• Too far in their lunacy • Well prepared Too far in their lunacy After becoming a regular subscriber to your paper over the last month, I first believed that conservative/right/Republican leaning staff ran your editorial section. However, as time
• Too far in their lunacy • Well
prepared
Too far in their lunacy
After becoming a regular subscriber to your paper over the last month, I first believed that conservative/right/Republican leaning staff ran your editorial section. However, as time went on I noticed instead that you alternated your main editorial articles with ones from the moderate and moderate-left/liberal/Democratic viewpoints.
But the fact that almost all of your editorial cartoons are nearly 90 percent critical of Obama, liberals, Democrats, and unions, indicates to me that you tilt your views to the right. Although I do consider myself a “lefty liberal democrat,” I believe that hearing the views of those who disagree with me is the way to have a healthy discussion and understanding of the issues. However, there are some arguments that go too far in their lunacy and are unforgivable.
Diana West’s “Vetting Rep. King’s ‘crimes’” column you published is one of those. How could you responsibly publish this ultra, ultra, right-wing racist apologist? In her support of U.S. Rep. Peter King’s hearings into Islamic “radicalization,” she goes on to justify McCarthy’s Communist witch hunts (just relatively inflammatory) and Japanese internment camps during WWII (beyond inflammatory — explosive).
How reprehensible that you allowed her to justify the forced internment of U.S. citizens who were of Japanese descent merely because there was some nebulous threat that they might be working for Japan. That’s nearly as horrible as writing that the “Holocaust internment camps were justified because Germany felt threatened by potentially disloyal Jewish citizens” — something I believe you would never allow this paper to publish if an author tried to express it.
Then to back up her view, West cites Michelle Malkin’s book “In Defense of Internment” — a book that Asian civil rights organizations and the Historians Committee for Fairness heavily criticized and debunked. Coupled with the fact that thousands of Japanese Americans served with distinction during WWII, including Congressional Gold Medal Winner Senator Daniel Inouye, militates against the idea that internment was justified. However, your staff still continues to print Michelle Malkin’s columns weekly along with Diana West.
West even goes so far as to call the reparations the U.S. had to pay to survivors of Japanese internment camps as “pandering” rather than just compensation for illegal and unjustified imprisonment. West insinuates that the forced relocated and concentration of Japanese Americans was not only proper, but that the U.S. had no obligation to compensate those countless innocent Japanese Americans who suffered. Instead, she bashes them as another case of “victimology.”
Well, Ms. West, they were victims; victims of a racially motivated false-imprisonment due to hysterical over-reaction from mainly white Americans. A free and just society should never justify a sweeping program of persecuting thousands of people because of their race or religion because there may be a few of them who support the side we are at war with. Neither should our local newspaper continue to give space to Michelle Malkin or Diana West in their editorial section so that they can spew this racist nonsense. There are so many other authors on the right you could publish before these two. You should pull any author who defends Japanese internment camps, especially since we have a huge population of citizens in our state who have Japanese ancestry. I am embarrassed and saddened to think how they felt on this day when they read this column. I hope others in our community will write in to support the replacement of these authors.
Furthermore, this is not her first anti-Islamic column you published in the last month; I can remember at least one other and it may have been more. Muslims are not the problem; terrorists are — and terrorism transcends a race or a religion. We should target those who engage in this behavior, because terrorism in the U.S. has not been the sole province of people who “think” they are Muslims — Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh was not a Muslim. And just like WWII’s Japanese Americans, Islamic Americans are now starting to face a similar problem: serving with distinction in the U.S. military while facing potential witch-hunts here at home. Hopefully, we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.
Christopher O’Brien, Lihu‘e
Well prepared
I would just like to send out a very big mahalo to the staff of KONG Radio (the official Civil Defense station) for keeping all of us on Kaua‘i well-informed during the big tsunami scare March 10.
Thank you to DJ Podagee (aka: Matt Rapozo), Marc Valentin, Brad Shaw, Joel Groomes, Jamie Rowe, Ron Middag, Andy Melamed, and of course, Ron Wiley (who stayed on the air from 9:30 p.m. Thursday evening until about noon on Friday afternoon). I have no idea where Ron Wiley gets all that energy from, he’s like the Energizer Bunny, he keeps going and going!
Also a big mahalo to Jen Groomes who worked behind the scenes and all of the office staff who came in the next day: Annette, Denise, and Sherri.
We are so fortunate to have KONG radio and its staff who is always willing to go the extra mile to keep the residents of Kaua‘i safe during any type of emergency.
Thank you also to Beth Tokioka of the Mayor’s Office for the updates. Don’t know what we would have done without all of you and I bet everyone is now prepared for hurricane season with all their prepared emergency kits.
Francine Grace, Lihu‘e
