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PrintCheney is more dressed for respect than Sharon Stone
It was very disconcerting to see two similar pictures in the Post-Gazette on Jan. 29, with such dissimilar commentaries.
In the story concerning Vice President Dick Cheney's official visit to Auschwitz, the fashion editor of The Washington Post, Robin Givhan, criticized Mr. Cheney's parka and knitted ski cap -- saying he looked like an awkward child amid well-dressed adults ("Cheney's Parka and Boots Stand Out at Ceremony").
Too bad Ms. Givhan didn't attend the World Economic Forum in Switzerland and see Sharon Stone in jeans and boots slouching slovenly in the front row like an awkward rude teen-ager ("Sharon Stone Puts Spotlight on Malaria Aid"). At least Mr. Cheney didn't stand up and rudely interrupt the main speaker at Auschwitz, as Ms. Stone did at the Forum to announce she was giving $10,000 to Tanzania's anti-malaria effort.
A most worthy cause but couldn't she have been more respectful in her attire, posture and timing, or doesn't that apply to movie stars?
MILDRED MASSARO
Penn Hills
This tax hurts
I assumed my company had my hours wrong when I got my paycheck last week. After a call to the human resources department, I learned I lost $52 to the newly raised occupation tax (up from $10 per year, and now called the "emergency and municipal services tax"). My wife, who is paid monthly, will also be sporting a paycheck that's $52 short.
When a family scraping by loses $104 all at once, that hurts. Worse, this tax hits two-income families twice as hard as single-income families. They call that a regressive tax because it affects the working poor disproportionately. Mayor Tom Murphy might be able to not miss $52 from his check, but it sure has us scrambling to cover our bills this month.
ERIC NICHOLAS
Squirrel Hill
Bill Schofield's legacy
Bill Schofield died on Jan. 24 ("William J. Schofield III: Insurance Executive with Knack for Politics and Community Service," Jan. 26 obituary). Now it is up to each of us to see that his work for and in our community continues.
Bill demanded equal opportunity for all. He was a champion for those suffering from poverty, mental illness, and alcohol and drug addiction.
Brenda Lee, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Allegheny County, said he recently sent a contribution to the association (where he was a past vice president and board member) with a hand-written demand: "Serve those suffering from the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction."
Our former warden of the County Jail, Calvin Lightfoot, has pointed out that Bill "was always there, volunteering his time." Now it's our turn. Thank you, Bill Schofield.
PHIL JOYCE
Advisory Board Chairman
Mental Health Association of Allegheny County
Point Breeze
Nobody is a nobody
A probably little-noticed phrase -- for me an inspiring message -- in President Bush's Jan. 20 inaugural address were these five words: "Even the unwanted have worth."
A poignant and sad twist of this electrifying and palpably democratic sentiment of the president's assertion that whoever is self-perceived or otherwise viewed as unwanted is not without value, is the self-deprecating characterization made by a housekeeper I know who, time and again, puts herself down as a "nobody."
Her disparaging attribution, which in effect says that she is unwanted and without value, is at sharp variance with the myriad kindnesses and acts of helpfulness she showers on everyone, family, friends, even strangers. My wife and I have continuously counseled her that she is a consummate somebody, not a nondescript nobody, judging from her 24/7 efforts to comfort people in distress and help them resolve disputes with community agencies and other rigid and insensitive bureaucracies. A nobody? Hardly. A somebody, absolutely! A worthy person? You can take it to the bank!
Nobody is a nobody. Each and every one of us is a worthy somebody, no matter how inconsequential we may feel we are in the big-picture context of life's insoluble riddles and cruel injustices, and of an unfathomable world. Housekeepers, street cleaners and bindle stiffs are somebodies, not only celebrated movers and shakers like Leonardo DiCaprio, Elsie Hillman, Jennifer Lopez, Condi Rice, Ben Roethlisberger, and Donalds Duck, Rumsfeld and Trump.
ROBERT PERLOFF
Shadyside
Reason for suspicion
In a Jan. 27 editorial ("Phony Crisis"), the Post-Gazette states that the president is stooping, as he did in selling the war in Iraq, to the use of deceit and alarm tactics in his gloomy portrayal of Social Security as a "system that will be flat bust, bankrupt" by 2042.
My guess is that many, if not most, of the citizens in this region are by now suspicious of this administration's seemingly pathological inclination to distort and manipulate facts. And many if not most would agree with the editors that Bush's willingness to gamble on Social Security privatization is because it will benefit his friends on Wall Street.
Yet I fear that one of our region's representatives in Congress -- Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Bradford Woods -- is not as suspicious of the president's motives and rhetoric as many of her constituents are. Although she is vague about how exactly to fix Social Security, in a recent e-mail to me Rep. Hart parrots the president's own alarmist words on the topic: "By 2042, the Social Security Trust Fund will be bankrupt."
Yet some analysts say the crisis will not occur until 10 years later, in 2052. Moreover, whenever it does occur, "bankruptcy" is still too strong a term to use for a system that will still be operative and paying out about 75 percent of its promised benefits in 2042, even if nothing whatsoever is done to correct the system before then.
What's curious is that this administration and those who support it, like Rep. Hart, are ignoring the elephant in the room: What is putting us in danger of "bankruptcy" is the mammoth deficit caused by Bush's unjust tax cuts for the wealthy and his needless, tragic and fraudulent war in Iraq.
DONNA WHITSON BRETT
Ross
Great women
Thank you for your tribute to the lives of two great women from our region, Karen Shapira and Cordelia Scaife May ("For a Cause: Pittsburgh Loses Two Leaders in Giving," Jan. 29 editorial; obituaries, Jan. 27: Karen Shapira and Cordelia Scaife May).
What inspired me about both women was, despite their own personal pain -- Karen with breast cancer and "Cordy" with her reclusiveness (which I really understand) -- they endured. They kept on giving. They never gave up giving to the mission to which they were dedicated.
It is important to me that we have role models of people who, despite whatever personal pain they are enduring, give. They go on and on and on. They never quit. And, to me, that is what character is all about. It does not matter whether you are a man or a woman or a child. It is endurance that makes for heroes and heroines in this society. We need more of them.
GLORIA L. GIZZI-HASSETT
South Side
Dynamic duo
Isn't U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi a breath of fresh air? Her response to President Bush's State of Union address was to read from a page of John Kerry's flawed campaign playbook.
And what can I say about Harry Reid, the senator from Searchlight, Nev.? Batteries are not included.
E.M. VARHOLA
Munhall
The PG sings Britain's tune in accusing IRA of Belfast bank job
I find it extremely curious that the Post-Gazette allows its staff to print libelous material about individuals, political parties and ethnic groups. The Jan. 28 editorial "Bank Job: Is the IRA Now Gunning for Cash?", the PG's most recent "trial by media" of the IRA, Sinn Fein and the entire Nationalist population of Ireland for the Belfast bank robbery, is appalling.
Not one person has been convicted of this crime (the equivalent of $50 million was stolen from a Belfast bank on Dec. 20) nor have the local authorities uncovered one shred of evidence of IRA involvement, despite numerous raids on "known" IRA sympathizers.
However, since Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde, a British/Unionist politico, says that he thinks the IRA was involved, I suppose it must be true. His reasoning (and that which has been accepted by the media lapdogs) is that no one else could have pulled off such an organized robbery. In that vein, I suppose the IRA must have been behind the most recent theft of prized art in Norway or perhaps the numerous bank robberies in Iraq and elsewhere.
Of course, when the IRA is mentioned, media habitually link them with Sinn Fein, "the political wing of the IRA." This is despite the fact that Sinn Fein draws its support from hundreds of thousands of voters, if not millions. What is most amazing is that I recently read a rant by a Unionist editorialist complaining that Sinn Fein was the wealthiest party in the North, mainly because Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness can raise millions of dollars (legally) at the drop of a hat through fund-raisers in the United States and Europe. As such, why would Sinn Fein, or the IRA for that matter, need to rob a bank and risk everything they have built over the past two centuries fighting against British Imperialism?
But then again, this information is coming from a group of people who exterminated millions of Irish, kicked them off their land and handed it over the likes of the Orange Order. This is just another card in the British bag of tricks.
KIRK B. BURKLEY
North Side
