DECEMBER 03, 2021, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A8
Reporters, question yourselves
PUBLIC SQUARE welcomes all points of view. Published submissions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Keizertimes
A seat on the city council
Thursday, Dec. 9 is the deadline to
submit a letter of interest and a resume
for those who want to be appointed to
the vacant Keizer City Council position.
Applicants will be able to make a brief
presentation and take questions from
the sitting councilors on Dec. 20. This
is a golden opportunity for those who
want to be part of setting policy for the
city of Keizer.
This is the time for those from histor-
ically underrepresented groups to seri-
ously consider throwing their hat in the
ring. They do need to recognize that a
city councilor represents all 40,000 res-
idents. A councilor can—and should—
watch over the interests of those in the
community who feel they have been
invisible.
For almost 40 years the city council
has been compromised of friends and
neighbors. Common sense has been the
hallmark of decisions made by dozens
of women and men who have served
since 1982. There is little stomach for
ideological diatribes. Every councilor
brings their experience, knowledge and
background to their position. Keizer is a
beautiful tapestry of backgrounds, eth-
nicities and opinions. Everyone has the
right to express themselves, either as a
councilor, or a resident addressing the
council.
Editorial
Some may say that being a city coun-
cilor is a thankless job, but that is not
true. Decisions that affect our daily lives
are made at the local level with school
boards, county commission and espe-
cially city councils. Serving ones’ com-
munity as a city councilor is a noble job,
far from thankless.
When pondering applicants for the
vacant seat, the city council will no
doubt consider experience. Through
the years, many Keizer city councilors
got their start by volunteering for any of
Keizer’s citizen committees and boards.
That experience is good but it is not
essential. We think the best qualifica-
tion for a future city councilor is a desire
to see that Keizer maintains its desir-
ability as a place to live and do business.
Leave the rabid politics to those in
Washington, D.C., in Keizer we want our
councilors to be polite, moderate and
neighborly. In other words, we would
like to see our council as if painted by
Norman Rockwell.
—LAZ
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By DEBRA J. SAUNDERS
If you have any doubt about whether the
White House press corps has a different stan-
dard for President Joe Biden than for former
President Donald Trump, consider the press
briefings that followed their first physicals as
president at Walter Reed National Military
Medical Center. Biden’s physical occurred
Friday, Nov. 26.
On reflection, Team Trump was too trans-
parent when then Press Secretary Sarah
Sanders brought Ronny Jackson, then phy-
sician to the president, to the briefing room
where he answered press questions for nearly
an hour in January 2018.
Here’s a sampling of some of the more
egregious press questions.
— “Are you confident of his prostate
health?”
— “There have been reports that the pres-
ident has forgotten names, that he is repeat-
ing himself. Are you ruling out things like
early-onset Alzheimer’s? Are you looking at
dementia-like symptoms?”
— “Do you have a life expectancy range for
him based on his results?”
— “Did you see any evidence of bone
spurs?”—a reference to the cause for Trump’s
fifth Vietnam-era draft deferment. (Jackson
said the medical team didn’t check for bone
spurs.)
— Given Trump’s age, then 71, “Will you
give cognitive testing in the future?”
— “Does he take any sleep aids?” (Yes,
Ambien occasionally during foreign trips.)
— “How much sleep does he get on
average?”
CNN sent Dr. Sanjay Gupta to the brief-
ing. Gupta challenged Jackson for asserting
that Trump’s health was “excellent” for his
age, given that Trump was taking cholester-
ol-lowering medication and Gupta saw evi-
dence of heart disease and borderline obesity.
(Jackson credited Trump’s health to “great
genes.”)
Not all of the questions are out of bounds,
but the very number of questions about
Trump’s mental state was over-the-top. If then
Press Secretary Sarah Sanders’ plan had been
to make the press look like a pack of jackals to
the GOP base, she succeeded.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki no doubt
other
VOICES
learned from the Trump experience. She
did not usher physician to the president Dr.
Kevin O’Connor into the briefing room after
Friday morning’s physical.
Instead, Psaki released a six-page letter
written by O’Connor after the briefing, which
gave her license to avoid answering ques-
tions about it.
O’Connor offered that Biden “remains a
healthy, vigorous 78-year-old male, who is fit
to execute the duties of the Presidency.” (The
next day, Biden turned 79.)
O’Connor also wrote that since the last
year, Biden experienced more frequent
“throat clearing,” probably because of esoph-
ageal reflux and allergies, as well as “percepti-
bly stiffer and less fluid” ambulatory gait.
The timing was fortuitous. Biden’s annual
physical, which included a colonoscopy, was
held during a packed news day that included
the traditional Thanksgiving turkey pardon
and House passage of the Build Back Better
Act. That meant less time for questions on
Biden’s physical—and most of those ques-
tions were about the logistics of the exam.
There were no questions about the asthma
for which Biden got five draft deferments.
There were no questions that referred to
Biden’s two brain surgeries more than two
decades ago, no questions about his atrial
fibrillation or what O’Connor described as
“moderate to severe spondylosis.” There was
no question about the “mild sensory periph-
eral neuropathy of both feet” and whether it
might have played a role in Biden fracturing
bones in his foot while playing with a family
dog a year ago.
Amazingly, there were no direct questions
about whether Biden was given a cognitive
test or if he had a psychiatric exam. No such
tests were mentioned in the O’Connor letter.
Was the kid-glove treatment proof of bias,
or did the press corps get played? Try: both.
(Creators Syndicate)
Are we destroying our cities?
By GENE H. McINTYRE
For several days recently, a Portland
TV station asked: “Is Portland over?” The
news anchor answered his own question
several days over while others in the com-
munity offered their take on the subject.
At an amusement level, such a question
invites guffaws, ridicule and derision due
to the fact that more than 600,000 human
beings live within Portland’s city limits.
Isn’t such a question a silly waste of time,
eliciting nonsense should it be answered
by “Yes”?
However, another angle on the question
may not be so silly or ridiculous. After all,
for most of my seven decades of life, there
has been in our world the ability of humans
to build weapons of destruction that could
vaporize Portland, converting it into a pile
of dust along with some unrecognizable
debris. At first in 1945, only the United
States had an atomic bomb, whereas now
many others do, some allies, some enemy
powers, some less reliable, some sound of
judgment, while a much more powerful
hydrogen bombs and other secret weap-
ons have been added over the years to
the arsenal of those that can deliver mass
destruction.
In a few weeks a U.S. built rocket will
be launched into outer space whose pur-
pose is an attempt to find other planets
in other galaxies that can support life by
carbon-based creatures such as those that
have developed on Earth over eons of
time. One of the issues of greatest interest,
if intelligent beings can be found and ulti-
mately contacted, is to determine whether
Guest
COLUMN
these creatures of another world similar
to ours have matured enough to reach a
place where they have ridden themselves
of weapons to harm and kill, hatefulness
and distrust there having been abandoned
Every grown person knows we have not
reached that place of peaceful togeth-
erness where all human effort could be
devoted to a state of health and safety
for everyone. No, in fact, we, as the dom-
inant species, have found it necessary to
war and destroy since humans came into
existence, some 300,000 years ago. In fact,
when it gets down to particulars, humans
find it challenging to get along even with
those persons they profess to love, cherish
and say ‘they can’t live without.’
We may never reach a place in our deal-
ings with one another where we are safe
and secure from destruction, to a point
now of prospective total annihilation. If
a modern war is launched between those,
for example, in possession of hydrogen
bombs, all life, not just human life, could
be destroyed and our planet thereafter
circling the Sun without a single living
creature taking notice of time, the tides
and sometimes tenderness among the
mammals.
(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)