ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

A Satisfied User

Dear ETS!,

Nice goin'! Now, I'm addicted! Do you feel shame? The drug, of course, is this rag you write. Pushers ply LSD on pieces of paper, you know! Of course you know!! You're probably their supplier! Now I'm trying to get my friends and neighbors strung out, too!

In my tormented state, I'm editing an anti-airport newsletter. The state of Illinois has been gracious enough to attempt to pave over useless corn and soybean fields (25 sq. miles worth). I use your comix to hook people into these evil ideas. The fact not one airline is willing to be part and parcel to this progress is totally irrelevant.

This sick addiction to printed matter that impudently challenges our great TV and news media, has led me down the path of--horrors!--self-publishing my own anti-state zine. I know I'm sick. As a matter of fact, I'm waiting for the boys in white coats and butterfly nets to come and rescue me right now. There's nothing like an overdose of thorazine to make you come to your senses and join the herd of the dullwitted.

Like all junkies, I'm begging for my next fix! My subscription runs out next month. Please don't force me to send a check. This would force me to deny my starving children their Sugar Pops, candy, gum, ice cream, and Twinkies.

Desperately,

Anthony Rayson, Monee IL

Ed. reply: Are you kidding, Tony? This is when the price goes up. But it's not for us; it's for the kids.

Jonesboro Blues Cont'd

ETS!,

I would like to comment on Jonesboro. While I think what you wrote [ETS!, Apr. 14 '98] deserves the widest possible dissemination, there are a couple of points, admittedly only of secondary importance, that disturb me and have certain possible ramifications. These are the comments by the school principal and the minister. What they said, of course, could be taken several different ways. But your summaries of them were so brief that it was not clear to me what was the actual meaning of the two men?

I'll give my own background. I am an old man. My career with the media spanned the pivotal decades of the '60s and '70s. While I no longer feel strongly about what I attempted then, it seems so insignificant when so much was evolving, I tried to make the stories that came before me actually say what they purported to say or make it plain that they did not (at least for the careful reader, which we all have the potential for being). Certainly I was limited by the limits of the dispatches put before me, but also of course of Everyman/woman's intuitive second sense, if that too is consciously engaged.

And is the mind set of Jonesboro really so different from that of the national and international councils or the I-me-ism so rampant in our city, on streets, crosswalks, stores, at the ordinary level of all of us?

--Wesley D. Johnson, Seattle

Fresh Bait

Dear Gang of More Than Four,

Two recent issues of ETS! printed letters from Benjamin F., a subscriber whose anti-Marxist comments supposedly constituted red-baiting. Each editor protested Ben's remarks as offensive. These protestations would have delivered a wee bit more force had ETS! not baited Congressman McDermott and Senator Murray in the intervening issue ("Seattle Liberals Embrace Fascism"). Implying casually, off-handedly, and without evidence that Mr. McDermott and Mrs. Murray sympathize with fascism does not represent the best way to defend oneself against baiting.

Both voted against gutting the First Amendment (to allow prosecution of flag desecration). ETS! complained about a "strip-mined constitution" immediately after baiting the politicians, shoving the irony meter even closer to overload.

Aside from the authoritarian-baiting, the excellent articles on the Seattle-Singapore junket in both ETS! and The Stranger criticized our order-loving officials quite well. But both critiques (and the good letters following them) missed an obvious point.

While in Singapore, our elected darlings received briefings from transport and public transit officials. In other words, our leaders went to Singapore to learn how the fascists made the trains run on time! In the immortal words of the Roman satirist, Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis ("Juvenal"), "Difficile est saturnam non scribere." ("It is difficult not to write satire.")

Experiencing Extreme Difficulty,

--Tensor, Seattle

G.P. replies: You're right, we should have spelled it out. The focus of the article was Singapore's example of corporate domination of public policy and human rights, and how liberals (such as, it was noted in passing, M&M) have supported it. Both Murray and McDermott are all for "free" trade and the global economic abuse it implies, as epitomized by...Singapore. Both have also consistently opposed restrictions on U.S. corporate investment or arms contracts with foreign countries with horrible human rights records, like...Singapore. Of course, the argument can also be made that the concept of "fascist-baiting" someone you identify as a member of Congress is redundant, but I'll leave that for others.

Red Dawn

ETS!,

The fluoride issue was brought to my attention by one of your renowned readers, Jeff Pearson, on Deface the Nation (Thu. 11 PM, channel 29) two weeks ago. After doing extensive research on the subject myself, I have started a campaign to rid the City of Renton of fluoridation in the city water. The only problem is I am the committee. If anyone out there would like to help get the word out on the dangers of fluoride, i.e. bone cancer, fluorosis, decreased IQs in children, please e-mail me using the subject "fluoride" at LoveOwen@aol.com. I have included a few links to get you on your way to investigate the atrocities that the Dept. of Public Health have been force-feeding us for the past 40 some-odd years. Thanks for the forum!

--Theresa M. Sents, Renton

G.P. notes: For additional information, rent "Dr. Strangelove (Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb)" (dir: Stanley Kubrick) at your local video store.