For Christ’s sake
In response to Andy Singer’s little cartoon “Hey all you Christians” in the February 18 issue, obviously Singer doesn’t know very much, if anything, about Jesus or the extremely unique 200-year time period in which Jesus’ life took place. For someone like him to try to speculate what Jesus would do in our day is quite preposterous.
Jesus used a plethora of then-modern resources to spread the word and to make his (God’s) motives manifest. Jesus also did whatever it took to get the ultimate goal achieved. Even though he begged and pleaded with God to change his destiny, he stepped up and saw it through to the very end.
Singer should avoid directing his uninformed, uneducated comments toward people who know about his subject because it makes him sound stupid to us. I’m sure Singer isn’t really stupid, he’s just not very good at political propaganda. He’s not that good at making cartoons either, really. I would suggest that he scrap his little cartoon hobby and stick to his real job, or at least stick to subjects he knows.
To set things straight, Jesus probably wouldn’t drive an SUV because he’d be frontin’ the big diesel smoke-spewing bus so there would be plenty of room for all the disciples. As for the lawn chemicals, Jesus didn’t have a lawn and probably wouldn’t have one now. Now, half of our tax dollars are not spent on the military, so I don’t know where Singer’s info came from there but you better believe that Jesus would rock his colors and stand up for God’s people. Jesus would love his enemy but never let them have dominion over him. And finally, Jesus was the epitome of the death penalty—Word (of God).
There. That last paragraph wasn’t intended to be taken seriously, just to prove the point that we can all speculate. I hope this helps to clear up some of the misguided thoughts that Singer may have spawned.
Duane Brown
Charlottesville
Pregnant pause
I read your article about Lynn Wiber with interest [“Charlottesville’s new homeless,” March 11]. Do her seizures preclude her from using her nursing degree? I understand there is a nursing shortage nationwide.
As for the pregnant homeless couple—what are they thinking? I know many people need help but hearing about people who make bad decisions, can’t be bothered to get decent job skills, won’t use the job skills they do have and then whine about the consequences really bothers me. Wake up, folks! Concentrate in school, get a marketable skill, don’t make babies you can’t take care of and quit expecting society to bail you out.
Carolyn Simpson
Richmond
Left behind
John Borgmeyer, in his review of Ted Rall’s speech [“Meet the mouth,” Fishbowl, April 1], ignored a lot of compelling content in his pursuit of trash. I found it interesting that the Federal government is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution from intervening in elections. This power resides solely within the jurisdiction of the states. The Supreme Court circumvented this mandate when it chose to hear the Florida presidential election dispute.
According to Rall, Afghanistan after its American liberation is not “just as brutal, repressive and undemocratic as before”—it’s worse. It’s lawless. Now the warlords of the Northern Alliance not only force women to wear burqas, they rape them with impunity. The significance of Afghanistan for Rall is the precedent it sets for the brand of liberation we are bringing to Iraq. Too bad his incisive analysis of the Afghan crisis was reduced to a single paragraph. I was grateful for the light it shed on what has become a total media blackout.
Borgmeyer took every opportunity to bash the “liberals munching on brie and crackers and sipping organic green tea.” If liberals seemed to enjoy themselves too much, maybe it was because Rall’s speech was a breath of fresh air for many who feel bombarded by the propaganda that is dished out daily by corporate media giants. Sure, he was outrageous. But wasn’t that fun for a change? Sure, he was in your face. But isn’t that better than doublespeak about “liberation forces” and “collateral damage”?
I was particularly disturbed by the inaccurate reporting of an incident involving a question about terrorism. This speaker was not heckled by the crowd. His distress was obvious to many. As a Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice organizer of the event, I took the opportunity to comfort him. It is difficult to be overwhelmed by emotion in a public setting and clearly there were many layers of concern in the question he posed.
Rall gave a legitimate answer to his question, if not one that fully recognized the needs of the speaker. The pressures of public speaking don’t always yield the most personal response. That’s why I took the time to walk this young man back to his seat. He did not leave the auditorium. Instead he flashed me a peace sign to voice our shared humanity.
I am troubled by Borgmeyer’s divisive coverage of this event, which C-VILLE sponsored. It brings into question the integrity and sincerity of the newspaper. Cathryn Harding has stated that C-VILLE “supports the First Amendment,” and yet with freedom comes responsibility. Unfortunately, the staff of this trendy weekly seems more intent on stirring up controversy to fuel its least-common-denominator marketing strategy than serving as a media forum committed to the intelligent and balanced discussion of issues that effect all our lives so deeply.
Scott Supraner
Charlottesville
Free the brie
Talk about cheap shots. In John Borgmeyer’s account of Ted Rall’s talk and slide show, he takes careful note of the “happy munching of crackers and brie,” and the sipping of “organic green tea.” Had the reporter not, perhaps, spent so much time hanging around the small piece of brie, he’d have noticed other, um, more proletarian fare. Stuff like bagels and cream cheese; carrot and celery sticks; cookies and homemade brownies, along with—gasp!—coffee. So un-French, so plebian.
Good thing the folks at the Peace Center couldn’t afford to spring for vintage French wines to further arouse Borgmeyer’s ire. Good thing, too, he didn’t mistake the brownies for dense squares of congealed black caviar.
The overflow crowd that packed the old Lane Auditorium on March 26—a rain-soaked evening—wasn’t there to indulge its collective elitist tummies, but to listen to an unembedded journalist and political cartoonist dish out some hard facts. As for the “two uniformed Albemarle County police officers eyeing the crowd,” more than two of their City counterparts were on hand in City Council chambers during the recent Festival of the Book.
That occasion was a panel featuring such non-inflammatory speakers as UVA’s past president and retired professor of government and foreign affairs—Robert O’Neill and Henry Abraham, respectively—who discussed patriotism.
At a time when the last word in the foregoing sentence is almost solely equated with flying the flag, we could use more rally-with-Rall events.
Barbara Rich
Charlottesville
Take the lead
Thank you to C-VILLE Weekly and the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice for inviting Ted Rall to Charlottesville. People like Rall who understand what’s going on and express it well are unfortunately in short supply.
As much as we need ideologues like Rall, we also need leaders. This town’s affluence seems to make it sleepy and complacent, even though a lot of people’s hearts are in the right place. For example, I found the bumper stickers and pins on sale at the Rall event were a bit meek and wordy. We need activism that’s provocative and caustic. I believe we need to start by flying the flag upside-down—to signify that the nation has been hijacked by an immoral regime—and calling the invasion of Iraq for what it is: high-tech terrorism, looting and possibly cultural genocide.
Since, as Rall pointed out, there is certainly a “bizarre” pseudo-Christian ideology driving Bush, Christian groups should come forward and set the record straight: Christ never provided for a double standard of conduct for groups of people like armies (“let’s you and I get together to murder and break no moral law”). This is a triumphalist or “joyous secularist” perversion of Christianity. Similarly, we should write letters to Christian servicemen (and other creeds) and tell them they should consider their actions before pulling triggers/opening bomb bays.
Demonstrations—and they should continue—should be dedicated as much as possible to reminding people what war really looks like, since the media is presenting a censored image and it’s easy to believe that this is a tidy police operation. In war, people do not stand in a circle in the middle of intersections like Preston and McIntire. It’s nice to have a Universalist prayer circle. Let’s do that, too. But die-ins with stage blood make a lot more sense in the context of a busy intersection. The implication is that in war, streets fill with bodies.
With all the media technology and cultural influence at our disposal, it is obscene that we have started a shooting war in the 21st century. We are burying an entire Iraqi generation under our cruel arrogance. Karmic law is such that, to paraphrase the old WWI song, it’ll all come marching home—not just our troops, but their actions.
Kristopher Rikken
Charlottesville
Lecture circus
Your account of the Rall “lecture” was wonderful. His statement “liberals like to think” was beautifully illustrated by his use of profanity, obscenity and outright lies. For instance, I doubt that Afghan women who are now allowed to attend school would agree that that country “is just as brutal, repressive and undemocratic as it ever was.” Of course, I realize that since he is gifted with awesome liberal brain power, he was able to become an expert in Middle Eastern affairs in a very short while. His ugly and insulting statement about President Bush that “caused the crowd to go wild” was further proof that only conservatives like to have their opinions thrown back at them.
Margaret Anderson
Charlottesville
Reality check
I can’t continue to listen to the Rallian arias without a little piping up of my own! I doubt if young Mr. Rall has ever traveled extensively or lived in a totalitarian state—but I have. I grew up in Nazi-occupied Berlin and I must tell him that in such surroundings you are very, very careful what you say, to whom you say it and whether you should say it at all!
People who disagree vociferously with their government in such places as the Third Reich, Latin American dictatorships, Havana, Peking and—yes—Iraq (just to name a few) will be or were removed very quickly. And I mean REMOVED. There seems to be no danger of Mr. Rall being dragged from his pulpit into some grim Bushian gulag. WE can shoot our mouth off and we can vote next November!
Judy Brubaker
Crozet