Oklahoma Gazette provides an open forum for the discussion of all points of view in its Letters to the Editor section. The Gazette reserves the right to edit letters for length and clarity. Letters can be mailed, faxed, emailed to jchancellor@okgazette.com or sent online at okgazette.com. Include a city of residence and contact number for verification.
Okie anarchy
Pete Lepo’s “Big government, big bills” (Letters, Feb. 18, Oklahoma Gazette) is the typical right-wing collection of distortions and false statements not generally worthy of reply, but he asks one question that deserves answer: What is the reason for tenure?The reason, of course, is to protect faculty from politically motivated, but vague and unsubstantiated charges of being “anarchists, unindicted felons and social misfits.”
And, Pete, when someone says that government doesn’t create or fix anything and that it just makes everything worse, that makes him the anarchist, not everyone else. — Jeff Collins Norman
Not laughing
As an independent, freethinking woman living in Oklahoma, I was appalled by the cover story of this week’s Gazette (Performing Arts, “Hitting hard,” Ben Felder, April 1).Oklahoma is already nationally known as a horrible place to be a woman, with women earning only 76 cents to every dollar that men make for the same jobs.
For a cover story to say that “Women can be funny too!” it’s adding insult to an already oppressed community.
I realize that the article was probably meant to shed light on the women comedians of OKC, but think of it this way: If a cover story said, “Black people can be funny too!” it would draw criticism from across the board, and some people would probably lose their jobs. Whether it’s singling out race or gender, stereotyping is never a pretty thing, and frankly, I find it a shame that the Gazette has been so tasteless.
(The article opens with a woman telling a tampon joke, and I won’t even go into all the reasons why that’s wrong.) In the future, I sincerely hope your writers will refrain from such derogatory articles, as women already have it hard enough here without some patriarchal dribble talking about “monthly flow” in a “man’s world.” It is very telling that this should even be a discussion in this day and age: Obviously, Oklahoma is still stuck in the stone age on a lot of things.
From the tug job advertisements in the back pages to articles about women marketing their menstrual cycle, the Gazette really has become a reflection of the “values” Oklahomans hold. — Elizabeth Sotomayor Oklahoma City
Correction
Last week’s Oklahoma Gazette cover story on architecture in Oklahoma City (News, “By Design,” April 8) mistakenly misidentified the 309 Monterey building as 309 Montgomery. Design of Dust Bowl Lanes & Lounge was also mistakenly attributed to Ken Fitzsimmons instead of Brian Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmons Architects, Ken’s brother.Speaking of...
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