CURRENTS OF GALLOWAY - PORT REPUBLIC / Thursday, January 17, 2013
8
O
pinion
Fox News addiction
is a threat to nationÊs
well-being
To the editor:
The Centers for Disease Control has officially declared Fox
News addiction a pandemic. Furthermore, this disease, having
permeated much of the United
States, most notably in politically
“red” states but in “blue” states as
well, has been found to contain
a potent subliminal messaging
component that attacks brain
cells, especially in white working-class folks, causing them to
support politicians opposed to
their best economic interests.
It’s easy to get hooked. After
perhaps three or four doses of say,
Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly, a
mysterious vapor begins to envelope neuron pathways, reroute
logic circuits and create cravings
for more and more anti-progressive ramblings.
Indeed, that subliminal component threatened to put Mitt
Romney over the top in his quest
for the White House and threatened the economic well-being of
America’s middle class.
From the perspective of an uninfected observer, the very idea
that middle-income Americans
would agree with supply-side
economic theories, support the
repeal of an estate tax that only
affects the wealthy, believe that
government is always the problem, and so forth, seems quite
bizarre.
One methadone-like antidote that could break the addiction is a liberal dose of Rachel
Maddow, aka Maddowdone
treatment. Medical professionals do, however, recommend
at least a two-week course of
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer mild psychotherapy before engaging in
this rather drastic regimen akin
to shock therapy. The infected
brain would not likely be able
to withstand the intense withdrawal symptoms produced by
Maddowdone and might explode without some preliminary
preparation.
MSNBC researchers, abetting
the CDC, have worked with
this powerful anti-brainwashing
remedy for years and found it to
be effective in purging nonsense
from addled minds not wholly
sapped of insight. Potential temporary adverse consequences
despite Blitzer psychotherapy
such as vigorous denials or bouts
of pronounced pouting should
not dissuade its usage.
Manipulating minds at both
conscious and subconscious
levels has been a staple of notso-Grand Old Party strategists
for decades. For example, Newt
Gingrich’s libelous label of “food
stamp president” strategically
directed at President Obama reawakens the darker angels of
many working-class white folks
and stimulates their knuckledragging instincts to unfavorably
stereotype those who don’t look
quite like them, insuring they will
vote the right way.
The pandemic of Fox News
addiction remains one of the
greatest threats to the well-being of our challenged nation. In
tandem with bloviating rightwing talk show hosts on other
networks, they could, if successful the next election go-round,
shrink our middle class to the
size of a thimble.
Blitzing the media, in effect vaccinating our uninfected
populace with a progressive
pro-middle class set of ideas,
ought to be the top priority of
Democratic leaders. An ounce
of prevention is surely worth a
pound of Maddowdone.
Lawrence Uniglicht
Galloway
Problem isnÊt guns,
but moral crisis
To the editor:
I never cease to be amazed at
how little people learn from history. It is as though there is amnesia for the facts of history.
A fine illustration of this is
the column by Tom Williams,
“A Gift for All: Gun Control.”
I laughed when I read his opening exhibit for successful gun
control, communist China. Am
I the only one who knows the
major component of ours that is
absent from China? That would
be freedom.
Gun control is the hallmark of
totalitarian regimes, from Hitler
to Stalin, Cambodia to Rwanda,
to name a few. Remember
Tiananmen Square 1989? On
another note, I am tired of letting
the left define the issues with the
media bully pulpit. The Second
Amendment was not adopted so
that future hunters and collectors could have a nice hobby. It
is the last line of defense against
a tyrannical government, i.e.
Great Britain.
The right to protect yourself with the shotgun on the
mantelpiece or to go shoot
your dinner wasn’t even in
question. Ultimately, we are in
a moral crisis. How is it that in
the ’50s and ’60s kids rode the
subway in New York and New
Jersey with their rifles, kept
them in their lockers at school,
and virtually no one got shot?
It has become evident in just
about every area that if we do
not mend the moral fences, there
will be no effective solutions for
our problems.
Joel I. Brockenberry
Mays Landing
Good riddance to
political soapbox
columnists
To the editor:
For those of us who appreciate
a local paper for community information and events of interest,
we are grateful that the political
soapbox columns are gone. The
extreme right-wing proselytizing of Harry Hurley and Seth
Grossman diminished the quality
of the paper. Norm Cohen did
an admirable job, but he could
not dedicate his space solely to
addressing the bulk bunk of the
other two, who each had longstanding soundboards for their
ill-conceived fringe views. Some
of their supporters responded irrationally to substantive criticism
of these columnists.
Grossman’s anti-government,
hyper-free market views as an
occasional contribution would
be valid under an open forum
and free speech. He disparaged
the Tech Center, which does
tremendous work in aviation
research. He praised the casinos,
which produce nothing. He allied
himself with Rush Limbaugh,
the silver-spooned college drop-
out who became a multimillionaire as a talk-radio buffoon. His
misunderstanding of the science
behind the Hurricane Sandy
was exposed. He believes that
we should take the mentally ill
off the street and that poverty
is self-inflicted. What was The
Current’s reasoning for granting a weekly column for the illconceived, poorly-researched,
and weakly-reasoned smallworld views of Seth Grossman,
a local conservative attorney
who masquerades as an expert
on social issues? This would
be like having a creationist
or flat-Earther as the science
columnist.
What causes America’s
problems? The overall effect
of the quick loot-fast plunder
and “You are what you own”
culture of private companies,
whether corporate, small business, or startups with their
unfair dismissals, ADA violations, puppet HR departments,
inflated CEO and executive
salaries, fudged numbers, offshoring, outsourcing, 24/7
advertising, and cult-like management schemes are destroying America. The symbiotic
relationship of greedy producers and consumers has created a
class system, not a nanny state,
in America.
Veterans, churches, press and
educational institutions, instead
of selling out, should stand up
to the converging well-funded
right-wing fanatics who live in
an alternate reality and seek to
rewrite history, fabricate controversies, underfund science,
annihilate oversight, poison the
media, misinterpret the Bible,
blame unpopular targets (poor,
sick, gay, black, atheist) and
rationalize disparity as godly,
American, or the result of liberty
and prosperity.
Jeff Lehman
Northfield
Amend 2nd
Amendment to
reflect the times
To the editor:
Right to bear arms? Perhaps, yes. But when the Second Amendment was added
in 1791 to the United States
Constitution, there were
muskets and pistols that had
to be reloaded. In fact it took
40 musketeers to set off four
rounds per minute. Today it
takes one misguided person
or criminal to set off 40
rounds per minute. There
were no assault weapons
and semiautomatic weapons
in 1791.
Any president, governor
or senator would, of course,
go through the proper process to, yes, negotiate and
amend the Second Amendment. No one needs those
types of weapons in their
homes to protect themselves
and their families from intruders. Nor does anyone
who enjoys hunting need an
assault weapon or semiautomatic weapon to shoot a
deer, duck or bear.
Yes, we need more education concerning mental
illness and less violence on
TV, video games and movies. The NRA doesn’t own
us. We have a voice.
Marsha Galespie
Ventnor
Hughes Center to honor
people who get things done
By DANIEL J. DOUGLAS
The new year in Washington started much
like the last year.
The fiscal cliff was partly avoided, the debt
crisis continues, and a key farm bill went unfinished. As hurricane victims in New York and
New Jersey waited anxiously, the last Congress
failed to consider the Sandy relief bill. Never
mind that more than 60 days had passed since
Sandy ripped through the East Coast, while
previous emergency reliefs had sailed through
Congress in two or three weeks.
Congress has an approval rating of only 14
percent. National polls indicate that Congress
frequently votes against the majority opinion
across the country.
Voters said they want the two parties to work
together and are willing to accept compromise.
So what do our elected officials do? Fight,
threaten and bully each other. They seek to score
partisan political points in a game that the general
public does not want to watch.
It is like watching the Eagles scoring a late
fourth-quarter touchdown in a game that they
are losing by 30 points. Sure, they scored the
points, but who cares? They still stink.
This goes on while the people of our area still
work our way through recovery from Hurricane
Sandy. Most of us did not suffer the communitywide devastation that occurred farther up the
New Jersey coast. Some in our area did lose their
homes or businesses, but you can drive up and
down the quiet streets of our shore communities
and think things are back to normal.
But behind most doors, there are still struggles
to recover. Senior citizens are trying to untangle
the web of insurance adjusters, FEMA representatives and plumbers, electricians and contractors
of all sorts. Small-business owners that rely on
summer tourists are racing to get their shops
repaired and their equipment replaced.
It is difficult, but most people in our area are
managing. But they wonder why people in public life have such difficulty doing their jobs.
That is one reason why the William J. Hughes
Center for Public Policy has created the Hughes
Center Honors, which will honor five outstanding New Jerseyans who have managed to get
things done, and have, in fact, excelled at their
job and have worked productively in the public
arena. We honor them and set them out as examples of how working together in the public
sector is doable.
The honorees are:
Former New Jersey Gov. Brendan T. Byrne
is being recognized with the Distinguished
Lifetime Achievement Award; former Congressman Jim Saxton with the Civility in
Government and Politics Award; recently
retired Verizon NJ President Dennis Bone
will receive the Excellence in Civic Engagement Award; Lori S. Herndon, president and
CEO of AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center
will receive the Distinctive Alumni Leadership Award; and Stockton student Justin B.
Frankel will receive the Distinctive Student
Leadership Award.
Their work will be celebrated Feb. 13 at the
Stockton Seaview Hotel and Golf Club.
Daniel Douglas is the director of the William
J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. Learn more
at www.stockton.edu/hughescenter.
NAACP continues its march
toward the dream
By CHRIS A. BROWN
Only an unyielding commitment can better the
quality of life of minorities
within our community and
counter stubborn ignorance.
On a cold December night
in Pleasantville, I met with
a small group of volunteers
with such a commitment.
As a boy, my father taught
me that we are all God’s
children, interconnected in
life, and what you do to your
brother, you do to yourself.
So when I was asked nearly
20 years ago to serve as the
solicitor for the Atlantic City
Chapter of the NAACP, I
didn’t hesitate to say yes.
I remain honored to be a
life member of an organization with such a long and
proud history of commitment to the advancement of
equality for all of us.
Racial attitudes in America have improved much
since I was a boy when Dr.
Martin Luther King shared
his dream of true racial
equality from the steps of
the Lincoln Memorial. As
Dr. King led the national effort on civil rights, Atlantic
County had its own civil
rights pioneers: Horace J.
Bryant, Joseph Allmond,
Margaret Hiawatha, Karlos
LaSane, C.J. and Gertrude
N e w s o m e , H a n k Ty n e r,
Dennis Braithwaite, and,
of course, Pierre Hollingsworth, who took on every
local civil rights challenge
for a quarter of a century.
Today we have countless
minorities involved in government, and local business
standing on the shoulders of
these giants. These leaders
embody Dr. King’s advice:
“We must live together as
brothers or perish together
as fools.”
However, ignorance is a
persistence thing. Regrettably, all too often, minority
involvement is limited to urban settings. It is incumbent
upon all of us to reach out
and work with groups such
as the NAACP to encourage
and foster more diversity
within our government and
business community.
That is why 17 dedicated
members of the MainlandPleasantville Chapter of the
NAACP gathered in a small
room at a local library to prepare
for the upcoming year. Over
trays of sliced subs and cookies, the members, with diverse
backgrounds and experiences,
chatted about how to fulfill the
association’s mission to ensure
“political, educational, social
and economic equality of rights
of all persons and to eliminate
race-based discrimination.”
During the meeting, I had the
privilege to swear in the newly
elected officers for the upcoming year. I spoke with the new
president, Ms. Olivia Caldwell,
who indicated there are five issues she wants to focus upon in
order to raise public consciousness: the level of violence in
the community, teen pregnancy,
voter awareness, minorityowned businesses, and more
minority representation on all
of the boards throughout the
county to better represent the
diversity throughout our community.
As the local eyes and ears of
the NAACP, these individuals
bear their membership duties
earnestly. They remain vigilant
against racial discrimination, the
most repugnant transgression
against individual liberty. They
are equally ready to stand up
against offensive behavior and
to serve as models for cooperation and understanding.
Of course, greater numbers
of active members would help
the cause. Like most volunteer-driven organizations, the
chapter spends a considerable
amount of effort trying to attract
and retain members.
This year the NAACP will
try a new tactic. It will rotate
the locations of monthly meetings around the county, holding
meetings in Pleasantville, Mays
Landing, Galloway and Egg
Harbor Township. With the help
of the media and articles such as
this, I hope the word spreads and
interest rises.
I encourage people to at least
stop in to one of the meetings
or follow the website, www.
mlpnaacp.org.
Thankfully, we are blessed as
a community to have people such
as those in the Mainland-Pleasantville Chapter, who not only
look up to Dr. King and Pierre
Hollingsworth, but also have the
courage to stand on their shoulders and continue their work
toward realizing the dream.
Chris Brown is a member of
the New Jersey General Assembly representing District 2.