Letters to the Editor
Amerigo
Published Letters: 955 Editor's Choice: 60
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A more interesting case...
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a supplement to my earlier letter, let us consider the case of Byron Leftwich. As QB for Jacksonville, playing in a predominantly black city, he was injury prone, but good enough to get Jax into the playoffs now and again, but not to win playoff games. The Jaguars are one of the few teams that have never made it to a Superbowl.
At the start of the current season it became apparent in preseason training that David Garrard, another black QB who had been a college opponent of Leftwich's was playing much better, so Leftwich was fired only days before the start of the season.
How much commercial considerations came into it, I don't know. By firing Leftwich, Jax saved his $5 million emolument for the season. However the Jaguars, even after having reduced the stadium capacity to less than 70,000 by covering up 10,000 seats, were unable to sell out their first game of the season.
This meant that the game could not be shown locally on TV, thus further alienating many local fans who could not afford the $114 for a packet of three tickets in the cheapest seats.
Those local fans, though, might not have been too disappointed since at nearby Gainesville the University of Florida had sold out all 90,000 tickets. (For their next game against Auburn the Gators are selling tickets in pairs at $143 EACH.)
Interestingly the Gators have a stunningly precocious young white QB who hails from the Jacksonville area and has an interesting back story (born in Philippines son of Christian missionaries, home-schooled, parents both alumni of UF.)
So right now the Gators can name their price, while the Jags can hardly give tickets away.
Now supposing Leftwich's replacement had been a Caucasian player? What would we be hearing?
Who would be a football team owner?
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Cary is right
[Read the article: Should I tell my kids about all the drugs I used to do?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is impossible to know how kids will interpret information.
When I was a youngster I was told that if you have sex you will get syphilis, so you should save yourself for marriage and marry a virgin to be on the safe side.
I was told that one try at heroin and you would be addicted for life.
I was told that people who take LSD do crazy things that make them think they can fly.
I was told that cannabis had antibiotic properties that cured acne.
Now, you may think that I ignored all the warnings, but this is not so. I did have sex, though not with prostitutes, whom I sincerely believed to be walking Petri dishes of disease.
I did smoke cannabis for a few years.
I completely avoided heroin, LSD, cocaine, and other drugs other than coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol, none of which I use today, except an occasional coffee.
My ex-wife died from heroin. I once knew a guy who jumped off a high building under the influence of LSD and killed the driver of a car that he landed on. My best friend in college became a heroin addict.
Now to the kids. I once worked in a Juvenile Justice facility that specialized in treating kids with substance abuse problems. Most of them had parents who drank, smoked, and did other drugs. At Juvenile Justice, we (staff) would never admit any deviant behavior to the kids. It was important that we be alternative role models for them and that we represented an alternative value system to the one they had been raised with. (Many of the staff actually did not have any history of drug use anyway, but the important thing was that the kids could not distinguish.)
Kids want and need adults to be adults. If they know about your drug history, it all depends how it is presented. Maybe tell them that you used some drugs when you were young (minimum details), but put the main emphasis on the people you knew who failed in life because of their drug use, on those who died because of their drug use, and tell them that you will personally execute them if they ever use illegal recreational drugs and you know about it.
This advice comes with no warranty as to its effectiveness, but it may help to discourage them at least until they are old enough to be responsible for themselves.
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What about Leftwich?
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No one had addressed what I raised in an earlier letter.
Jacksonville Jags got tired of their (utterly uncharismatic) QB Byron Leftwich and fired him and replaced him with another black QB, David Garrard when it was apparent in preseason training that Garrard looked better (at least that was their story, though they also complained that Leftwich was injury prone).
If Leftwich was white, would they have retained him longer? Is it OK to replace a black QB with another black QB so long as you don't replace him with a white QB?
Does it depend on the population of the city in question? Jax is a largely black city, and Leftwich has now moved on to another predominantly black city, Atlanta. Coincidence?
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What is all the fuss about?
[Read the article: Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 1]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know what all the fuss is about. Would not Mr. Bush want to have the opportunity to put across his point of view to Iranian students and opinion makers?
Outside of the Internet, Americans have very little exposure to foreign points of view. If Mr. Ahmadinejad denies the truth of the Nazi extermination camps, surely we would want to know what is the source of his false information, so that we can discredit it for millions of other Iranians.
Don't forget that Saddam Hussein issued a public challenge to debate George W. Bush on TV over the WMD's. Wouldn't it have been better if he had had the opportunity?