Comments, Please
Re: Planet Janet by Fawn Germer (March 20-26)
I just wanted to tell you I loved your article on Janet Reno. Two enthusiastic thumbs up! Finally, someone with an outlook not so far from my own. I agree totally. I think she's a great woman, but she needs to do quite a bit more to overtake good, old Jeb in November. I can't comment on that just isn't going to cut it come November.
Rochelle Christiansen
Via e-mail
Spies Among UsRe: The Spies Who Came in from the Art Sale by John F. Sugg (March 20-26)
Thank you for reporting about the Israeli spying campaign, which has much bothered me since the Carl Cameron reports. I expect that you will be called an anti-Semite for staying true to America as a journalist. It is disgraceful to the profession that the Fox News reports were spiked and that there is nothing but silence on this major news from the major news networks. So many questions are unanswered by our intelligence agencies that are supposed to serve us. The public should also know that a great many Jews are much opposed to Israel's behavior.
George Morton
Via e-mail
I found your article very interesting and at the same time very disturbing. I initially heard, albeit, at a whisper from FOX news earlier this year, then it disappeared from the radar screen so to speak. Here we are, closing Muslim charities (without substantiated evidence), incarcerating people with Arabian names (without charges) and kicking secret service agents, who are on the way to protecting the President of the United States, off planes because of their names and or physical appearance, yet, these incidents with America's allies have received not even glancing attention. I feel that, if this administration is truly committed to our national security, they should make details of this investigation public.
Timothy Stinson
Miami
Dig DeeperRe: Black in the Bay by Rochelle Renford (March 13-19)
I am disappointed that a story that could have demonstrated a little depth about what it is like to be black in an unresponsive cultural environment like the one we have in Tampa had to fall so short. Rochelle Renford's approach was dense and lazy. This story was the hugest letdown. Why did you devote most of the whole paper to it if you weren't going to say anything?
Charles Merrill
Via e-mail
Hypocrisy NowRe: White Dollar Crime by Fawn Germer (March 13-19)
I hate writing this e-mail. There are two reasons for this: First, I've written a bunch of e-mails in the past to the Planet, back when John Sugg was voicing his always well written, stylish, articulate, usually extremely obnoxious and often outright stupid opinions, and the lesson I learned is, it's pointless, because the letters simply disappear in a smear of anonymous phosphor dots, as if I had flung them at the event horizon of a black hole.
Second, this particular e-mail is going to sound as if I'm sticking up for white supremacists, and there is little to nothing I hate more than white supremacists.
However, I'm not; I'm simply sticking up for white supremacists' rights, as human beings and American citizens, to purchase the same soapbox as your weekly rag regularly rents out to tobacco companies, liquor companies, bars, porn sellers and prostitutes.
It's all well and good to say that you guys reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, and well, you're drawing the line at selling space to hatemongers. A large part of me applauds that.
The question is not, do The Racist Morons have an absolute right to advertise their stupid, toxic views in any specific newspaper or magazine where they can meet the asking price? The question is, do The Racist Morons have a right to be treated the same way by a commercial enterprise as, you know, everyone else?
Much as I hate it, I happen to think they do. Weekly Planet sells space — and I mean a LOT of space — to the cigarette industry, to the alcohol industry, to the local bars, to porn palaces and nude bars, to Internet service providers, and not to put too fine a point on it, to those pretty openly advertised as hookers. You also advertise illegal pharmaceutical supplies, if not the pharmaceuticals themselves.
Bluntly, y'all are panderers. Of course, so is everyone who has ever sold anything, but y'all are the worst sort of panderers; you sell stuff that at least some of you, most likely, think is bad for people, that people shouldn't spend their money on, that the world would, in fact, inarguably and demonstrably be better off without.
White supremacist nonsense pisses me off, too, but honestly, if I owned a paper and I were willing to sell space to folks who advertise cancer to children with cartoon funny animals, I don't know where I'd get the sheer, raw triple-faced, cast-iron hypocrisy to not only refuse to sell space to someone who just, you know, hates Jews and then write an article bragging about how sanctimonious I am for being such a hypocrite.
You want to draw a line? You need to draw it a whole lot closer to you. I simply can't stomach how you try to draw it with every really profitable vice in the world on your side of it, and lil ol' race prejudice on the other side.
Of course, this wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that your tobacco ads, and liquor ads, and bar ads, and titty ads, and prostitution ads, bring in most likely several hundred thousand dollars a week while the white supremacist ad you're waxing so self righteous about brought in $194?
Darren Madigan
Tampa
No JokeRe: Banishing Act by Morris Sullivan (March 6-12)
Initially I thought of this act as a joke, especially after I saw the piece on The Daily Show. The danger with this proclamation is that it could start us down the slippery slope of intolerance to other religions. Before you know it, some town could say no one can enter but fill in the blank religion. Once that happens even the most moderate of followers look the other way when non-practitioners or infidels are killed by those who believe.
Rex Rowland
Via e-mail
This article appears in Mar 27 – Apr 2, 2002.