ALEX JONES: ‘DEAD ACCURATE’?
In response to Daniel Gordon’s letter regarding Alex Jones
(The Mail, August 25, commenting on City’s
August 25 article, “Paranoia Strikes Deep”): These are some of the things I
have heard on Jones’ radio program:
• Osama bin Laden and President Bush planned 9/11 in a hotel
room in Washington, DC;
• The United
Nations has a resolution to move the border between the US
and Mexico
north 600 miles;
• President
Fox of Mexico and President Bush have a secret plan to allow illegal
immigration so Fox’s children will be US citizens, so they can vote for a
resolution to cede California back to Mexico;
• Henry
Kissinger, Walter Cronkite, and many other international figures have performed
human sacrifices in California;
• Vaccines
are mind-control drugs.
While Alex
Jones does bring up important issues — immigration policy, the war on
terrorism, etc. — to call him “dead accurate” is a stretch.
Michael Enfonde, Colebrook Drive, Irondequoit
WILMOT AND SMART GROWTH
The openness of Democratic County Legislator Chris Wilmot in
his recent interview with City (“Say
What,” August 25) was nothing short of shocking. While the Rochester
community was aware of the Wilmot family’s opinions on development, we weren’t
prepared to hear him so openly express disregard for city residents and his
constituents when the potential for personal profit is involved.
Wilmot
showed just how out of touch he is with the average city resident, and he
showed his lack of familiarity with the City of Rochester,
when he stated that East Main Street
from the SibleyBuilding
to the Hyatt Hotel is “an embarrassment to the community and to the
region” and is “the greatest commercial carnage.” While this
area is not experiencing the boom of economic growth that a land developer
would want, it is certainly in much better condition than most of Rochester.
The areas where shootings have taken place better illustrate the embarrassing
conditions into which big real-estate investors have let our beloved city fall.
Wilmot
places the blame for empty retail space downtown on Mayor Johnson,
“liberal Democrats,” and “poor city planning.” Yet Wilmot
and other county legislators have attempted to cut off talks involving
improvements to our bus system. They favor a giant bus station, which will be
great when it comes to handing out construction contracts and land ownership
deals, but will actually make public transportation in Rochester
even worse for its many riders and will almost guarantee no new riders from the
suburbs.
Although
our city planning is actually good considering the age of Rochester,
Legislator Wilmot attempts to place the blame on the victims. That’s easy to do
when anyone can see the large number of abandoned buildings and brown space in
our city.
Sadly,
Legislator Wilmot fails to see that his family is one of the biggest
contributors to the downfall of this city. Take a look at the endless malls in
Henrietta and Greece,
which destroyed any concept of smart growth or land-use planning. They use big
tax incentives to draw the retail and the production jobs out of the city
center and into the suburbs.
Housing
tract after housing tract was constructed, giving land development companies,
with strong ties to elected officials, contracts with fantastic margins of
profit. That development drew more and more people out of the City of Rochester,
leaving abandoned buildings and homes behind.
His
frustration with Mayor Johnson’s denial of a giant Wegmans
store on Elmwood Avenue is
the perfect example of Wilmot’s failure to grasp the concept of smart growth
and land-use planning. Had Wegmans not closed the store
on Mount Hope Avenue, less
than a mile away, there wouldn’t be a need for a new Wegmans
in that area. I doubt that Mayor Johnson would mind if Bob Wegman
wanted to build a grocery store on the north side of the city or any of the
numerous other areas of the city without a grocery store.
If
Legislator Wilmot were truly concerned with city planning, why was he so quick
to dismiss the fact that city planners did not zone Elmwood Avenue for
commercial businesses when creating the current plan for the city? He then
tried to justify his stance that he “wasn’t privy” to the zoning of
the city. Legislator Wilmot knows anyone can walk into City Hall and review a
zoning map.
It’s time
for Rochesterians to realize that when people
consumed with personal economic gain get elected to public office, they are
there to serve only one person. Chris Wilmot doesn’t express any opinions in
this interview that would be consistent with the ideals of the Democratic
Party, but the Democratic Party helped put him in office because his family’s
money helps to win elections.
We need
community leaders in public office, people who have shown that they are part of
our community and that they care about the people of Rochester.
We need political parties to return to their values and turn away from the
wallets of investors like the Wilmots.
If the
Democratic Party had acted in alliance with the values of most of its members,
maybe there wouldn’t have been a need for the Green Party in Rochester,
but Chris Wilmot is the prime example of why we are here and why we are growing
stronger every year.
Joseph M Young, treasurer, Green Party of MonroeCounty
KERRY, SLIDING
Regarding “Hurtling Toward November” (September 1): You’re
in a fog, aren’t you? And in the dumps. You are seeing this sad sack John
Kerry, this default candidate of the Democratic Party after the Clintons
torpedoed both Al Gore and Howard Dean, sliding into a well-deserved oblivion
and — Dukakis-like — into the rank of a footnote in history.
And why is this
happening? In Michael Moore fashion, you are blaming the dumb American public,
not before taking a stab at the “appalling… Bush campaign tactics.”
Bush
campaign tactics? And you quote, for help, Paul Krugman
of the New York Times? One 527 ad
comes out in three states poking some legitimate holes into Kerry’s Vietnam
story and, bingo! we have a conspiracy! How liberal!
Of course,
the public reaction shows “no outrage.” Why do you insult the
intelligence of the American people? Where was the outrage from Kerry when,
say, moveon.org (financed by gazillionaire George Soros) was flooding internet and airwaves with ads
depicting Dubya in Nazi regalia? You do know that
anti-Bush 527’s have gotten 5 to 10 times the amount of money that pro-Bush
527’s have, right?
And the Times and the Washington Post were rah-rah for Bush and war in the days leading
up to the Iraq
invasion? What planet do you live on, Ms. Towler? Next, you are going to tell
me that Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings and Tom Lehrer volunteered
to go fight the war.
Let me give
you a little hint: Have you seen Bill Clinton, this supposedly very popular
ex-president, and wife Hillary, the high priestess of the Democratic Party, go
out of their way in defending John Kerry? Now, I am not talking conspiracies
here, but their behavior should tell you something of the snake pit the
Democratic Party is.
ItaloSavella, FernwoodPark, Rochester
Mary Anna Towler’s
response: For the record, I think you’re right about some of the stuff
moveon.org has put out. But my point about the Times and Post coverage
leading up to the war had to do with those newspapers’ news coverage, not the editorials and columnists’ pieces. Both of
those newspapers have admitted that they were too friendly with news sources
and too accepting of suspicious material coming from the likes of Ahmed Chalabi. Both have admitted that they played up reports
about Iraq’s
threat to the US
— now proved erroneous — and buried or killed entirely reports to the
contrary.
CAMPAIGN MYSTERIES
Don’t give up hope; your man Kerry may yet win in November.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my vote will likely mean nothing in this
Democrat state, and I’m glad to see you’re taking off your blinders and
admitting that your candidate may lose in the electoral college.
But in the
meantime, between now and November, maybe you can demystify a few of the topics
you brought up, along with Kerry’s vulnerability, in “Hurtling Toward
November.”
1) On
527’s: What are the implications of billionaire international financier George Soros’s funding of moveon.org in the effort to unseat Bush?
What will he want in return?
Why are the
Swift Boat Vets any worse than moveon.org, or, for that matter, than Michael
Moore, or Tom Tomorrow? Books, documentaries, comic strips — all are a form
of “politicotainment.”
2) Should
Kerry’s military records be fully released, as the press demanded of GW Bush’s?
3) On gay
marriage: If Clinton was against it, why should Bush be condemned for his
similar “position”? What are the confines of gay marriage? For
example, would adultery be grounds for divorce? Didn’t a man recently lose a
divorce case based on the judge’s ruling that his wife had only had a
homosexual affair, which did not constitute infidelity?
4) On abortion:
Men want abortion to be legal as much or more than women do, and most
Republicans know they’re performing a balancing act with their staunch pro-life
wing against the majority of the party’s personal beliefs. It’s distasteful,
but legal. You folks did a good job with your article on pro-choice
Republicans, including the letters you ran. Abortion will never be made illegal
in this country, in my humble opinion. It’s becoming a less and less prominent
issue. For example, in the 2002 election cycle, Emily’s list candidates did not
fare as well as they previously had.
5) On the
war: You should come up with a media scorecard, and see who gets how many
points for pre-war coverage. In my opinion, the mainstream media was against
the war. I recall a Democrat and
Chronicle headline something like “Bush Goes to War,” and I
remember thinking, “No, the United States
went to war.” I may be splitting hairs, but it sure sounded anti-war, and
anti-Bush, to me.
I think you
kid yourself when you try to separate yourselves from the rest of the
pro-Democrat mainstream media. You can yell Fox and Clear Channel all you want,
but they don’t quite stack up against the NY
Times, LA Times, CNN, the
networks, etc., all of which are pro-Democrat.
Joe St. Martin, Penfield
Mary Anna Towler’s
response: I won’t take up the space to answer every one of your questions,
but briefly, on a few: Maybe Soros does want
something. What do the pharmaceutical industry, the NRA, the energy industry,
etc., want from George Bush?
If the
Swift Boat Vets are completely independent of the Bush administration and the
Bush campaign, there’s no difference. My own opinion is that citizens’ groups
have every right to run political ads. The ads should, of course, be truthful.
Media investigations into the Swift Boat charges indicate that they are false.
Bill
Clinton didn’t propose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. And
I’ve criticized John Kerry for what I think is political waffling: agreeing
that same-sex couples should have certain rights, but not marriage.
I’d like to
think that abortion rights are no longer under attack. Anti-abortion leaders
don’t seem to think so.
LIES AND DISTORTIONS
I am an ardent, liberal Democrat, borderline Green Party
member, and I am outraged at how George W. and his cronies were allowed to
stand up there and spew the lies, fabrications, and distortions that they did
during the Republican National Convention. People have been prosecuted in a
court of law for less slander than that.
First off,
the assailment of John Kerry was completely unfounded and misleading. The
Republicans rattled off a laundry list of things that John Kerry has voted
against or “flip-flopped” on. Have they ever stopped to think that
there may have been riders in the proposed bill? He may have agreed with 9 out
of 10 lines of the bill but disagreed with that one objectionable line that the
Republicans were trying to squeeze in under the radar.
Second,
“flip-flopping” should more accurately be characterized as listening to your constituents. A
politician is not (or shouldn’t be) in the Senate to vote his own viewpoints.
He is a voice of the people, and if the people change their opinion on an
issue, so should he.
Third, Bush
criticized Kerry’s plans for increasing taxes. But where is the money going to
come from for every one of Bush’s proposed “monumental” programs,
such as the No Child Left Behind Act? Taxes. Without taxes, our society can’t
provide roads, schools, fire trucks, or bombs for our fabricated wars.
Sorry,
Bush; you can’t lambaste your opponent for raising taxes when you will be doing
it yourself.
Ryan M. Loysen, Cambridge Street, Rochester
JOB SECURITY
With the recent announcement that MonroeCounty will eliminate or not fill
hundreds of jobs because of a budget deficit, there was no mention of reducing
the number of political patronage positions that have been awarded by the
Brooks administration.
From the
bus authority to the water authority to out-of-work MonroeCounty legislators, people with no
academic or operational qualifications other than being Republican political
insiders seem to have found easy employment in well-paying jobs. With tens of
thousands of MonroeCounty
residents out of work, the appointment of political hacks seems particularly
outrageous.
Leslie Miller, Rochester
REAL LIFE, FILMED
Matt Ehlers’ review of GardenState (August 25) is a perfect
example of how subjective movie reviews are and how we shouldn’t let them deter
us from seeing good movies. Although I agreed with a couple of his points,
Ehlers’ article was extremely jaded. He reminds me of the cynicism I’ve
encountered in my travels, from students who were taught to over-analyze and
pull apart films so much that they’ve forgotten how to simply watch a movie and
enjoy it.
Ehlers
tries to make the point that many movies, perhaps trying to be trendy, end up
stereotyping certain cities and the people in them. That is true, but I don’t
think that is the case in this one. Ehlers states, “Braff
is not the first filmmaker to fall into this cliché, but why is it that every
film set in the land between Los Angeles and New York is populated exclusively
with wacky characters?” I’ve lived in many places throughout that land,
and many times the characters in films are not all that far-fetched.
We should
also give the average viewer a little more credit than to think they would
believe the cities portrayed in these films are filled exclusively with quirky
characters.
In GardenState, one of these characters is Mark (played well by Peter Sarsgaard), whom Ehlers describes as the “kind of
character who drives me nuts: the stoned bohemian who is really just a lazy
genius.” Ehlers says that “we are led to believe that his life is
somehow wiser and deeper than ours.” While I did think his character was
lazy, I didn’t think he was a genius and I didn’t believe his life was wiser
and deeper than mine.
I thought
he was a very real character. I know people like that: people who never made it
out of their hometown, who never figured out what they wanted to do or had the
courage to do it and then disguised the resulting depression with drugs and
their inflated ego.
The story
is an easily relatable “slice of life” in which most of us can
identify with Andrew’s journey to find himself and to
find meaning in his life. The visual imagery in the film is beautiful and
unique, and I was impressed by this first effort from the writer, director, and
star of the film, Zach Braff.
Ehlers
recommends that when Braff writes another film, “he
actually goes out into America
and finds characters who aren’t wacky or tragic.” I recommend that Mr.
Ehlers go out into America
and find characters who are wacky and tragic. Maybe that will help him get in
touch with real life and cure his desire to over-scrutinize a good film.
Michelle Macirella,
Laburnam Crescent, Rochester
This article appears in Sep 15-21, 2004.
