Cover shock

Not amused

If this is the best you can do for a cover story [“Why doesn’t Charlottesville have a strip club?” June 26, 2007], how sad. If this is tongue-in-cheek humor, the cover was the wrong place. All teenagers are impressionable; what message does this send? Fifty dancers from our ballet school performed brilliantly at Dickinson Theatre this past month; why not put that on your cover? Perhaps not having a strip club is one of the top 15 reasons that Charlottesville continues to be a great place to live. However, if you believe we need a strip club, try siring a few daughters and put them to work!

Gary S. Hart
Crozet

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Not sold on sex

I have enjoyed your magazine over the years, and have generally considered it to be a valuable part of our community.  However, I was extremely disappointed to see today’s cover and the rallying for a strip club in Charlottesville.  I think the C-VILLE followed a very weak thread here simply as an opportunity for an offensive, attention-getting cover. Yes, sex sells…we all get it.  But I think you are getting out of touch with the advertisers you depend on, just as you are getting out of touch with many of your own readers.  The businesses that pay your bills don’t want to be associated with this kind of empty-hearted pandering. I know competition in the Charlottesville weekly newspaper market is tough, but, please… Innovate and be a positive part of this city. You guys can do better than this.

Harris McDonald
Charlottesville

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Not a Goode citizen

This is in response to the Virgil Goode article by Dan Catalano in the June 26 C-VILLE [“As Goode as it gets, The Odd Dominion”]. I have never heard of Dan Catalano but he is obviously no patriot of this great country. In fact he is no journalist either. In my opinion he is a disgrace to our country. Virgil Goode is one of the only state representatives who tells it like it is. What good citizen wants Muslims taking over our country? Who would like to see some other country’s flag flying over our statehouse? This Catalano guy is way off base on this one. He is no journalist, he is an unpatriotic idiot. How dare he write such trash and how dare the C-VILLE would publish such crap. It is time we as Americans take control of our country and practice what our founding fathers stood for. I am sick and tired of these liberals who want to destroy the values of this great country. Shame on you, Dan Catalano. Why don’t you pack up and move to a Muslim country? Lord knows we surely don’t want you here.

J. Bruce Eckert
Charlottesville

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Not the whole story

Your reporter didn’t dig deep enough in writing about the issue of gym access for same-sex partners of UVA students and employees [“University Expands Gym Access, UVA News, June 26, 2007]. Wyatt Fore may have written a letter for QUAA to the administration, but UVA Pride had been negotiating with the administration on this and other issues since 1993, when we worked with the Faculty Senate Benefits Committee on developing recommendations for offering health insurance and gym memberships to domestic partners of LGBT employees. Since 2001, members of the faculty and staff have been in direct discussions with senior-level management to come up with possible solutions to the inequities that exist for LGBT students and employees of the University. It has been a slow and frustrating struggle because the administration is reluctant to challenge the status quo, however individual administrators might feel about this issue. They understand that this systemic discrimination has hurt both recruitment and retention of top faculty, administrators and students. This fact has opened the door to honest dialog and open communication with us at the highest levels. The proposal for including one household member was developed by the administration in consultation with UVA Pride; the only stumbling block was former governor Jerry Kilgore’s 2005 opinion that this solution was not possible. Happily, despite Bob McDonnell’s anti-gay stance and support of the so-called Marriage Amendment, he read the law in an unbiased manner; this is what allowed the University to move ahead with a plan already on paper.

Claire N. Kaplan
Charlottesville

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Not that long

Thanks for the fun write-up and profile [“The unusual suspects,” June 19, 2007]. Just one correction: While I lived in L.A. for about a year and a half, my stint on “Days of Our Lives” lasted only a few months (the length of my infamous Brad the stable boy storyline), and not a year and a half, as was stated in the article. Cheers, and thanks again for including me on your annual C-VILLE 20 list.

Robert Wray
Charlottesville

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Not the 18th century

Following fearlessly in the errant footsteps of Thomas “Starvation “Malthus (1700s) and Paul “Population Bomb” Ehrlich (1960s), Marlene Condon [“Limiting human population IS necessary,” Opinionated, June 26, 2007] piles a heap of guilt onto mankind for a lack of “ecological preservation." She documents her case with a few anecdotes.

“Children are now born into a world that is badly polluted” she claims. Compared to when? I remember the daily burning of garbage by the New York City apartment building superintendents in my childhood. Is London of today not a better environment than the festering one described in Charles Dickens’ tales? She reminisces over her childhood fish eating.  Can she also remember such childhood diseases  as diphtheria, polio,  and smallpox  that are now controlled by v
accines?

The “source of all our environmental problems is far too many people” the author states. Too many where? by whose judgment? Most European countries and Japan are in population decline. The concerns there are the lack of young workers to support the generous social programs for the aging population. The U.S. is slightly above population replacement birth rate. It is an documented observation that as a population improves its standard of living, the birth rate trends downward.  The population of China is said to be already near its expected peak for this reason. Higher standards of living allow more attention to be paid to the relative luxury of environmental concern.

Mother Nature in the guise of disease is invoked by the author as the terrible final arbitrator of population size. This has always been true. That is why I went to medical school. Perhaps the author herself eschews any medical treatments for herself so as not to interfere with Mother Nature’s plans for her. What are the author’s views on providing health and medical care to the Third World?

Meanwhile, back on planet Charlottesville, the dismay expressed in the article seems to center on a proposal to spend $25,000 to come up with an “optimal” population number for the county. I suggest running for the hills anytime you see the term “optimal” applied by politicians to anything. Scientific studies can be made as to water, power, and transportation  issues. To equate this to an optimal population number is over-reaching and suffers from the twin scourges of hubris and elitism.  Who gets to decide what is optimal and by what criteria?

The author criticizes the county plan to spend  $250,000 to bring more jobs here.  The county private property taxpayers cannot alone carry the increasing  burden of the growing county budget. Bringing new business here is an urgent fiscal need.

Also criticized is the concept of climbing “the ladder out of poverty” as being “naive and illogical”. A bit of nonsensical circular reasoning follows concluding that there will always be people on the bottom rung.  That is the  whole point of course, but it will  be new people at the bottom rung as those who have  succeeded at that level  move up.  The bottom rung is a temporary entry level and not a  career destination.

I am having trouble fathoming the term “gentrification of wages” in the closing comments of the author. It sounds to me to some sort of pc terminology, or perhaps not.

Charles G. Battig, MD
Albemarle County

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