No need to insult ralliers

To the editor:

I was able to speak with Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick on the radio last week, but was disappointed with his answer to my question on the Tea Parties. But I appreciate his willingness to speak on the air and take questions and will take him up on his offer to "set the record straight" by sending a letter to the editor.

I do not want my newspaper to be either conservative or liberal. I want the truth without any spin from either side. Some editorializing is to be expected, but the kind of vicious vitriol spewed by John L. Smith in his column last week on the local Tea Party bus does not qualify. He wasn't just misinformed and didn't just get it wrong. He was partisan and insulting.

Since when is 1,200 to 1,500 people considered "a few hundred"? And why does Mr. Smith feel the need to blatantly insult seniors and people who are exercising their right to speak out when they have a grievance against the government?

Frankly, the Tea Parties and rallies are the purest form of American government. This is how the whole birth of America came about in the first place.

Here are a few of his insulting, outrageous quotes with my commentary:

"What I found in the parking lot of a defunct sports park was the Angry Americans Homemade Sign Convention."

-- The signs are homemade (unlike the professionally printed signs waved at rallies by union thugs) because we do not have labor unions paying for them. Yes, we are Americans who are angry, but we are not Angry Americans.

"Nearly all of the few hundred mostly older and grayer folks in attendance ... "

-- How dare he insult seniors in this manner? This was on a Monday. Most "younger" people were at work.

"It was my first Tea Party, but as far as I could tell, the traveling patriots didn't miss a trick. They waved a lot of flags, used a child to recite the preamble to the Constitution, sang angry patriotic songs."

-- Does anyone remember the school kids singing about candidate Obama during the primaries? And what is an "angry patriotic" song? To call a patriotic song "angry" is outrageous and offends me.

"I scanned the crowd but found no sign from Samuel Johnson, who once said, 'Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.' "

-- So now we are all scoundrels.

"In the end, Allan was a poet: Stuck On Stupid."

-- So now we are all stupid.

Funny, but it seems to me that insulting your audience is not a way to get their respect.

Joseph Tatner

LAS VEGAS