Letters

Vegan diet only sure mad cow prevention

The mad cow scare is far from over, and now more than ever, meat-eaters are flirting with disaster [Knappster, "USDA Dithering Prompts Mad Cow Cover-up Fears," June 10]. The FDA recently released a list of nearly 100 U.S. companies violating regulations designed to prevent the spread of mad cow disease, and U.S. officials admit that increased testing is certain to reveal more cases of BSE.

Plus, in addition to publishing contingency plans for a potential BSE outbreak in sheep, the British government just discovered a mysterious brain disease in cows that could pose a risk to human health.

The best way to safeguard our health is to simply leave meat out of our diets altogether. A vegetarian diet has been proven to reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes, and is an effective way to combat obesity.

--Erica Meier,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Press bashed Reagan plenty during presidency

At several points in the June 10 issue, the staff expressed a great deal of displeasure at the fact that Ronald Reagan's death and funeral got a lot of sympathetic coverage outside Fox News, which they never bothered to watch [Rant, June 10]. Geoff Schumacher wrote: "I thought NPR might put Reagan in proper perspective...Anyone remember Iran-Contra? How about the U.S. alliance with a madman named Saddam Hussein, who used chemical weapons with nary a complaint from the White House? How about that record budget deficit he piled up? Then there was that little thing where he fired 12,000 air traffic controllers. But no, NPR, you see, has abandoned its anti-establishment, no-fluff past."

Well, the press has a short memory, especially when it comes to itself. Not only do they forget that some of us actually LIKED Reagan, they forget that in the '80s, they devoted most of their Reagan stories to the air traffic controllers, the deficits, Iran-Contra and the other problems. Back when he was IN office, and it mattered. I hardly think the press' years of vigilance in picking out a president's flaws (as long as he's Republican) are erased by a week of fond memories and religious observances, which some might expect during a funeral.

Given the Mercury's hunger for more negative Reagan coverage, its opinion on the New York Times' recent stories on Las Vegas is all the more puzzling. Where Geoff Schumacher thought the NYT's articles had some merit, Michael Green (and some of the locals Schumacher quoted) thought the series was 1) too negative, 2) focused mainly on the Vegas cliches and 3) in either case, not news. Green said: "When a dog bites a man, it's a typical event. Much of what the Times published about Las Vegas was about a dog biting a man."

Has it occurred to Green that this lazy brand of writing is how the NYT covers everything--and that that's why the Jayson Blair scandal got as big as it did? How does it feel to be on the recieving end of mainstream press coverage? Can the Mercury now understand why the rest of us felt relieved to have a week off from our "objective" standard of journalism?

Seriously, make up your minds. Do you want the crafted PR image, or do you want the hatchet job? Personally, I just want the truth, but I know not to expect it from the New York Times or any other "respectable" outlet.

So between the Reagan coverage and Abu Ghraib, if I get to choose between media circuses, I'd rather have reminiscences of Reagan than sickos and butt-nekkid men on my television. But that's just me.

--James Gillen

Fortune scribe rubs local the wrong way

Editor's note: The following letter was written in response to an article by Stanley Bing in the June 28 issue of Fortune magazine.

Do you not find it tiresome to regurgitate the same anti-Vegas bile which is published in every other magazine and news source? Being no doubt aware of the countless other articles written about this city in the past few years, could you not have looked for a slightly different angle? There are so many things wrong here, why do people focus on the airport, and the Strip resorts and the buffets and the fat tourists? And why do people refer to other cities as "real" cities, when 90 percent of the people you came into contact with here were from...somewhere else? If you don't get away from the Strip, then you don't see "real" Las Vegas. You don't see the downtown art galleries, the small playhouses, the indie music venue(s), the eclectic restaurants. The kind of things you might find in a "real" city. Of course, you also miss out on the chain stores, the fast food franchises, the homeless day laborers, the lack of decent public transportation, the corrupt officials and greedy developers. Hmmm...all also found in "real" cities. In fact, the only thing fake about Vegas (stripper breasts not included) is all the moronic tourists who flock to town to give us their money and eat our swill, smiling and drooling all the while. (How do you know a tourist has been in your yard? Your garbage cans are empty, your dog is pregnant and there are quarters in your mailbox.) What gets spent and lost in Vegas, stays in Vegas (unless it gets channeled overseas to finance a Southeast Asian resort)...but what happens here will not stay here, because it will not even have been noticed.

Just because some tourist fails to be impressed by the noise and neon that drew him here like a fly doesn't mean the real people here will change their daily routine of work, eat, play, sleep. We appreciate all the money your kind drops here, but since most of us are just saving up to put our kids through college, or to move somewhere with weather, we're too busy to actually see you at all.

But thanks for stopping by, even if it was only to become one cliché among many.

--Robert Tarkenton