OPINION
Wallowa.com
Wednesday, January 27, 2021
A5
Searching for unity in a sea of exclamation points
OTHER VIEWS
Rich Manieri
n email laced with exclamation points
is never a good sign. At least not if
you’re me.
In my world, exclamation points usually
follow words such as “idiot!” or “commu-
nist!” I take issue with the latter though the
former is certainly up for discussion.
Moreover, when the salutation itself is fol-
lowed by an exclamation point, as it was
in a recent email, I know it’s trouble. “Mr.
Manieri!”
Inside voice. I’m right here.
This particular writer went on to make sev-
eral assumptions about my intellect, or lack of.
He ended with a call to action. “Defend your
character!”
For context, the writer was responding to
a column I wrote in which I blamed President
Trump for lighting the fuse that led to the Cap-
itol riots. He went on to ask how I could do
such a thing when it was clear that members
A
of Antifa and Black Lives Matter were bused
in and were, in fact, responsible for the insur-
rection — a claim without any basis in fact.
My response featured a conspicuous
absence of exclamation points as I encour-
aged the writer to keep an eye on his blood
pressure.
I resisted quoting from Proverbs 15:
“Those who are hot-tempered stir up strife,
but those who are slow to anger calm
contention.”
If you watch much television, or any tele-
vision, or if you engage in social media, it’s
pretty clear that we tend to punctuate our dis-
course with exclamation points. Perhaps Jerry
Springer was actually a visionary. He under-
stood the marketability of impoliteness and
boorish behavior long before it went main-
stream. (By the way, I promise never to use
the name “Springer” and the word “visionary”
in the same sentence again.)
Civility has fallen out of fashion. Some
say it’s overrated. How do I know this? I refer
you to a December 2019 piece in the Atlantic
titled, “Civility is Overrated.”
An NPR article in 2019 quotes Lynn
Itagaki, an associate professor at the Univer-
sity of Missouri, who said, “Civility has been
about making sure that the status quo, the hier-
archy of the status quo at the moment, which
means racial inequality, gender inequality,
class inequality, stays permanent.”
By this redeﬁ nition of civility, it would be
permissible and even encouraged to meet any
injustice, perceived or actual, with an uncivil
response. That’s ﬁ ne if you happen to agree on
the injustice. For example, if your candidate
loses a presidential election and you believe
the election was rigged, storming the Capitol
might be an appropriately uncivil response.
Thus, if you disagree with someone and
you’re convinced you’re on the right side,
what’s the point of a civil response? After all,
you’re right and he’s wrong.
Many believe our national discourse fell
apart the moment Donald Trump darkened
the doorway of the Oval Ofﬁ ce. Surely, the
former president, with his unhelpful rhetoric,
name-calling and incessant tweeting contrib-
uted to the problem. But he wasn’t alone.
Our elected representatives in Washington
— Republicans and Democrats — have been
content to play their respective parts in the
Monty Python “Argument Clinic” sketch.
“Is this the right room for an argument?”
“I told you once.”
“No you haven’t.”
“Yes I have.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Yes I did.”
The main difference, of course, between
the sketch and reality is there’s nothing even
mildly amusing about the real thing.
For what it’s worth, President Biden struck
mostly the right tone in his inauguration
speech.
“I pledge this to you — I will be a presi-
dent for all Americans, and I promise you, I
will ﬁ ght as hard for those who did not sup-
port me as for those who did,” Biden said. He
then signed 15 executive orders undoing vari-
ous Trump policies.
Unity is a ﬁ ne message but no amount
of rhetorical gymnastics will bring people
together unless we’re willing to understand
and listen to those with whom we disagree.
That means acknowledging that not all of the
75 million Americans who voted for Don-
ald Trump are racists and that not everyone
who voted for Joe Biden is pushing a Marx-
ist agenda.
From the president on down, unless we’re
truly committed to making unity a reality, it
won’t happen, no matter how many exclama-
tion points we use.
———
Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born jour-
nalist and author. He is currently a professor
of journalism at Asbury University in Ken-
tucky. You can reach him at manieri2@gmail.
com.
Six helpful hints for spelling, reading
OTHER VIEWS
Scott Smith
ith the development of vaccines for
the coronavirus and distribution
underway, there may be an end to
distance learning just around the corner.
This said, there are still many children
struggling with their reading and parents
assisting their children with schooling. Learn-
ing to read is not the same for everyone.
Reading text is a “human”-created skill
and not a natural skill for our brains to pro-
cess. Therefore, depending on acquisition of a
long spectrum of skills, some children have no
problems learning to read while others strug-
gle. To add to the confusion, English is a blend
of several different languages and rules, mak-
ing it even harder to understand.
W
There are those few people in our coun-
try who spend their time studying our lan-
guage and all the rules that apply, yet most of
us do not aspire to be linguists. Noah Webster,
back in the 1800s, brought us a complete rule
book of most of the words and rules behind
their spellings. There was a time when teach-
ers were expected to know all those rules prior
to starting to teach.
Over the years we have relied on text-
book publishers to provide those rules embed-
ded in their curriculum. Many of us do not
always pick up on the rules or remember them
because the curriculum moves on quickly.
When challenged why a word is spelled a cer-
tain way we dismiss it and say something like
“the English language just has some odd spell-
ings.” In most cases, there is a reason behind
that spelling, whether it be from the root of the
word or the language the word was adopted
from.
Having kids read to adults is always ben-
eﬁ cial — well, most of the time. What do
we ﬁ nd ourselves saying to a child when
they come to a word they do not recognize?
The most popular response is “sound the
word out.” The only problem is that the only
English words that can easily be sounded
out are one-syllable, short vowel words. In
the English language, you have to be able to
identify the vowel sounds in words, many of
which contain multiple letters, and then you
are able to blend the word and hopefully get
the sounds close enough that you are able to
recognize the word from your auditory vocab-
ulary or lexicon.
No worries — here is some help. This will
be enough to get you by without having to
become a linguist. There are six basic sylla-
ble rules that most English words follow, or at
least follow closely enough that you can get an
approximation, and then recognize the word.
The same six rules also help with spelling.
Here they are — open syllable (go, me),
closed syllable (cat, ﬁ n), vowel team, “r”-con-
trolled (ﬁ rst, far, or), vowel/consonant/silent
“e” (same, case) and consonant “-le” (little,
able). Common blends, digraphs and diph-
thongs also can cause confusion. Blends are
connected letters where you can hear all the
letter sounds. Digraphs are a cluster of con-
sonants that create a new sound, and diph-
thongs are a cluster of letters with at least one
vowel. These are the most commonly found
word parts in elementary texts. The letter “y”
is sometimes considered a vowel but there is
a reason. English words don’t end in the letter
“i” so they use “y” (my, sky, by).
A great activity for students to do is sort
single-syllable words into each of the above
groups. This allows them to work with words
along with looking for vowel sounds. This
activity only focuses on vowel sounds. The
objective is to identify the vowel sound in
each word or syllable and then blend the
sounds together to get an approximation close
enough that they can recognize the word or
are able to spell the word closely enough to be
able to recognize it.
Happy word discovery.
———
Scott Smith is a Umatilla County educator
with 40-plus years of experience. He taught at
McNary Heights Elementary School and then
for Eastern Oregon University in their teacher
education program at Blue Mountain Commu-
nity College. He serves on the Decoding Dys-
lexia-OR board as their parent/teacher liaison.
Conservative has a personal mission With President Joe, it’s divided we stand
WRITERS ON
THE RANGE
Ron Keine
am a lifelong conservative Republican
whose faith in the criminal justice sys-
tem was shattered by my near-death
experience with it. I came within nine
days of being sent to the gas chamber for a
crime I did not commit.
You could say I’m living proof of why
people should not trust their government
with the death penalty.
My nightmare started in 1974 when
three friends and I were falsely accused of
sexually mutilating and killing a student at
the University of New Mexico. We were
all sentenced to death in 1974.
The state had no proof — no weapon,
no forensic evidence — just poorly run
lie-detector tests on all four of us and an
alleged witness. Even when that witness
later recanted, the judge refused to grant us
a new trial.
It was only after the real killer con-
fessed that we were exonerated, and that
happened in the nick of time. My execu-
tion had been scheduled, and the assistant
warden had asked what I wanted for my
last meal.
How could this happen?
This was an abuse of government
power, and it happens more often than you
might think. In our case, the main wit-
ness had been coerced to lie at the trial.
Also, the murder weapon — nowhere to
be seen during the trial — was later found
inside the local sheriff’s safe. It had been
hidden from the defense and traced to a
law enforcement ofﬁ cer who ended up
confessing.
Yet our story is not unique. We are
among 173 people nationwide to be freed
from death sentences because of wrongful
conviction.
Although the Trump administration
resumed federal executions, there has been
a trend of conservative Republicans at the
state level rethinking the death penalty.
They do so because they believe in limited
government, ﬁ scal responsibility and the
value of human life.
As Republican State Sen. Owen Hill,
of Denver, put it, “It is against the natural
order for one created in the image of God
to willfully take the life of another created
in the image of God.”
There are also powerful ﬁ nancial argu-
I
ments. The death penalty costs far more
money than its alternatives such as life
without parole, according to numerous
studies in many states over a lot of years.
In fact, death penalty trials, and there are
always two — one to determine guilt or
innocence and one to decide a sentence —
have caused some municipalities to almost
go bankrupt, while others have been forced
to pass tax increases.
The death penalty is just another waste-
ful, big-government program. The 25 states
that still have the death penalty — eight of
them in the West — are wasting resources
that could be used to make communities
safer by solving cold cases or providing
more tools to law enforcement.
Take Wyoming as one example. Since
the state passed its death penalty law in
1977, Wyoming has carried out one exe-
cution, and today it does not have a single
death row inmate. However, the state con-
tinues to spend at least $750,000 each year
on a capital defense fund to train attor-
neys to handle death penalty cases that
rarely ever come to them. It is no wonder
that the overwhelmingly Republican Wyo-
ming Legislature came just a few votes shy
of repealing the death penalty in 2019, and
hopes are high they will ﬁ nish the job this
year.
New Mexico, where I was sentenced to
death, repealed the sentence in 2009, and
last year, Colorado ended capital punish-
ment, thanks to three GOP state senators
who made the crucial difference. In fact,
no state west of Texas has held an execu-
tion in more than 10 years, and 2020 was
another record low for new death sentences
with only six total in all Western states.
That’s down from a high of 72 death sen-
tences in the West in 1982.
Another encouraging sign of change has
just arrived with the ﬁ ling of a death pen-
alty repeal bill in the U.S. Congress, albeit
a Democratic proposal with no GOP spon-
sors — yet.
As someone who barely survived an
encounter with the criminal justice system,
I call upon all who share my values to get
rid of the death penalty once and for all.
And that last meal? It was going to be
macaroni and cheese, just like my mother
used to make. After I was released from
death row I sometimes ate mac and cheese
three times a day.
———
Ron Keine is a contributor to Writers on
the Range, writersontherange.org, a non-
proﬁ t dedicated to spurring lively conver-
sation about the West. He is a member of
the board of directors of Witness to Inno-
cence, a small nonproﬁ t working to end the
death penalty.
OTHER VIEWS
Michael Reagan
veryone agreed the inauguration cere-
mony was nice.
Lady Gaga was Lady Gaga. Garth
Brooks was Garth Brooks.
Everyone also agreed President Joe
Biden’s speech was nice.
Nothing plagiarized. Nothing too fancy.
Nothing that presidential historians will be
quoting a month from now.
Biden’s call for national unity and political
healing was widely praised by Democrats, the
mainstream Democrat media and even some
easily impressed Republicans.
But what did our new uniﬁ er-in-chief do
as soon as he got control of the presidential
pen?
Keeping his campaign promises, the
born-again progressive kicked off his plan to
reverse President Trump’s “America First”
direction and turn back the country to Obama-
style open-borders and an economic policy
that beneﬁ ts Communist China and globalists.
Biden signed 17 executive orders Wednes-
day and another 10 on Thursday. If they’re
not reversed by Congress or the courts, they
are sure to hurt America and its people.
They will kill thousands of energy jobs in
the Heartland, reopen our borders to waves
of illegal immigrants and again subject us
to the rules of the incompetent and corrupt
World Health Organization and harmful inter-
national agreements like the Paris Climate
Accord.
By his edicts on Wednesday, Biden imme-
diately showed that when it comes to foster-
ing national unity and building America back
better, he’s all talk and no walk.
Biden logic is, to put it mildly, more like
Biden madness.
In a country with millions of people out
of work, he stopped construction of the Key-
stone XL pipeline from Canada — and put
11,000 high-paid construction workers out of
work.
With a caravan of 10,000 Nicaraguan and
Guatemalan migrants already on its way to
the Texas border, he halted the building of the
wall.
With the COVID-19 pandemic still rag-
ing in the United States, he’s ready to greet
thousands of illegal — and unvaccinated —
immigrants at our border with open arms and
hugs.
And out here in California, where 3 mil-
E
lion of the country’s 12-plus million illegal
immigrants already live, our streets are cer-
tain to be made more dangerous because of
his decision not to deport illegal aliens —
including criminal ones — for 100 days.
So thanks, President Joe. Way to put the
good of the country above partisan politics.
In just two days you pleased both your
leftist supporters who hate ICE and your par-
ty’s environmental wacko wing.
It doesn’t matter, I guess, that in the long
run your new rules will shred our improved
immigration system and endanger America’s
energy independence.
Or that they will hurt Canada’s energy-
based economy and help our competitors in
the global oil and gas industry.
Good thinking, President Joe. You made
75 million Americans mad at you, but the lib-
eral media are united.
They’re loving every one of your execu-
tive decisions. CNN is so happy they can’t
stop slobbering over you and ﬁ rst lady Jill.
In fact, they praised “Doctor” Jill for
bringing class back to the White House after
an absence of four years.
It’s ﬁ ne to praise Jill Biden. But what did
Melania Trump do to deserve that last-minute
cheap shot?
She only speaks ﬁ ve languages, came to
America with nothing and ended up living in
the White House.
In a fair and decent world, that’s the deﬁ -
nition of the American Dream.
But for the past four years, the biased and
nasty liberal media — from CNN to the edi-
tors of the New York Times and Vogue —
were incapable of praising her even for her
looks.
They hated on her or ignored her every
day for one obvious reason: she married the
wrong man.
For the next four years, with Biden or
Kamala Harris in charge and the country
divided 50-50, the media and their journalists
are going to have a really tough time hiding
their partisan biases and dishonesty.
When a COVID-20 virus comes over
from China, or when the Biden administra-
tion throws the economy into a ditch, gets
caught in bed with China or drags us into
a war in Syria, who is the media going to
blame?
With Donald Trump out of power and liv-
ing in Florida, it’s going to have to be the
Russians.
———
Michael Reagan is the son of President
Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and
the author of “Lessons My Father Taught
Me: The Strength, Integrity and Faith of Ron-
ald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email
service reagan.com and president of The Rea-
gan Legacy Foundation.