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2 Wednesday, June 26, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: (A letter to Oregon9s congressional delegation): I listened this morning to a report on NPR9s Weekend Edition to an interview with a law professor from Willamette University where she shared the atrocious conditions she and a team of investigators found when inspect- ing facilities housing migrant children. Her name is Warren Binford. She has been doing this type of inspecting for over 20 years and described what she found as the worst condi- tions seen over all of those years. They visited facilities in Santa Teresa, New Mexico and Clint, Texas. She spoke of the dangerous, unsanitary, worse-than-prison-like conditions where the children had little chance to shower, were provided no soap and allowed to brush their teeth only every 10 days! In addition they were housed in a metal warehouse that had no windows, slept on concrete floors, lacked nutritious food, slept, ate and toileted in the same area with other children who were sick and/or had lice, and were granted little time out-of-doors. At the time of the interview there were 350 children, with 100 of them young. How horribly inhumane! And this is happening in the United States! As a par- ent, grandparent, early childhood profes- sional, parent education professional, and U.S. citizen I could not believe what I was hearing! In this day and age we all know the destruc- tion of young lives who live with trauma. No matter the race or ethnicity of any child, we need to value them as our future. Who does our government think will be raising these children? Who will pick up the pieces when they are older and hell-bent on retaliating for how they had been treated? Is our purpose to create enemies, because that is exactly what we are doing! Every day this continues cre- ates memories, memories not in the children9s or our country9s, let alone their families, best interest! Please, do something! Find a way to reunite them with their families or at least help them get to their sponsors. This cannot continue! Edith Ann Jones Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday T-storms Tstorms Partly cloudy Mostly sunny Partly cloudy Mostly sunny 63/42 63/41 67/42 72/45 75/47 78/49 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2019 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper9s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. When Vice President Mike Pence was the gover- nor of Indiana, he got along well with the mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, despite the fact that Buttigieg is a gay, liberal Democrat and Pence is a straight, socially conservative Republican. Things changed. Pence became the vice presi- dent, and Buttigieg decided in April to run for the Democratic presiden- tial nomination. Suddenly there was bad blood where there used to be mad love. Buttigieg insinuated that Pence had a problem with Buttigieg9s sexual orientation and marriage to another man. <If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade,= Buttigieg said at an event for the LGBQ Victory Fund. <And that9s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand 4 that if you9ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.= The controversy had a bit of a high school feel to it in that Pence initially objected (correctly) that Buttigieg was being unfair to him given that they had once got- ten along swimmingly. But Pence played the victim card too. <He said some things that are critical of my Christian faith and about me person- ally, and he knows better,= Pence complained. Buttigieg9s dunking on Pence was great fun for the mainstream press. It was a neat and tidy morality tale pitting the forces of toler- ance and equality against the forces of bigotry and oppression 4 Buttigieg the gay scholar veteran vs. Pence the would-be ruler of the Republic of Gilead (the fictional dystopia in <The Handmaid9s Tale=). This is all old news, of course. But it seems newly relevant given that Buttigieg has a new problem with Christians who object to his lifestyle. But it9s a very dif- ferent problem. During Buttigieg9s recent appearance on NBC9s <Meet the Press,= host Chuck Todd read him a statement from the Rev. Rodric Reid, an African American pastor in Indianapolis. <I guarantee,= Reid had told the Indianapolis Star, that Buttigieg9s marriage to another man <is going to be an obstacle ... That is really still a touchy subject, specifically and especially in the African American church.= Todd also noted that he9d talked to black congressmen who said Buttigieg9s homo- sexuality could be a problem with segments of the African American vote. Buttigieg9s answers were respectful, thoughtful and hopeful that he could work it out with black Democratic voters. But the question remains: Why don9t those voters get called bigots? It9s a rhetorical question, of course. We know why. Attacking Pence and the peo- ple he supposedly represents is good for fundraising and votes in Democratic prima- ries. Calling religious black voters bigots for having the same misgivings that some religious white voters have is political suicide. The way the media tends to handle culture-war con- troversies is deeply perni- cious. As I write this, we9re nearly a week into a debate about whether detention centers are <concentration camps.= Wherever you come down on this semantic row, the fact is that the media would never have enter- tained this <debate= under Barack Obama. We know this because he had detention centers as well. S i m i l a r l y, some Democrats are attacking Joe Biden for having had colle- gial relationships with seg- regationist senators. That9s fair game. But if this debate were going on in the GOP, the media coverage wouldn9t be the riot of nuance we see before us. It would be simple and straightforward: Racist racists act racistly. The GOP certainly has its race problems, and I feel no obligation to run to its defense. But if you want to know why millions of Republicans no longer care when the media shouts <Racist!= or <Bigot!= ... just look at how they whisper <It9s compli- cated= when talking about Democrats. © 2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.