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Opinions9/12/01


Opinion of Helms was way off the mark

To the editor:

Shame on you. Shame on you for turning Esther Godfrey loose to denounce a man retiring from an office in which he served the people of this state for longer than she has been alive. Ms. Godfrey’s column on Sen. Jesse Helms was wordy, naive, immature and sexist. She foolishly deducts that Jesse is elected, repeatedly, by old white men. “Unsympathetic and cruel” old white men are most likely the same type of guys financing her lengthy stay in college, after they built the college and the roads to it.

Ms. Godfrey should know that old white women outnumber old white men. If she would stop being so self-righteous and look around, she would also see that the majority of the women who live within the circulation of this paper are opposed to using abortion as a means of birth control. These women voted for Jesse. Voters who are pro-democracy and against military tyrants like Fidel Castro voted for Jesse. Today’s over-taxed workers who are paying a larger percentage of there personal income in taxes than any other group in history of this country voted for Jesse.

They agreed with “Senator No” that a man who hangs up child pornography and calls it art does not deserve any of their hard-earned money. Jesse opposed the Martin Luther King holiday because it costs those same taxpayers, both white and black, billions in tax dollars to celebrate it. Ask the block mason of African heritage if he would rather have a couple more dollars in his check at the end of each week or give the federal and state employees a day off with pay to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday. Ask him, Ms. Godfrey. You might be surprised by the response, though I doubt you know any masons.

Of course tax dollars are meaningless to Ms. Godfrey. I am confident that her yearly power bill is much greater than what she sends the federal government in taxes. That’s if she sends any money at all. Tell her not to worry. Some cruel old white guy who voted for Jesse will pick up her slack.

The publisher is wasting some good trees on dribble from children. He should be ashamed.

Tom Enterline
Blowing Rock, N.C.

 

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