LETTERS
In response to recent controversy:
Dear Kristina Bui,
Let me first congratulate you on taking responsibility, on intelligently improving your editorial process and on not resigning.

As a queer who came out before it was trendy, as an activist who’s literally risked his life for gay rights (e.g. taking a cross-dresser who was wearing a dress, a beard, and his high school letter jacket to the movies in downtown Tucson in the mid-’70s), and as a former director of the University of Arizona’s Gay Peer Counseling Program, I’d like you to know that I didn’t find the cartoon even slightly offensive. I found it funny.

It’s not our biggest problem at the moment, but America is drowning in political correctness. It’s keeping us from even talking honestly to each other, much less understanding and empathizing with each other.

I’m sorry you fired your cartoonist, but you’re still batting 3 for 4 in my book. (I was once fired by the Wildcat, feather in my cap.) By the way, cartoons, especially political/social cartoons, aren’t supposed to make people feel comfortable. They’re supposed to make people laugh in spite of themselves.

Feel free to share this with all and sundry, including your delicate readers.

Bear down!
— Lee Thorn,
UA affiliate

*ONLINE COMMENTS
In response to “Race-neutral admissions policies can work” (by Dan Desrochers, Oct. 10):*
No such things as quotas in America, buddy. If letting people in based on race was such a big deal, we’d be much more in trouble for “filling quotas”. The argument is well intended, but misguided and under researched.
— tookaclassonit

In response to “Cross-dressing ball raises money for students to study abroad in Russia” (by Kyle Mittan, Oct. 21):
It was an informative and fun event! I loved the trivia game that was being played. I learned so many incredible facts about Nadezhda Durova’s life while meeting so many other students as we exchanged slips of paper with trivia bits on them. The costumes were especially creative and amusing. I definitely had a great time!
— Liz

In response to “Tucson congressional candidates fail to address poverty problem” (by Savannah Martin, Oct. 16):
The underlying premise of your article is wrong-headed.

There is no such thing as a “poverty problem”, at least not as you seem to be describing.

Poverty is the natural state of human beings, it’s how babies come into this world, it was the overwhelming default state for all of humanity for thousands of years and is still the condition for billions of people on Earth.

Poverty as a problem is like saying you are trying to solve that darn gravity problem. Man! If only someone would eliminate gravity we could all fly around like Superman! Super cool!

Poverty is a known inevitability because poverty is simply the absence of wealth.

It’s easy to destroy, take away, expropriate, redistribute, etc. Thus it’s easy to return people to or keep people in poverty.

What’s hard is creating new wealth, production, goods and services, the voluntary exchanges that grow our economy.

We’ve all heard for years about “The War on Poverty”… you let me know how that fight against gravity is going.

I’m waiting for the soap box speakers to start standing up for a “Crusade for Wealth.” That would actually help the people on behalf of which you so piously plead.
— Taylor Davidson