Letters

Click Your Heels

The yellow trick road: While we’ve all been enjoying the holidays, the Oz Entertainment Company crowd has been working relentlessly to get the Johnson County commissioners to reconsider their rejection of the proposal (Kansas City Strip, December 14).

Let’s be clear:

1. The “new” management is simply a person whom we know very little about who replaces someone else whom we came to know too much about. The same empty promises are still behind the curtain.

2. The decision for the commissioners is not whether we want a theme park in Johnson County. Rather, it is whether they wish to participate in a public policy decision to give away 9,000 acres of public property in Johnson County worth hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for more promises from Oz.

You’ve got to be kidding!

William L. Kostar, mayor

Westwood

Fail to the Chiefs

Playing the field: Regarding Greg Hall’s article “Sack Carl Peterson” (December 28): Gunther Cunningham has been released in hopes for the Chiefs to secure another sucker-puppet to coach our almighty, albeit lame-brained, squad to a winning season. Yes, the same squad where many pretended to be great philanthropists in the KC community so they can woo peroxide-headed women and get some poontang at Fuzzy’s South after they simulate sex to “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

I have no problem with good, clean competition between two athletic teams. Hell, I don’t care if it’s the Fargo VFW versus the Toledo Kiwanis. What I don’t understand are the whiny owners, managers and players who blame their coaches for the lack of individual talents and team cohesiveness.

Many athletes collect a salary upward of $10 million annually and then claim, “I can’t play my best because I don’t care for my coach.” Do you see concert violinists playing out of tempo because they don’t like the fucking conductor? Do you see a ballerina performing a half-ass pirouette because she has a personality clash with the choreographer?

These testosterone-laden athletes, managers and owners who drive their Chevrolet “subdivisions” and wear their Giorgio Fucking Armani suits are not in fact “tough guys” — they are emotionally unstable icons trying to blame whoever for their lack of whatever it takes to win.

Name Withheld Upon Request

Kansas City, Missouri

Love Thy Neighbor

Don’t call on me: I read Deb Hipp’s article about Holy Family House (“No Room for the Innkeeper,” December 21) and noticed the care shown for those who do not have a warm home or place to use the restroom and must depend on the love and care of Brother Louis Rodemann. The sad, more disconcerting portion of her article deals with the portrayal of the Longfellow neighborhood. Only two “short-term” residents were quoted — one not a homeowner himself. Neither of these residents speaks for the vast majority of the residents of Longfellow.

Most of us bought homes in this neighborhood because of the diversity and our acceptance of those who live lives different from our own. Most of us are able to live here in peace with so many different styles of life: nonprofessional, stay-at-home mothers, “wish we had a home” mothers, homeless, gay, lesbian, Catholic, Episcopal, Baptist, Jewish, agnostic, married, single, widowed or living together. There are some families who have three generations all living in this neighborhood — mine is one. Holy Family House isn’t the only residence the “neighbors” have “called the City” on: We have had three codes officers visit in the last six months. Most of the association members decided to no longer attend or associate with this association for this kind of activity.

Several recent Longfellow newsletters state: “When you call the action center on your neighbor, please use the Longfellow/ Dutch Hill Neighborhood Association as the caller’s name so we can keep track.” So with these kinds of comments in newsletter after newsletter, one would wonder who would want to move into our neighborhood. Yet most of the neighborhood lives quietly and peacefully in Longfellow and understands the work of Brother Rodemann and his Holy Family House.

Name Withheld Upon Request

Kansas City, Missouri

Deb Hipp responds: The two residents quoted, Parris Twillman and Jim Collins, are both homeowners who have lived in the Longfellow neighborhood for more than ten years. Twillman is president of the Longfellow Neighborhood Association.

Good Sports

Hall monitor: In response to Greg Hall’s commentary on the Kansas City sportscasting community (“SOFA Awards 2000,” January 4): Does the Pitch even have a sports section? The answer is a resounding NO. Until the Pitch has one, who is he to judge?

Name Withheld Upon Request

Kansas City, Missouri

Editor’s note: Greg Hall’s sports column debuted in last week’s issue.

Half MAST

Suit up and show up: I found Allie Johnson’s article about Kathy Harris and Michelle Miller rather … well, empty … of real information (“Internal Bleeding,” December 28). These two individuals, whom I know and worked with, complained of the unequal treatment and how they wanted to work to help people yet can’t seem to come to work themselves. I don’t understand that.

I trained and evaluated Kathy Harris as a paramedic at MAST, and I will attest that she is and can be a competent paramedic. But if she is unhappy with how she was treated, to condemn the entire system and to imply that HELP IS NOT ON THE WAY is not right. Help is on the way, but if you are not at work, how can you help? We have FMLA and other programs, and these people used them, to my limited knowledge. Most of the coworkers I know work hard, have problems, deal with them and still manage to come to work.

I’m sorry Kathy and Michelle are unable to work at MAST anymore, but I believe they made their bed and must lie in it. I wish the rest of the story had been told in the Pitch article.

Randall L. Bennett

Kansas City, Missouri

Trench Foot-in-Mouth

A telling detail: I’m a Bill Belzer fan and share his distemper with the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy regarding gay members of the service ( Letters, January 4), but he is incorrect in assigning blame for the policy to General Colin Powell.

The policy came not from Powell but from the Clinton transition team in 1992. Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, begged Clinton to reconsider the policy in his first interview with the president-elect; the general correctly predicted “Don’t ask, don’t tell” would be a disaster. President Clinton’s deserved popularity in the gay community ought not to overshadow the fact that his policy was, and remains, a tragic mess; to rewrite history to lay the blame on Colin Powell does not change the fact that in this instance, as in so many others, the president’s good intentions caused immeasurable human harm.

Patrick Quinn

Lawrence