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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Ads and Answers
To the editor: I wish to make some comments concerning your advertisements. On Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003, I left the TCU library, picking up your paper on the way out. After a few pages I suddenly noticed flippant illustrations of scantily clad women advertising what appears to be prostitution. To begin with, I am appalled that such practices are allowed, let alone publicized as if universally accepted. In addition, such advertisements have the potential to reflect advertisers and their beliefs. So think of these questions: Are you faithful to your wife? Are you an example for your children? Do you possess personal values such as honesty, integrity, virtue, and charity? How could you profess or even answer these questions affirmatively, when your publication advertises the degrading influences that sustain the opposite?
Michael Wood
Haltom City
Saluting Courage
To the editor: I am the first wife of Richard Chowning and the mother of one of his daughters. The story about Richard and Wirt Norris (“Every Picture Tells a Story,” Oct. 15, 2003) shocked, dismayed, and deeply saddened me. From the time Richard and I met in 1963, Wirt was frequently around. He had assumed the role of honorary uncle in the Chowning family. He was in our wedding, he was our daughter’s godfather, and he was at her wedding in 1995. Wirt violated Richard’s trust and duped me and the Chowning family. I salute Richard’s courage in coming forward.
Kay Thompson Fields
Fort Worth
Arresting Trouble
To the editor: Just read Jeff Prince’s story, “Fear of Flying” (Oct. 22, 2003). Excellent. Really appreciated the details. Texas authorities who intend to violate the federal rights of any one of “The Seven” (federal medical marijuana recipients) are in deep trouble the moment they make the arrest. They will immediately be guilty of a conspiracy against the rights of citizens, as defined in federal law.
Title 18 USC Section 241 says that threatening or intimidating any person in the exercise of the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution or laws is punishable to imprisonment of up to 10 years. What’s more, if state or local public officials — including law enforcement officers — violate that law, they are liable for civil charges. Law enforcement officials have become far too willing to violate the rights of citizens. The backlash by citizens will likely end a lot of careers — state and federal. I believe there is a prima facie case for the federal conspiracy against citizen rights with regard to medical marijuana. My essay on the topic can be found on the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Indymedia site at www.santacruz.indymedia.org.
I’ve been involved with the medical marijuana issue only a month and a half. Should have gotten into it earlier. I’m seriously ill (on SSA disability, with condition expected to result in death), and the right strain of marijuana would allow me to sleep through the pain that causes my chronic “sleep maintenance” insomnia. The rest that I can’t get — even with prescription sleep aids — is crucial. My life is being needlessly shortened, thanks to the legal stupidities surrounding marijuana. And there are hundreds of thousands of us who need medical marijuana nationwide.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to raise children with autism or other emotional disturbances. The denial of medical marijuana to those children over the past several decades adds significantly to this national tragedy.
Stephen Neitzke
Tulsa, OK
Direct Democracy League
Up the South Side
To the editor: Great job on the Southside story (“A New Era for Near South,” Oct. 8, 2003). I hope the redevelopment of that side of Fort Worth is a success for all parties involved. I love that damn town, and it’s time something was done for the folks on the South Side. It’s depressing to drive through the area with my wife’s grandfather, who’s lived in Fort Worth for over 50 years, and listen to him recount how he used to buy tires over there, or make deliveries for a company that used to be in that building. I love our Un-Dallas, and I want it to prosper and grow, but not grow too big. Fort Worth has a charm all its own, and the neighborhoods that call the city home help define that character and charm. I will continue to keep my fingers crossed for Fort Worth.
Jeremy McClain
Residing in Gaithersburg, MD,
but constantly missing home
Come Out and Say It
To the editor: I wouldn’t mind seeing Steve Hunt expand his “On Second Thought” commentary (“Real Progress, Not Synthetic Grief,” Oct 15, 2003), primarily for the purpose of shedding some light on what the heck he’s talking about.
I’m sure some folks are simply going to respond rabidly to what they think he’s saying ... which probably isn’t what he’s saying at all. What he may be trying to do is make a statement about his perception of the U.S. culpability in anti-Americanism. If so, he ought to just come out and say it without dancing around it. Others will pillory him, perhaps, but at least he’s said it. Most of us are big enough to actually discuss to what extent U.S. policy causes anti-Americanism without some puerile reflex from either right or left.
Other thoughts puzzle me, like his suggestion that we can’t mourn firefighters and police officers if we’re not pure in our devotion to unionism. The one thing that does actually offend me about what he very nearly almost kind of says is his categorization of other people’s visceral reaction to events as “synthetic grieving.” I can’t imagine being presumptive enough to broadly categorize other people’s pain as illusory and solely the result of emotional manipulation. Equally bothersome is his eagerness to suppose what other viewers of the exhibit were thinking.
I think that the social progress he seems to long for is much more likely when other people and their concerns aren’t so blithely dismissed.
Richard Nimz
Fort Worth
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