LAZY LANGUAGE

I pick up your paper every week since I discovered the very good crossword puzzle included in each week’s edition. Thank you for that.

You insult my sense of propriety on a regular basis with your recurrent use of vulgarities in headlines (see “Bob Marley” this week) and in the text of various letters and columns. I see no need to pander to people’s “need” to use gutter language and I do not believe that the use of crude language is or should be acceptable in public print (or in conversation, for that matter). In my opinion so called “adult” language is actually extremely juvenile — get over your junior high fixation with being crude. There is a far greater vocabulary out there for those who have the brains to use it.

Frank Maguire

Orient

BRING HOME THE BACON

It’s rare that any editorial writer stirs me to respond as your article has, “A grim realization,” (Dec. 27, by Tanya Whiton) but not likely for the reason you might hope. I don’t doubt that the rules made by legislators for the disbursement of assistance for the needy need to be modified. The part of the story that stunned me was the part about you. You admit that your parents paid for your education and have helped since for needed medical and transportation crises in your life. You also claim to have a master’s. You also mention that a college education is touted as a means toward higher earning ability and seem to question that theory.

In past generations, people learned skills like farming, lumbering, etc. to be able to earn a living to support their families. In today’s world there are a much wider selection of professions from which to choose but the goal should be the same. Obtain a profession that is personally satisfying and brings home the bacon. It’s very frustrating to me to read your article as you delineate 100 percent, 150 percent, 175 percent, and 200 percent of poverty levels, yet you have not figured out in your own life, with an education that was given to you, how to obtain a job that is personally satisfying for you and provides the necessary income and benefits to meet your physical and emotional needs. I have no difficulty supporting assistance programs for the needy, but I don’t think you should be needy. I sincerely hope you can find a profession that meets your needs.

William DeCormier

Poland

ANTI-PRO-WAR

David Brudnoy’s pro-war essay, “Pre-emptive right,” (see “Thoughts on going to war,” Nov. 22) is an ugly racist diatribe arguing for guilt by association, not any action that Iraq has taken, as the reason for a pre-emptive strike on Iraq.

Brudnoy condemns Saddam Hussein (and all of Iraq) for the actions of Osama bin Laden. In the absence of material evidence, he links them together solely because they are Muslim and from the Middle East. Being unable to see them as sovereign identities is˜the equivalent of blaming the US for Catholic/Protestant violence in Ireland. After all, we’re both white countries full of Catholics and Protestants.

Moreover, using his line of thinking, anyone could blame Canada for the US bombing of the aspirin plant in Sudan because we’re countries from the same geographical area.

Brudnoy, along the way, calls those not pro-war everything from anti-Semite to Arabist to Jew hater, and infers that they are uncivilized and do not have common sense.

I am not arguing the innocence or benevolence of Saddam Hussein, but the actions of Iraq, not the actions of separate individuals or other countries, should be the basis of an argument for war on Iraq. Waging any other war is just as unethical and unbeneficial an act for humanity as anything Saddam Hussein has done. Unfortunately, Brudnoy’s essay functions only as an ugly racist smear campaign.

In his pro-war essay, “The case for war with Saddam Hussein,” Seth Gitell states that “Saddam Hussein is a menace to world security, and he must be removed from power.” I have to ask: Whose world security, and why wasn’t he a “menace to world security” after he invaded Iran? Why wasn’t he a “must [to] be removed from power” after he used chemical weapons, that we gave him, on the Iranians? Why did we veto the UN condemnation of him that resulted from these actions?

Moreover, why wasn’t Saddam Hussein a “menace to world security” after he used chemical weapons, again, which we gave him, on his own people? An incident that Gitell mentions in his essay. What was our response to that back in the ’80s when it happened? Again, why did we veto UN condemnation against him? Where was our concern for world security back then?

US foreign policy consists of supporting anyone who will do what we say. It does not consist of concern over the peoples of the world’s security, nor human rights. Hence Saddam Hussein’s only punishable crime in the eyes of the US was disobedience, not being “a menace to world security.”

Karl Rawstron

Portland