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Wednesday, June 26, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I
N I
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Jonah
Goldberg
Letters to the Editor…
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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
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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.
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Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.