TO THE EDITOR
DUMB AMERICA
Simply put, John Kerry was just too smart
to be president of our country. He spoke in
complete and well-articulated paragraphs,
discussing a variety of complex issues and
put forth viable solutions to complicated
problems.
Dumb America (Midwest &
Bible Belt) needs a dumb presi-
dent to relate to and Bush is per-
fect for the job. The entire world
witnessed that in his bumbling
performance during the debates
and with his infamous one-liners
and catch phrases like “axis of
evil,” “He can run but he can’t
hide,” or my personal favorite,
“You’re either with us or you’re with the ter-
rorists.” Black or white, good or evil, right or
wrong. Arrgh!!
Dumb America is lazy. They don’t want to
have to think, but would rather sit in front of
Fox entertainment and listen to the talking
heads blather on with their misinformation
campaign. Their ignorance is evident in the
fact that more than half of them still think
Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11.
We are the laughingstock of the world
right now, as was reflected in the headline of
a British publication on Nov. 3, which read
“How can 59,087,000 Americans be so
dumb?” Thank God we live in a blue state!
Julie Claybaugh
Eugene
GET TO THE BOTTOM
As noted on EW’s post-election cover, our
planet indeed continues to spin, and the sun
still rises in the east and sets in the west.
However, the election results are not yet set in
stone. Our votes are funneled through the
Electoral College, which assembles on Dec.
13 to formally elect a president. EC members
are pledged but not required to vote for the
candidates whom they represent.
If vote results are proven to be
invalid, EC representatives
might be persuaded to recon-
sider their vote. Furthermore, the
Constitution states that Congress
may debate the legitimacy of a
state’s electors prior to ratifying
the outcome.
Mounting evidence, particu-
larly in crucial battleground
states such as Ohio and Florida, indicates that
electronic voting concerns were well-
founded. OnlineJournal.com has published
instructive articles by Larry Chin, Thom
Hartmann, Wayne Madsen, and Jackson
Thoreau. Another fine source is investigative
reporter Greg Palast (gregpalast.com), who
broke the story of Katherine Harris’ and Jeb
Bush’s “cleansing” of the Florida voter rolls
in the 2000 election.
Reporting from Ohio, Bob Fitrakis
(freepress.org) has been covering both e-vot-
ing problems and voter suppression. Fitrakis
brought to light the fact that out of 638 total
votes, an electronic voting machine in
Gahanna, Ohio, reported 4,258 votes for
Bush!
Bev Harris deserves enormous credit for
blowing the whistle on the dangers of e-vot-
ing. Her organization, blackboxvoting.org,
has filed numerous Freedom of Information
Act requests to get to the bottom of this deba-
cle. Please help her by donating whatever you
can afford.
Greg Lief
Salem
CRAZY SPENDING
In this past election, candidates for state
and local office spent millions to get elected
to jobs that pay next to nothing and whose
very offices are supposed to represent the
voices of the people. How is this possible
with all the money that is spent by the special
interest groups throughout Oregon?
I believe that it is time that we the voters
insist that our representatives and senators in
Salem pass and forward onto the electorate a
campaign finance reform amendment to the
Oregon Constitution which will do the fol-
lowing:
• Eliminate all corporate campaign contri-
butions.
BY JERRY HARRIS
Musing with Skinner
At the new library
I
am a library freak. In fact, my deceased wife used to tell people that there were two
places people could find me — the corner bar or the library. Green Eugene, the
bronze sculpture of Eugene Skinner, the founder of this city, sits outside the new
public library. I wonder why Whistler’s Mother wasn’t put beside him for companionship.
If one is going to skip 100 years of modern sculpture, why not go all the way?
The old pioneer seems to be coming off a bad night at the Horsehead bar, or maybe
he is just sitting there musing over a girl with pink hair sitting on his lap. When I am at the
new library I like to muse with old Skinner too, even though he can’t talk, and if he could,
he wouldn’t speak to an African-American. Black people were severely segregated in
Eugene well into the early ’60s, but that is another western tale.
Until recently, the Skinner sculpture attracted a crowd of homeless youth, petty crimi-
nals, destitute dogs, circus performers, and small-time thugs from Oakland, Calif. The
dogs appeared to be more interested in going inside the library than the outsiders. An
old-timer sitting with The Founder and me said that he didn’t mind the show. “The
Eugene monsoon rain washes them all back to California when the winter comes,” he
said while feeding a dog. I guess a man must laugh or scowl at something.
T
he new library is not like the old. Some might say that it is sterile — a bit
Orwellian with its computers, data (on you) banks, alarm systems, and IKEA inte-
rior. It’s a bit eerie in the era of the PATRIOT Act, when Ashcroft and company
have the right to know what you are reading. God help you if you are checking out The
Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller. The PATRIOT Actors might consider this a
bomb-making book, and it is, considering that Miller likes dropping literary bombs on
America.
Librarians, known as “culture workers” in Sweden, have always intrigued me. They are a
4 NOVEMBER 18, 2004
serious bunch, melancholic, efficient, smart, and a bit snobbish.
Humor and laughter seem to escape them, at work anyway. One
told me recently that he was not going to let me check out a CD.
“There’s a limit of five,” he said. I explained to him that I had turned in
my allotted five. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t on his computer. “Sorry pal.”
Dejected, I walked away like a wimp. Maybe their anxiety was the result of
all those computers that didn’t need them anymore. Perhaps those electronic demons were
taking their jobs. I hope that these sui generis culture workers are not on their way out.
I met a lot of homeless people when I worked at the library as a volunteer. It was a
maddening experience. “We’ve replaced the ER mental ward at Sacred Heart,” said one
of the staff. It is certainly a luxurious place to bed down for the day. “At night I go back to
my storage container — low rates — no deposit,” said a rather jovial dude. He had recently
lost his job and was evicted from his apartment. A smart guy, but down on his luck, he re-
minded me that it could happen to anyone in George Bush’s America.
Then there was the guy who cussed me out. “How the fuck did you get a job?”
“Excuse me mate, but I am handicapped and I do this one hour a day so that I don’t go
crazy.” Of course this didn’t make a dent in his demented mind, but that was it for me,
back to my electric rocking chair.
I’m still a regular at the library. Mostly I search the aisles looking for books on pain,
both mental and physical — no, I am not a sadist, nor am I a hypochondriac. It’s just a state
of mind and body. Still, life at the library runs relatively smoothly. Once in a while you
meet an interesting person. The library is one of the two places where I can meet women.
The other is Safeway — pretty low maintenance, as they say, when one is on the prowl.
In high school, when I was kicked out of a class for some indiscretion, I was always
sent to the library as punishment. It was a strange sentence, because it was there
amongst books that I discovered life. Nothing has changed. Oh, sure, we try to take root
in some cozy city or town — raise a family, get divorced — but it is the books at the library
or the book store that get us going again. Just think, if Eugene Skinner had read books,
he might have gone off to Africa instead of sitting here on a log in front of the library
looking very bored.
Jerry Harris is a sculptor and contributing writer to Eugene Weekly and has just finished his first novel, Mad Swedes
and Black Men.