Letters to the Editor: ‘Cancel culture,’ victimhood, self-pity and the Kentucky Derby

‘Canceled’ again

I’ve long been puzzled as to why I haven’t won a Nobel Prize or won my age group at the Boston Marathon. And why don’t I have a vacation home in the Caribbean? I assumed it was because I’ve produced zero earth-shattering scientific discoveries, don’t run fast, and am not rich. I now understand it’s not my fault based on the impeccable logic used by trainer Bob Baffert in explaining why his horse failed a drug test. First they came for the horses and then they came for me. Yep, I am another victim of cancel culture. Nobel and Boston Marathon officials, please send my long overdue awards to my future abode in Bermuda. No hard feelings, this comes as a surprise to me too.

Greg Hager, Versailles

Fox promotes victimhood

While you were watching Fox News’ incessant stories about “cancel culture” you were actually witnessing Fox’s promotion of the right’s favorite activity — their embrace of “victim culture” and the glorious self pity of victim status. Best example: Donald Trump and his “I wuz robbed” tour.

That martyrdom, that “victim culture”, is exactly how Trump incited January 6 and the domestic terrorism perpetrated. Just like his supporters lap up his comforting lies they know are lies, they wallow in the Trump-constructed victim status. It’s time those sheep think for themselves and reject the ignorance for which Fox News is Patient Zero. That ignorance is more damaging to our social structure than fentanyl.

Bill Adkins, Williamstown

Vaccines protect

In 1796, Edward Jenner discovered a vaccine for smallpox, a disease not eradicated until 1980. Hundreds died from it in Minneapolis in 1924-1925. My great aunt and children received vaccinations. The husband refused, visited his stricken father in the hospital, and both died. My great aunt lived to be 84. Her husband died by 25.

Once, visiting a cemetery to locate the grave of a relative, my father and I reviewed huge ledgers. They listed names of people buried by date, and cause of death: i.e., typhus, typhoid, diphtheria, smallpox, tuberculosis, polio, tetanus, measles, pertussis, and cholera, diseases now rare because of vaccines, antibiotics, and medical advancements.

In 1833, Lexington had a cholera epidemic that killed 502 out of 7,000 people, 7%. In 1952, 58,000 Americans contracted polio, including 1,760 Kentuckians. Many remember those days when people were paralyzed, lost the use of limbs, or died.

Now vaccines are available to protect against diseases that ravage populations. Research on rare diseases shows how people suffered when little was known on how to escape illness. My brother died from COVID-19. One has to hope that families need not lose someone dear to realize that they have options to protect themselves and others.

Anne Keating, Lexington

J&J vaccine

I am a Master of Public Health candidate at The George Washington University. Last month, the Herald-Leader published an article detailing how Fayette County intends to resume use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. I would like to bring attention to more facts explaining why this is a good idea.

The Centers for Disease Control found that the rate of developing blood clots after the J&J vaccine was one in a million for women between ages 18-49 and 0.9 in a million for women 50 and older. That still sounds scary, but not when placed in a larger context. According to studies conducted during this pandemic, COVID-19 infection is associated with a much higher risk of developing clots than one in a million. Not to mention there are many medicines that you may take daily that also increase clot risk.

It’s important that anyone thinking about getting a vaccine fully understand the risks, but it is also important to understand those risks in context. The J&J vaccine is a viable option. If that is the vaccine offered, I encourage you to take it.

Haley Campbell, Lexington

Mask, vaccinate

Wearing masks and getting vaccinations are not sacrifices as many people seem to claim. They are simple activities that an overwhelming majority of health experts say will save lives. Donating a kidney to someone you do not know is a sacrifice. Wear a mask as appropriate and please get a vaccination as it might just save your life,

John C. Wolff Jr., Lexington

Choice or not?

The anti-mask, anti-vaccine faction of our state GOP has doubled down on the “It’s my body, my choice what goes in it” doctrine. I keep hearing that adults have the mental capacity and good judgment to make their own decisions when it comes to their personal freedoms. Does that apply to recreational marijuana? Frankfort? Hello? Just crickets.

Steve Skoien, Georgetown

Just do it

Many folks vaccinate their dogs, cats, horses, cattle, on and on.

Why can’t they accept the fact that they need to vaccinate themselves.

And as Bill Nye “the science guy” recently said, unvaccinated people may become “incubators” for variants of COVID-19.

Don Pratt, Lexington

Fund gun interventions

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the root causes of gun violence, like income and housing inequality, and it has strained the lifesaving social services that gun violence intervention programs like Cure Violence provide. Cities should use funding from the American Rescue Plan and other federal grant programs to provide gun violence intervention programs with much-needed resources, so they can disrupt cycles of gun violence and continue serving communities most impacted by daily gun violence.

According to the Herald-Leader, there were 34 homicides in Lexington in 2020, a 13% increase over 2019, which had the previous record of 30 homicides. President Joe Biden signed the ARP into law in March, authorizing $130 billion in funding for local governments to counter the economic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. Local governments can utilize ARP funds to counter surges in gun violence and support gun violence intervention programs performing essential public health work.

Lexington must join cities like Columbus, Baton Rouge, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Akron, and Atlanta that have already decided to invest federal COVID-19 relief funds to address gun violence by ensuring that violence intervention programs that have been performing essential work on the frontlines of both COVID-19 and violence prevention have the funding they need.

Chris Breseman, Lexington

Keep KSP slogan

Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, should get a life. To call a state police poster/campaign “transphobic “would be laughable to our parents’ generation. Is everything now associated with police work “racist” because a certain organization deems it so? Where will the madness end? I say to the Kentucky State Police, keep your slogan, there is nothing offensive about it. Most busy taxpayers, of all colors, support the police in their thankless job of protecting the public.

John Mackay, Lexington

People always pay

Corporations don’t pay taxes, they collect them.

Only human beings can pay taxes.

It’s because when a corporation has to pay more taxes, it can recover the cost by raising prices or cutting pay and benefits to employees. They can also slash dividends to retired owners of their stock, reduce the quality of their products, cut service, and a myriad of other actions. In the end, human beings pay in one way or the other.

So, when a politician says he’ll cut your personal taxes and increase them on corporations, he’s only trying to take advantage of your gullibility, replacing taxes that are out in the open with stealth taxes. Perhaps it would be better not to have any corporate taxes at all, so that prices could be much lower, and people would see, directly, what they’re actually having to pay. Then politicians would have the responsibility of telling us exactly what those taxes are going for and convincing us that they are justified before imposing them.

I’m not against taxes. I consider them the dues we must pay for a functioning society, and I’m in favor of most of what they’re spent on. But let’s cut through the myth that corporations ever, actually pay taxes.

Roy Crawford, Whitesburg

Leaders missing

Indigestible noise is on every news channel these days. For example, top-level public servants elected to lead are leaderless and cowardly decision-makers. Unappreciated police officers, who are the backbone of our “general welfare,” are struck with sticks and doused with water from smirking, laughing assailants who apparently have no fear of official consequences. On our southern border, children are attempting to survive the cruelest of conditions, but our leaderless leaders see a challenge, not a crisis.

America has decades-old problems to be solved, i.e. the national debt, interest payments, public education, and a dysfunctional Congress, but our leaderless leaders see additional justices on the Supreme Court, absurd statehood, and the amount of beef we consume per year as their priorities.

Currently, the tail wags the dog among top-level elected leaders in America, and the tail is frequently unconstitutional, unethical, unlawful, or irresponsible to boot.

Judy Y. Lyons, Lexington

Visual arts coverage

The Herald-Leader should consider a Facebook post by Kate Savage regarding the article by contributing writer Kevin Nance about her and her arts organization in the Herald-Leader recently. There were 142 likes and 74 extremely positive comments, all in support of her influence on the awareness of visual art and artists in this community. Unlike politics and sports, no one said anything negative at all. In casting about for some way to connect with community awareness, please consider a sudden broadening of interest in visual art, especially from local studios.

John Kenneth Galbraith, eminent economist of the 20th century, prophesied in the ’90s, in his 90s, that the time of tech would pass and in the next century the world would be moved by art. History has hiccupped and it’s time to evolve. Good luck in discovering a new need for information and commentary, and perhaps an avenue to remain locally relevant despite the ever-expanding competition for the old ones.

Clay Wainscott, Lexington

Voting laws

I wonder why any citizen would be opposed to a measure that ensures election security. I find it baffling when one party opposes measures taken to protect the integrity of our elected officials. One of our most treasured liberties is the right to vote. One party, the Democrats, believe any measures taken to strengthen honest votes are somehow racist or biased towards poor people. Further, they embrace the foolish notion that mail-in voting will somehow result in honest results. Of course, their goal is to win an election by any means, I suppose. Ballot harvesting will only encourage more corruption. With the passage of SB 202 in Georgia, the left has become unglued. The bill strengthens honest voting in that state, while at the same time affording more opportunities to vote. Major League Baseball decided to punish Georgia by moving the All-Star game to Colorado, and corporations such as Coke and Delta came out screaming like a child on fire. Did these organizations bother to read the bill? At one time in our country big corporations and sports organizations left politics at the door and didn’t bother to make their views public. Sadly, this is not the case today.

Darrell Cook, Richmond