Letters for February 14, 2002

Listen here, mudslingers

Re “Is Dick Ready?” by Jim Evans ( SN&R News, February 7):

I was very disappointed in journalism when I read the Riordan article last night in the News & Review.

I always kinda figured journalism entailed stubbornness, insensitivity and general inappropriate nosiness … now I see that it also requires pettiness, vengeance and grudge-holding.

If a candidate for any office has had extra-marital affairs, I can see the wisdom behind looking into it and reporting it—it’s a matter of integrity and morality. But Riordan had a tragic event happen in his life that is obviously devastating to him, that has no bearing on how he would be as a governor. The L.A. Times reporter gleefully ignored his requests not to mention his aide’s requests.

In addition, the News & Review happily printed the article, as if looking for something with which to “hang” Riordan.

I think that a journalist should definitely look into the confines of taste and necessity when reporting on the life of someone running for office. I don’t think that “all aspects of his personal life” should be up for review.

Will the next article be about how many times per week he has sex? Or, better yet, has a bowel movement, as well as the size and texture of them? If you can’t tell what’s necessary, you shouldn’t be a journalist.

Adriana
Sacramento

Folsom blues

Re “What Lies Beneath” ( SN&R Editorial, January 31):

The sewage problem is only one of several problems with the city of Folsom. In its incessant growth mode, the air quality continues to deteriorate and the City Fathers give a nod and wink toward any real effort at affordable housing for the low-income people in the Sacramento area.

You are certainly right about the limp slap on the wrist by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board. Until there is a definitive seven-year plan in place with signed contracts there should have been a ban placed on all new sewer connections in Folsom.

James G. Updegraff III
Sacramento

Good job with Baby Rae!

Re “Good God … It’s Baby Rae!” by Jim Evans (SN&R Cover, January 31):

Good job on the profile on Baby Rae. Honestly, I did not know the “back story” on her. Your words filled in many gaps and skillfully provide insights into one of our more unique residents. It would be easy to dismiss her for a variety of obvious reasons, but her history and her honesty weave a different view for those willing to read your insightful prose.

We at Access Sacramento invite all residents to “tell their story” on our channels. But to voice one’s story is not easy to do. Your article is the companion piece to Baby Rae’s performance art ministry. Together, her TV program and your article attempt to tell the complicated story of a life lived hard.

To stand out is a lonely place and yet the only place to be for some. Each of us secretly wish our stories could be as eloquently rendered, but an honest assessment can also paint a melancholy portrait. Who is willing to risk this bright light? What price do they pay? As strange as Baby Rae and J.C.’s struggle to survive and bring meaning to their lives may seem to most, your words serve to remind us, happy times are rare and fleeting moments, be thankful.

You went beyond the obvious and cared enough to tell a small story others would fail to see or value … good writers do that.

Ron Cooper
via e-mail

Good grief … it’s Baby Rae

Re “Good God … It’s Baby Rae!” by Jim Evans (SN&R Cover, January 31):

Where does one begin with SN&R’s story on Baby Rae? Perhaps with its motivation to tell the tale in the first place. I think it is to demonstrate the contrast of U.S. Puritanism with European sensibilities.

Baby Rae dares to take it all off, and to use every word available, sanctioned or not, to tell her story. What is particularly sad is the fact that the constitutional responsibility to guarantee her free speech falls squarely upon the shoulders of community cable television. Commercial TV cannot guarantee a return on invested advertising dollars, much less a venue of mass media for the people.

I only wish that SN&R would cover the people’s struggle to put real public affairs shows on community television.

Michael Monasky
Elk Grove

Coal fired up

Re “Irradiated Food Fight” by Chrisanne Beckner (SN&R News, January 31):

Interesting story on irradiated food.

What you don’t mention is that we are all irradiated every day. We receive continuous radiation from the sun, which is highly radioactive, and would be deadly except we are so far away. We receive continuous radiation from the earth, which is mildly radioactive. We also receive continuous radiation from coal combustion, which provides roughly half the U.S. energy consumption, and which emits something like 800 tons of radioactive elements into the atmosphere each year, elements contained in the coal and released in its combustion. Coal plants release more radioactivity into our atmosphere each year than all other sources combined, but Public Citizen doesn’t have a thing to say about that.

We should also remember that, if radiation slightly reduces nutritional value, so does cooking, so does canning, so does freezing, but the loss of nutritional value by each method of preservation is slight to minor, not dramatic. As for meat processing, radiation will kill bacteria and areas of contamination too small for meat inspectors to see.

Radiation will also make it possible to ship food with unlimited shelf life anywhere in the world, wherever there is famine or war or widespread food shortage, without spoilage, and will ultimately save thousands or millions of lives. Farmers’ markets are great, but they can’t supply food to Afghanistan or Somalia.

And the risk from irradiated food (if any, since there is no scientific proof that there is a risk, not even Public Citizen has produced any scientific evidence to corroborate their fears) is vastly less than the proven risk of disease and death from salmonella, botulism, E. coli and other foodborne diseases.

There is no risk-free human activity. Automobiles, for instance, kill about 1000 people a week in the United States, compared to irradiated food that has never killed anybody. Foodborne diseases kill at least hundreds, probably thousands of people a year in the U.S., probably hundreds of thousands or millions worldwide (I don’t know the statistics, but those numbers seem plausible, since most of the world does not have USDA food inspectors).

As I see it, unless you’re suicidal, or really enjoy food poisoning, the lower risk (irradiated food) is generally preferable to the higher risk (salmonella, botulism, E. coli).

Ray Kraft
via e-mail