SELF-RIGHTEOUS BIGOT

Today, I was wondering if a real conversation between liberals and conservatives was possible, or if everyone was so set in their belief systems that we were destined to preach to the choir as market-tested sound bytes were continually regurgitated by politicians. And as I picked up the August 4 edition of The Flagpole, I was wondering if conservatives even bothered to read your publication, if letters to the editor had any chance of reaching non-liberal ears. So I was pleasantly surprised to see Republican Congressman Charlie Norwood's "Dam Break," if only because its presence there gestures toward the possibility of a cross-over readership for The Flagpole.

As for Norwood's "article" itself, the piece reeks of self-righteousness of the worst kind. He exploits a local disaster - the death of 39 people near Toccoa in 1977 - to push his hate-filled, paranoid agenda. The Toccoa story would be touching if he were commemorating the victims (which is what I thought he was doing at first), but he simply "uses" the victims and their story for his own kind of activism. He calls judges "activist" while ignoring the very activism of conservatives in Congress in trying to use the Constitution to promote bigotry and, for the first time, limit the rights of U.S. citizens.

Norwood claims that people who support gay marriage are "anti-family" and "hell bent." His rhetoric and series of hypotheticals are intended to strike fear and intolerance into the populace; he even claims that gay marriage will lead to legalized pedophilia and polygamy. I'm surprised he didn't mention bestiality, as other Republicans seem fond of doing when barking about this issue. Not so long ago, people like Norwood - i.e., bigots - were against mixed race marriages and thought women should obey their husbands because they were property (marriage has its legal base as a transfer of property - the property being the woman). Fortunately, most Americans have come to see that bigotry is un-American and unfitting in a democratic society, and (at least until January 2001) our country as a whole has continued to develop more tolerance toward all kinds of minorities.

As a husband and father in a "traditional," "pro-family," American family, I refuse to let politicians like Norwood define marriage for me or to speak on behalf of my family in their crusade against gay marriage. Marriage is above all a civil union. It may be - but doesn't have to be - a sacred union. In a democratic country, people should be free to define marriage for themselves. Let individual states decide if they want marriage to be primarily a civil union, with the option of a religious ceremony. But keep your twisted, moralistic fingers off the Constitution!

Brian Henry
Athens

NORWOOD VS. REALITY

In your current paper, Congressman Norwood (9th Georgia) takes issue with the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court on gay marriage, a decision which the Court based on the Constitution of Massachusetts.

Nearly all the Constitution of Massachusetts was written by John Adams, one of the founding fathers, the second President of our country, and a devout Christian, who prayed and read the Bible daily.

Many children are being raised, and raised well, by homosexual couples, a number of whom I know in the 12th District and elsewhere, and by doubtless others living in the Congressman's district, and throughout our great nation.

What would Dr. Norwood do with these particular children and with their loving parents, who are living today, even as the Congressman and I write? My concern is about actual men, women and children, not about Dr. Norwood's wish to change reality to match his beliefs.

George Koch
Athens

BOT GARDEN LOCK-IN

I was locked in at the Botanical Garden, and even though I called for help, and was told that help was on the way, help never came in response to my call, but arrived two hours later for another matter.

More fully, when I left the park, it was full daylight. I am sure I have read in various places that the Garden closes at sundown. Sundown in my estimation is when darkness becomes apparent.

Yes, at the entrance to the Garden in brown letters on a brown sign, quite distinct and noticeable, their closing time is presented, and I feel certain that drivers entering the gate always brake and carefully peruse that information; otherwise I know of no other place in the Garden that closing time is prominently displayed.

Even so, it seems that someone on the Garden staff would have had the intelligence to check the parking lot, and to have seen that a car was there. Or is it possible that these people have a bureaucratic mindset whereby they follow an obscure, indistinct regulation, with an attitude of the general public, at large, be damned?

Furthermore, for those of us who do not have watches, would it be cost-inefficient to have a sound system to warn people that closing time was approaching?

Finding myself locked in, I took down the two telephone numbers to call. I then walked to a service station to find a pay phone. It did not work. A young lady was nice enough to call the numbers for me on her cell phone. The first call got an answering machine. The second call was someone's private residence. Next, the store clerk suggested that I call 911 on his cell phone, but never having used one before, he had to give me some prompting on just how to use it. 911 rerouted me to the University of Georgia police, and after telling a woman my situation, I was told that help was on the way.

Upon leaving the station, a young man was kind enough to give me a ride back to the Garden and then the long wait began, a long wait of two hours in which at one point I resorted to stripping to my socks and underwear to see if that would induce anyone to call the police to come and see about me. Finally, it seems that lying down on the side of the road accomplished the purpose.

I appreciate the couple who stopped and asked if I were all right, and the University of Georgia policeman who finally came, but not in answer to my call, was nice enough; however, I was not exactly happy with being treated like some possible suspect criminal, and being given a summary interrogation, when all that was necessary was simply to release me.

In brief, someone on the Botanical Garden staff was irresponsible in locking me in; someone on the University of Georgia police force was irresponsible in not sending me any promised assistance as such.

Donald Harris
Athens

IN RE: FAHRENHEIT

This is in response to Greg Woods' letter [July 28] on the subject of Michael Moore's magnum opus, specifically this: "Eventually, some smarter dissenter will take the time and invest the energy to see Fahrenheit 9/11 and write up a decent opposing argument. But it hasn't happened yet, and at this rate I don't expect it to."

So Mr. Woods doesn't waste any more time waiting for the Nation to run such a breaking story, let me refer the curious to Dave Kopel's comprehensive roundup of the various critiques of F911, at: www.davekopel.org/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm

This exhaustingly long piece contains criticisms from the major media as well as the dark and murky corners of the digital world. Each point has a link to Moore's defense of the issue at hand. Consider it "one-stop-shopping" for both sides of the debate, with the caveat that it's lacking in third-party defenses, and only contains the direct responses that Moore has made.

Clint McElroy
Athens

Editor's Note: In defense of Mr. Woods, let it be known that his (severely cut for space reasons) letter came when Fahrenheit was first released and it didn't get into Flagpole until the film had been widely discussed.

OFF TARGET

The review of the 63 Crayons album Good People, by Bunny Mcintosh [August 4] was way off-target.

I usually wouldn't take action and write something like this. But this was such incredible bullshit I didn't know how I could possibly keep myself from telling you guys about it.

When I read a review like this one, trashing a record that I think is pretty solid and one of the better things to come out of Athens in a while, it makes ME cringe.

Not because of the pretentious tone of the review itself. Not because of the lofty presumptions of the reviewer. But because the reviewer is dead wrong.

Mcintosh remarks that "the album is divided (for no obvious reason) into 'phase 1' and 'phase 2'." Well, aside from this having nothing to do with the merits of the music itself, if one listens to the album, one notices a certain equilibrium in even the juxtaposition of the song titles. While I agree that it's not completely obvious why the band chose to divide up the songs in this manner, I disagree with the act of dismissing the record as being arbitrarily "experimental and strange." Is all "real" art supposed to be obvious?

And accusing the band of this kind of purposeful artificiality on the basis of unfounded musings was a pretty low blow.

Had Mcintosh given us any real material reason to believe that the 63 Crayons were being purposely pretentious, we might have had an actual reason to believe her. But no. The closest she actually gets to specificity in her complaints is when she informs us that the lyrics from one of the songs make her "cringe."

And Mcintosh presumes to know so much about the process of making an album here: "There are so many layers and so many instruments, that even the parts that probably should have been cut from the mix make the pass." What? How the hell do you know what should have been cut?

First off, you're presuming to know the difference between good and bad. And then you tack on the ability to make the bad things good.

And finally, at the end of the review Mcintosh likens the album to a "dumb blonde." Don't hurt yourself thinking here, okay Bunny?

This is what happens when you combine groundless presumptions, bad metaphors and a thesaurus. The result is a record review that's "a little bit masturbatory."

Frank Reddy
Athens