Letters

GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

Couldn't help noticing that you're holding your Smart Asparilla Festival at Four Green Fields, the same establishment you denounced in LAST week's Planet for holding fundraisers for Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA.

Glad to see you're sticking to your guns.

—Michael Skold
via e-mail

Editor's reply: Oops. Guess that comes from having an editorial department that's independent from our money-grubbing sales and marketing folks — although you'd think each side would pay more attention to what the other is doing.

For the record, the Smart Asparilla Festival was not affiliated with Four Green Fields. Along with our co-sponsors and advertising partners, the Weekly Planet paid an event company to arrange a free outdoor party near the Gasparilla Parade route. The event company, in turn, paid $5,000 to rent a parking lot several doors down from its owner, Four Green Fields. In our promo materials, we identified the bar to help folks find the party.

And yes, if you're following the money, Weekly Planet promo dollars found their way to bar owners Colin Breen and Bobby O'Neill, who've done their part to support the often-violent Irish resistance. We don't blame our smartass readers for pointing out the inconsistency. As our own chief smartass, John Sugg, remarked when he heard of it: "The ironies abound."

REPUBLICANS RULE

To have sent Kevin Griffis to ask Southerners why they ran screaming from the Democratic Party was like sending the answer to ask the question.

Flawlessly condescending and dishonest, the article left one wondering how many platitudes, half-truths and stereotypes he could cram into such a small space, not to mention how on earth the people of Blairsville have made it for so long without him.

Perhaps to enlighten the good folks of the cultural backwaters of the South, you would consider shipping them a box of the Weekly Planet to better sort out all of their foolish notions. That they'll be better equipped to locate an array of strip-clubs, piercing parlors and male witch psychic-readings here in Eden will just be an extra.

—Hunter Yeary
St. Petersburg

Your article came to the totally incorrect conclusion. Most Southerners are busy working and raising their families. They have a tendency to vote pragmatically. Your economic analysis is completely flawed. Most Southerners are smart enough to realize that they never were hired by a poor person. They understand that rich people buy new houses, furnishings, cars and the services that they provide. In addition, they don't want their kids to act like freaks and engage in social experiments that will probably end in suffering and misery.

You did get something right. Southerners perceive themselves as upwardly mobile, not downtrodden as you would have them believe. I believe that most rich Democrats vote that way because they either don't feel they earned their money, or don't understand economics. Poor Democrats are held hostage by their governmental benefactors. Only about half the population realizes that our government is far too intrusive and big, and demands much too much of what we earn.

The only reason the Republicans are currently more successful than the Democrats is because the Republicans are the latest party to learn from their mistakes.

Don't worry: This too will change.

—Bart H. Siegel
Temple Terrace

You guys, left-wing zealots, just don't get it. One of the problems conservatives have with the left is their self-created feeling of superiority. Your article proves this point time and time again. When the interviewed residents give their opinion, you are baffled as to why they have the opinions they do and attack them by citing your tired left-wing drivel about Haliburton, healthcare and Iraq. I noticed the word terrorism did not come up. It did not come up because a sane person cannot deny that the Bush team has done a good job fighting terrorism. This would lead to approval of one Bush policy, and that would not be acceptable to this article. You refuse to accept and, more importantly, respect the opinions by bringing up all the things supported by the left. What most people want is more freedom to do what they need to do with their own money to provide for their families.

Working families. How do you define a working family? My wife and I collectively make over 100K dollars a year. We have a nice home and two beautiful kids who attend nice schools in a nice area in south Forsyth County. We also received an $800 tax refund from the federal government, a.k.a, the Bush administration. Are we not a "working family" deserving of a tax cut in an overtaxed country? Should we not have more of our own money (our earned money, not the government's money) available to us — thereby, allowing us to make our own decisions about what is best for us? Or should we send 40 percent of our income to the federal government so they can decide what is best for us?

One more thing: Most Southerners have traditional/conservative values. And in this day and age, these items are not being supported by the Democratic Party.

—Michael Merck
Atlanta, Ga.

Just finished reading your cover story in the Weekly Planet and wanted to say "thank-you" for trying to explain Bush's popularity with the people he couldn't care less about so comprehensibly.

I ask myself "where's the anger" almost on a daily basis. Why aren't these people in the streets screaming for a change in administration? And you offered a variety of explanations, each making complete sense. It's ignorance, it's the skewed dream of being "like Bush" one day, it's selfishness, it's right-wing talk media, it's definitely religion, and it's a combination of homophobia and racism. Scary.

Keep up the great work.

—Lisa Marzilli
Riverview, Fla.

This article appears in Feb 12-18, 2004.