Now and Zinn
Cop a feel: Regarding Victor Zinn’s letter “Cop to It” (September 25): Cops feel they know what’s right for everyone. But they don’t know what’s right for themselves!
I’m a single man. Sometimes a guy wants to get laid. But he doesn’t want to deal with games and rejection. Yet most men inevitably pay for sex. One way is illegal. It’s called prostitution. The other is legal. It’s called marriage.
Prostitution works in Nevada and the Netherlands. It’s a victimless crime. Maybe Zinn has convinced his pals at Dunkin’ Donuts, but not me.
David Youmans
Merriam
Loan Snark
Bank on it: How nice for Leslie Phinney (Letters, September 25) that she has good credit and a choice of financial institutions, but her disdain for people who patronize payday-loan operations “because of their past business handlings” demonstrates an appalling level of ignorance of social conditions in America.
I don’t have much patience with someone who takes out a high-interest loan to go to the boats (a value judgment on my part), but needing help to pay for a prescription or to feed your kids doesn’t necessarily reflect bad decisions. For many people, finding themselves $100 short four days before payday is a crisis requiring desperate measures, and Leslie, many of these people do not have your education, financial literacy or advantages.
I found the assertion that payday-loan customers “are adults who can read the fine print and take responsibility for their own financial obligations” to be particularly disturbing. Yes, some understand the implications and can handle the obligations, but there are tens of thousands of adults in Kansas City who can’t read and many more who can’t calculate compounded-interest rates. These are the people — the illiterate, the desperate — that predators like Paul Silverman deliberately trap into a spiraling cycle of debt.
Payday-loan operations somehow remain within the law, although for much of our history, usury has been considered a crime, if not a mortal sin. Banks are conservative businesses, answerable to stockholders, and are therefore unlikely to lend to financially unstable people, leaving this segment of the population vulnerable to predation. It therefore falls to the state government to provide some level of protection, but it will only happen if people like Leslie open their eyes to the disparity between themselves and our most vulnerable citizens.
Samuel Bennett
Kansas City, Missouri
Strip Tease
Liberal arts: Regarding Tony Ortega’s Kansas City Strip (September 11): I’m just totally intrigued that this Mr. Ortega thinks that The Kansas City Star is like, liberal. I don’t know where the hell he is from. Maybe the Star is printing the fucking truth about George W. Bush.
I thought the Pitch would be more liberal and that you might welcome the fact that the Star might be a little more honest in its reporting of what George W. is doing. Tony Ortega is crazy. The Star is not liberal; I don’t know what he’s thinking. The Pitch definitely, obviously isn’t liberal, or he’s not.
This city is going to hell; it’s losing everything that’s real. It’s just going to be another bland city — maybe it can just be like be Omaha, Nebraska, where Warren Buffet is from — he’s a freak
One more thing — President George W. Bush has robbed the American people blind. The states of Kansas and Missouri are suffering so awful. Maybe Ortega should write about that and their budgets because George W. Bush is spending all that money to kill people. Commander-in-chief, message of optimism, all these white people. I wonder if Ortega’s white. The name says that he’s not, but if all these white men run the country, we’re going to all die.
I never read the Strip, and now I know why.
Edie Harrison
Kansas City, Kansas
Souper Bowl
Pure bread: Jen Chen writes in Kansas City Strip (September 25):”Latest evidence of the Plaza’s meltdown: Pantera Bread Co., purveyors of bland soups and bread bowls named after a four-man Texas headbangin’ lineup of 1980s metal gods — no, wait, there’s no T in the store’s name. Scratch that. We don’t know what the place is named after, but it hardly matters.”
I’m sorry, but there is no way Jen was talking about the same Panera Bread. Maybe she got lost somewhere in “I’m-better-than-you-ville.” Coming from a Panera Bread associate for over two years, I can tell you that there is nothing soggy about our soup bowls. Maybe it is a franchise store, and maybe it’s not a four-star restaurant, but it does have a more comfortable environment to just sit and chat with some friends than over half of her favorite “I’m on the guest list” Plaza locations.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the Plaza and all that is contained in it, but leave Panera alone. Does she really think we need another modern Mexicanesque eatery?
Jessica Johnson
Kansas City, Missouri
