On Brantley
I read with great joy of Max Brantley’s “retirement” from that awful liberal rag and so-called “alternative” paper, which has long been the mouthpiece of whacko, left-wing, anti-business, pro-commie, gay-loving, anti-God, progressive trash.
Art, some would call it (those folks tend to stay in Hillcrest).
Journalism, a claim made by even fewer, at least no one in God’s Country of West Little Rock, where the skin is white and the living is easy, and the signs in the yards every other year yell “NO TAXES” and “VOTE for a Christian [with some fish symbol to illustrate something that still escapes me].”
Informative, I guess. (I must be careful with what I’ll admit in writing. You understand.)
Entertaining? Only if you like to watch some rich, powerfully corrupt asshole squirm and dodge and dance and hide and run and rant.
Brantley says he’ll spend his time now on the “blog.” Well, that’s good, but what he’s got there isn’t a blog. Blogs are for mommies who whine and over-share the content of Junior’s shitty diaper. Right?
His so-called “blog” is really just a porn site. Don’t tell anyone you know this: As a baby, raised in the morning with the Gazette, and balanced with an afternoon pick-up of my grandfather’s Democrat, I had a well-rounded education with varying viewpoints. But the Arkansas Times (magazine) was off limits. I was taught a healthy loathing for its form of outrageous lies.
So imagine the difficulty with which sneaking peaks at your news stand pornography was for me? Skulking into some patchouli-soaked, liberal hide-out, late at night, busting up meetings of Future Socialists of America with my uniform of khakis, loafers and golf shirts, to secretly grab an ink and paper version of your words, reporting and editing.
Man, it was a tough life. Then you started the “blog,” so upstanding Pro-God and Country citizens such as myself could access your porn properly, as all porn is to be consumed, online, in the dark of night, in the privacy of our own homes.
So to hear Brantley is going to be spending even more time and energy on this endeavor is like an answer to my prayers. I wish him continued good health, fine sources and sharp thoughts.
As a young journalism student, I was asked if journalism is something I did or was a journalist what I was. I answered it was who I was, Simon Lee, journalist. Despite leaving the paper business years ago, I’ve remained a journalist, a reporter and info junkie whose secret highs come from reading the likes of Brantley. And always learning new tricks for the craft from him.
He’s never officially been my editor, but he always has been.
Much love to him and his family, the real one at home and the real one in the newsroom.
Simon Lee
Little Rock
PD needs to slim down
I first want to say that I am a supporter of a tax increase if it is dedicated to increasing salary for policemen, firemen and other lower paid city employees. The recent proposals for use of the tax revenue tend to have many pork barrel projects, the only purpose of which is to attract votes for the tax increase and not stick to basics as most of us want.
Next, the police department needs to get its house in order before making a case for additional staff and funds. A few months ago I was watching a news report of a murder, and the patrol officers were standing around when a supervisor’s car arrived on the scene. The cameraman focused on that car as the driver was having great difficulty in exiting. Finally, a young patrolman stepped up and helped the supervisor out of her car, and then camera showed that she was so heavy below the waist that she could barely walk. She even had to be boosted up a slight incline to view the body on the ground.
Thereafter, I took the time to look at a few police department award ceremonies on the public access channel and was dismayed by the number of supervisory police personnel that were just plain obese. As taxpayers, we have the right to insist that our taxes be spent on well-conditioned police personnel, and not upon those who can’t move out of a fast shuffle. Further, the many young, well-conditioned police officers need to have an avenue to promotion that is now clogged by the physically handicapped older officers. Before they ask for more money, the drones that are the butt of jokes need to be purged from the force.
Tom Ferstl
Little Rock
Farm flip-flop
Everyone in the state knows that before Stanley Reed was for the state felony animal cruelty bill, he was against it for over a decade. Indeed, the Arkansas Farm Boys took credit for blocking the legislation year after year. It is ironic that now they want to take credit for its passage.
Suzanne Hamilton
Little Rock
The rich and the rest
It is time for Americans to realize the very rich are waging class warfare against the rest of us, and they are using their puppets in Congress to do it. Since the election of Ronald Reagan, they have systematically lowered their share of the financial cost of running our nation. When their icon was elected in 1980, the tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans was 70 percent. Today it is half that. They have also created so many loopholes and tax dodges for themselves that many pay less taxes than the average middle class citizen. Those who have perpetrated this fraud have told us lowering taxes on the wealthy will ultimately create more jobs and thus more taxable wealth, as the wealth “trickles down” through the economy. They call this “supply side economics.”
Does it look like it works to you?
After 30 years of this nonsense, surely it is clear to any thinking person that the experiment has failed! Our nation is in terrible debt, yet the leaders of the Right in Congress refuse to even consider raising taxes on their wealthy bosses. They instead want to destroy our government’s ability to do anything other than wage war, while they tell us it’s for our own good.
This is nothing less than a lack of patriotism. If those on the Right love this country as they claim they do, then the time has come for them to step up and pay their fair share to get the country back on a sound financial footing. If they continue to refuse, then they should be shamed and shunned as the true haters of America they are.
Todd Hall
North Little Rock