Letters to the Editor The Widening Pay Gap To the Editor: Thanks for the article "The Promus Guarantee" (September 16th issue). You put names on the powers that be. The powers that wipe out thousands of jobs (families) while collecting ballooning bonuses in the name of the bottom line. The U.S. still has the highest poverty rate and the most unequal income distribution of the industrialized nations. Now 60 percent of white 20-year-olds and 90 percent of black 20-year-olds will fall below the poverty line some time during their lives. Real wages have fallen the past 15 years while corporate profits have increased the past eight. In 1980, the average CEO was paid as much as 42 factory workers; in 1998, as much as 414 workers! During the 1990s, worker pay rose 28 percent, corporate profits rose 108 percent, and CEO pay rose 481 percent. If worker pay had risen at the same rate as CEOs, it would be $110,399 instead of $29,276. (Minimum wage would then be $22.08 rather than $5.15.) Something is terribly wrong with the U.S. capitalist economy. Ray Berthiaume Memphis The Best and Worst To the Editor: The Chickasaw Bluffs Conservancy accepts with pleasure the congratulations of the editorial board of The Memphis Flyer ("Welcoming the Bluffwalk," August 12th issue). We also treasure the staff's show of approval in picking the Bluffwalk in the Best of Memphis '99. This honor is certainly preferable to the previously promised plaque. Of course, we always kind of thought you'd like it once you tried it. Hallelujah! Patricia Merrill President, Chickasaw Bluffs Conservancy To the Editor: It was especially interesting to see your Worst Marketing Ploy (Best of Memphis, September 23rd issue) was the Kroger Plus Card. This card has been a sore spot with me since it began. On September 9, 1999, I called the toll-free number for Kroger in Cincinnati and complained to some female marketer who said that it had been discussed, and the corporate decision was to "keep the program in force." While I like the Kroger-labeled products, it seems to me that the expense that Kroger goes to set up and maintain such a plan must be borne by the consumer -- and that's us! The cost, plus the trouble of having to dig up that card at the point of sale, is downright worrisome -- to say the least! Fred Werne Memphis (P.S. I'm a retired marketing manager, so I am qualified to know what is "customer-irritating"!) Overlooked To the Editor: A friend, who is active in the arts community, recently showed me the Summer 1999 edition of Tennessee Arts Report, the newsletter of the Tennessee Arts Commission. In this newsletter, the Tennessee Arts Commission announced its Individual Artist Fellowships for Year 2000. Of the six fellowships, two were awarded to artists in Memphis. If I've done my math correctly, that's one-third of the fellowships awarded to Memphians. That's impressive. Adam McLaughlin was awarded the fellowship for dance, and Sheri Bancroft was awarded the literary fellowship. These two people have achieved the highest honors available to artists in the state of Tennessee, yet I have read nothing about them in The Memphis Flyer. Your publication does a wonderful job of covering the arts, so I hope this is just something that was overlooked. I look forward to reading about these award-winning artists in your publication in the near future. Julie Hays Cordova Life and Death To the Editor: Max Maloney's Viewpoint article "The Cost of Killing" in the September 23rd issue is as biased as any article could ever get. How can you, Mr. Maloney, sit there and defend these morons who kill not only adults, but children? If the money is the only concern, and if the felon is found guilty without a doubt, turn the felon over to the family of the victim. Let them do to the felon what he did to their loved one. Now, that would cut back on costs! And how can you say race has anything to do with the issue of expenses for executions? Only in the South is race an issue. I am so sick of this black/white thing. If someone does wrong, then they should pay the consequences. Get over it! These felons are sent to jail by a jury, which is a mixture of races. So if you want to blame executions on something or someone, blame it on the jury. That's kind of hard to do. Don't you think? I think Memphis can do without the issue of race being thrown into an article about prisoners, or any other article. If you haven't noticed by now, we live with it every day. We don't need people like you throwing it up in the air and starting another racial war. Race is a completely different issue than the cost of executions. Chrystie Davis Memphis To the Editor: Max Maloney's main objection is that retaining the death penalty is merely for an economical standpoint rather than justice being served. This view blurs any distinctions of ultimate right or wrong. He also petitions for equality in the racial sentencing, which I agree with, but why not be fair to the families of the victims as well? Life for life, a very equal sentencing. It is true that the death penalty does not bring back the dead victim, but the issue is restitution, not restoration. He also mentions that we must take up a moral awareness of the death penalty, but the question is: Whose morals do we adopt? Opponents of the death penalty claim it is "cruel and unusual" punishment and thus prohibited by the Constitution. Courts have held to the contrary. No court has ever deviated from the position by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1890. "Punishments are cruel when they involve torture or lingering death; but the punishment of death is not cruel within the meaning of that word as used in the Constitution. It implies something inhuman and barbarous ... ." The main cost of death penalty cases is mostly tied up in unnecessary litigation. In 1983, 230 inmates were on death rows in 38 states that have capital punishment laws; many more are added yearly. Three rounds of appeals provided every convict before death sentence is executed. Pursuit of those appeals can stretch out for years. Robert Sullivan, convicted of the 1973 shooting of a restaurant manager, had his case reviewed 20 times by appellate courts including five trips to U.S. Supreme Court. Sullivan was finally executed in 1983. Advocates of the death penalty contend it is necessary to protect the public because it serves as a deterrent to capital crimes. Opponents disagree, saying the death penalty is no deterrent. Statistics support the deterrent argument: During the 10 years that the death penalty was outlawed, the number of murders in the U.S. almost doubled . Charles Gillihan. e-mail (Bartlett) Unacceptable Cartoon To the Editor: I have been reading the Flyer faithfully ever since its inception, and although I am an avowed Republican, Christian, conservative member of my community, I usually enjoy the content of your paper [even if] I don't always agree with it. However, the "Tom, the Dancing Bug" cartoon in the September 16th edition is totally unacceptable! I am appalled that a pro-atheistic cartoon would appear in your pages, especially since cartoons are exactly what any child would turn to, even though these particular ones are geared to adults. God is real; God is not a lie, not a theory, and not another version of the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus. The cartoonist will certainly find out it's not "cool" in hell, which upon his day of judgment, he will certainly visit for the long ride. We all sin; we all do wrong; and we all certainly make mistakes. But atheism is not a mistake; it's a choice made by an individual, and it's one you cannot ever gain entrance into heaven by making. The road to heaven does allow U-turns, if you happen to be traveling the wrong way. You better get the map out and look at it. Get it? The Bible. "Downtown" Bruno Lauer Power Pro Wrestling Walls, Mississippi The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 687, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at letters@memphisflyer.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words. Editor’s Note by DENNIS FREELAND In this issue we start a new syndicated column called The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams. The column currently runs in more than 30 U.S. and Canadian newspapers. The concept is simple: Readers ask questions and Adams, a pretty smart guy, answers them. We have to warn you, this isn't your ordinary question-and-answer column. Sometimes the questions (and Cecil's response) can be pretty out there. But The Straight Dope is popular in many markets. Ballantine has published three collections of the column to date. There was even a TV tie-in to the column which you may have seen on the A&E cable channel. The column first appeared in the Chicago alternative newspaper, The Reader, way back in 1973. Our first installment of The Straight Dope appears on page 47. Let us know what you think.