Letters to the Editor for Thursday, October 1, 2009

Columnist rubs reader the wrong way
If you wanted to publish a prime example of the intemperate, partisan rhetoric that sours the national debates over health care and other issues, you succeeded with the racist tirade by Stanley Crouch in your Sept. 29 issue. Whoever Mr. Crouch thinks are “wing nuts” on the right (maybe Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck), they don’t even come close to the insults that Crouch hurls at his opponents.

Crouch doesn’t even know his history. If he ever read a reasoned biography of Lincoln, like “Team of Rivals” by the liberal Doris Kearns Goodwin, he’d discover that the Civil War was not fought over slavery, but to preserve the union of the states. It was only after Lincoln decided that free men would side with the Union forces that he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Those who fought on the Union side (like two of my great-grandfathers) could attest that the fighting spirit of the Southern soldier in no way indicated that the “white trash” (Crouch’s term) were anything other than courageous defenders of their perceived rights.

Many of us citizens in Lynchburg and across the country have serious reservations about the constitutionality and wisdom of actions taken and proposed by the powers in Washington, including interference in our choices of health care insurer and confiscation of investors’ interests in GM and Chrysler. Does this make us “rabid pit bulls,” as Crouch asserts? Our opinions are not formed by Fox News or “bought and paid for by the drug and insurance lobbies,” rather by understanding of American law, respect for individual responsibility, and love of independence and freedom.

Too bad Stanley Crouch doesn’t seem to understand or share these values, but can only see us as a paranoid, self-pitying fringe. The News & Advance could do a public service by removing Crouch from your pages and replacing him with a more rational liberal who could try to defend the policies of President Barack Obama and the Congress.
ROBERT BATCHELDER
Lynchburg

Irresponsible headline
As a local physician, I want to clarify for your readers that your front-page article about the swine flu vaccine on Sept. 28 is highly misleading.

The headline implied that officials are worried about side effects. The first paragraph could be misinterpreted to make people think the vaccine causes heart attacks. If I stopped reading there, I might never know officials are, in fact, not expecting any significant problems they are simply trying to develop an efficient reporting system.

Had I stopped reading after the second paragraph, I would not know that the vaccine is being made the same way as the seasonal flu vaccine, just using H1N1 as the virus rather than plain old seasonal flu virus.

We are on the verge of a potential massive public health emergency. My job is to make sure my patients who need the vaccination get vaccinated. I don’t need irresponsible headlines to instill unnecessary fear into people.
Dr. LEAH HINKLE
Forest