Paved with good intentions
On this Tuesday morning, the sky was gray and it was raining. I was feeling blue until I picked up a copy of the C-VILLE. And after reading Stratton Salidis’ article “Sprawl is not for all” [Comment, June 17] I could not stop laughing. It was a great pick-me-up.
I was chuckling at Salidis’ thoughts about stopping sprawl and the traffic problems that might be caused by the development on 29N. I feel the big problem with people in this region is that they do not see the whole picture. It sounds great on paper to get more people to take the bus, walk, or take a bike to work to cut down on cars on the roads. Yet people who work in Charlottesville don’t exactly live in Charlottesville.
People who work in Charlottesville live in Albemarle, Greene, Madison, Orange, Buckingham and Nelson counties, so taking a bike to work might be a good workout but not practical. We should allow the bypass or the Meadow Creek Parkway to pass. I think we are having too much County vs. City this and that on how to deal with these issues. Stop trying to have a power struggle and work together.
Where were the protestors when Best Buy was given the green light? If you think Hollymead Town Center will have traffic problems, Best Buy is going to take that cake. And no, you cannot have people walking from Greene County to Best Buy in order to reduce traffic. I just don’t think they could make it that far.
Also, why is everyone so quick to jump the gun on calling us a Northern Virginia if we don’t stop the growth? That argument also brings a laugh. How in the world can we turn into Northern Virginia? They are heavily populated and have like millions of companies based out of there. That area has the nation’s capitol and we just have the University. We will never be a Northern Virginia in a hundred years. We are not that important of a city that would make us grow that big. The only way we could is if everyone and their mothers decided to move to Charlottesville. That will not happen because here we do not exactly issue the welcoming wagon to anyone wanting to move to these parts.
Joseph Booe
Charlottesville
Calling the play
Regarding the Atlantic Coast Conference’s raid on the Big East [“New ACC means ‘Hoos could suck even worse,” Fishbowl, May 27], compromise is called for here, and compromise certainly can be achieved in a manner that satisfies both of the seemingly disparate mandates: the survival of the Big East as a second-tier football conference and the upgrade of the ACC to the ranks of the major football conferences. Here’s how:
Miami and Virginia Tech move from the Big East to the ACC. To swell its ranks to the desired 12, the ACC might say “beg pardon” to the Southeast Conference and snatch South Carolina. Consider the implications for intra-conference rivalries. Suddenly, most every team in the ACC has an arch rival in conference. Florida State-Miami is now a conference battle, so are Virginia-Virginia Tech and Clemson-South Carolina.
Of course, what the university presidents, boards and athletic directors care about here is the TV revenue that would be plowed back into the money-making athletic programs. But doesn’t intra-conference status make Virginia-Virginia Tech and Clemson-South Carolina that much more attractive to a national TV audience?
As for the Big East, it gets to keep Syracuse and Boston College. The other part of the solution here is to persuade Notre Dame to surrender its independent football status. Connecticut already is signing on, and while the additions of the Fighting Irish and the Huskies would not quite counter the losses of Miami and Virginia Tech in terms of football power and prestige, it’s enough to save the Big East. And there’s another possibility that would allow the Big East to more than make up its losses: Persuade Joe Paterno to come home.
Penn State is the 11th member of a conference that, after 10 years, still hasn’t gotten used to the fact. Hence, it remains the Big Ten. Some of the luster has come off the Nittany Lions in recent years, but those who attribute the drop-off to Paterno’s age or supposedly antiquated game plan are uninformed. Penn State’s recent struggles are all about recruiting. Bring Penn State back to the East, and watch how long it takes for PSU to return to dominance. Any way you slice it—revenue draws or college football prestige—the Big East comes out ahead if it gains Penn State and Notre Dame while losing Miami and Virginia Tech.
These may seem like a lot of puzzle pieces to fit together, but they all make sense from a number of vantage points.
Tom Dulan
Free Union
Tune in
In response to John Fracher’s letter regarding Brad Eure’s inclusion in the “C-VILLE 20” [Mailbag, June 17]: You fail to recognize that the left, of which it seems you are a member, does not represent the mainstream of society any more than your left arm represents the center of your body by sprouting forth from your sternum.
I suspect that Eure has chosen to include conservative programming on his station because, unlike you, he recognizes that truth. I suspect also that he, unlike you, has taken the time to listen to at least some of the content of those programs and has judged them differently.
Had you listened at all, you would know that only one of the three hosts in those hours, Sean Hannity, is a Republican. You would know that another, Neal Boortz, is a “live-and-let-live” Libertarian. You might also have noticed that Hannity, Boortz and Savage have been highly critical of the Bush Administration in recent weeks.
If you are going to lead a boycott, as is certainly your right, you might consider basing your accusations on fact rather than on gossip and hearsay. If you expect others to follow your example, you ought to be able to offer specific instances of the “hateful vitriol” and “unchecked anger” you claim to have heard. Or are you simply dismissing all dissent with your viewpoint as “hate speech”?
Even if, as you have claimed, all three shows were forums for Republican ideology, why would that, in and of itself, be damning? In suggesting that, in order to be acceptable to the community, all political programming must entertain all sides of the political spectrum, you might as well be suggesting that every musical genre must be included in the playlist of every program of every music station.
If Eure has chosen to include some hours of conservative programming on his station, it is probably because these shows do attract listeners—listeners who enjoy hearing, if not necessarily agreeing with, conservative opinions. (I find it fascinating that there are those on the left who are such great champions of diversity and free speech only as long as the speech falls into lock step with left-wing ideology, and the diversity is not a diversity of viewpoint!)
When you encourage not only anger but action against Eure on the basis of false claims, yours is the destructive voice in the community, and the hypocrisy is yours as well.
Felicity Lien
Buckingham
Idea men
I realize that as an independent thinker, I may be a minority in the Charlottesville area, but I disagree with Jeffrey Fracher about WINA’s programming. While I certainly don’t agree with everything that Neal Boortz, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage say, they give me something to think about and cause me to question the status quo. In this day and age when the broadcasting and print media are controlled by huge and often left-wing conglomerates, I am happy to hear the news with a different “spin.” I take all that I absorb from various sources and form my own opinions, as most do. I believe the point is to make us think and to make us question the age-old platforms, certainly not to spout “hateful vitriol.” Lighten up, Mr. Fracher!
Kim Umstadter
Free Union
The great debate
At WINA, we are in the business of presenting our listeners with the most informative and entertaining programming. We neither endorse nor refute the opinions of our syndicated talk hosts. There are no highly rated liberal talk shows in the country right now. If there were, we would certainly consider putting them on our airwaves. However in talk radio, the shows with the greatest listenership and appeal happen to be conservative.
Commercial radio is a business, and without the support of listeners, we cannot function as a broadcast entity. We greatly appreciate any feedback and opinions that listeners have, and we are always ready to listen. We are also actively looking for more local programs to add to our line up.
I respect Jeffrey Fracher’s opinion, but I was a little disheartened at his personal charge of hypocrisy against Brad Eure. WINA has always been involved in our community, and we continue that effort daily. We have helped to raise more than $130,000 for the Children’s Medical Center over the last three years. Every Monday we devote four hours of our programming to free air time for non-profit organizations. We also helped to orchestrate and promote the recent “Save the Fireworks” campaign. We are currently involved in efforts to support the Jefferson Area Food Bank and the Charlottesville Police Officer’s Association Emergency Relief Fund.
We broadcast high school athletics, and every year we cover the Charlottesville Ten Miler live on our station, and that is only a small percentage of our community involvement. So for Fracher to imply that Eure is not concerned with our community at large, simply because of some of the programs we air, is an excessive assumption.
Fracher also seemed to imply that our daily programming is a detriment to our community: “How does this hateful vitriol that spews forth daily from AM 1070 reflect the mores of the community?” I would respond by saying that it is not the responsibility of a talk show to “bring people together to solve problems.” People who both agree and disagree with our talk hosts listen because they enjoy the subject matter, not because they are looking for someone to tell them how to think. I think our wonderful community is far more intelligent than that. The great thing about talk radio is that listeners can always call in and express congruent or dissenting opinions. So even though I disagree with Fracher, the great thing about all of this, and the great thing about talk radio, is we both were given an opportunity to speak our minds.
Jay James
Program Director, WINA
jj@wina.com
End the facade
Congratulations on “Read This First” in the June 3 C-VILLE. I assume its appearance in the same issue with your report on the architectural controversy surrounding the transit station and Juvenile & Domestic Relations courts building is not an accident. It is high time that someone spoke out on what to many of us is an obvious contradiction: Charlottesville may be a city in which contemporary literature, drama, music and art are thriving, but architecturally, according to the UVA Boards of Visitors and many City officials, we desire nothing beyond pale imitations of what was being done in Virginia in the 18th century.
We neither honor nor remember history by its literal imitation in behavior, in dress, or in architecture. A good building should fit within its context but this does not require the construction of an ersatz history, or that we turn our city into a second-rate Williamsburg or Disney-esque theme park, poor settings to receive either justice or an education. If we valued these architectural fantasies less, we might value the real historic architecture of the community more, and perhaps less of that fabric would be threatened or lost.
Good buildings must do more than fit. They must speak to the aspirations of the institutions they house and to the values of the society that they serve. No doubt the requirements of a large performing arts facility can be shoehorned into an envelope of Colonial Virginia architecture, but to what end? What does this package communicate about the nature of the arts organizations that the facility is to house—that our performing arts productions are to be confined to a similarly narrow spectrum of time and place, that nothing that came after 1820 is worthy of our notice, that we expect no more from architecture or art than that it go unnoticed, be familiar and evoke no values beyond the nostalgic?
Edward R. Ford
Charlottesville