A single column

l refer to your lead piece in Monday's Opinion page, "Sex and the GOP", by Aledandra Petri of the Washington Post. Is this jackass article your considered contribution to the great challenges that are facing the USA today? Where is your opinion on the sustained attacks by both Democrats and Republicans on the jobs and incomes of ordinary people? Apparently it doesn't bother you that hospitality and agricultural workers have to survive on derisory rates of pay in our expensive area. What have you to say about Obama's statement a few weeks ago that extra-judicial killings of American citizens are justified in the name of the anti-terrorism "war?"   When Nixon ordered illegal wiretaps against his opponents, there was outrage in the press. Today, a president can order killings at will and it doesn't raise a murmur! Aren't you concerned at all that the Constitution is slowly being shredded in the interests of international corporations?

 Perhaps, as a British native, I was naive in thinking that Americans were proud of their Constitution, which was for years the envy of the world. Now I see they are more interested in personalities and who goes to bed with whom. Wake up, people. You haven't got much time left.

Brian Ashurst

Brian: Just as you can't determine a newspaper's editorial position on any one issue by reading one edition of the newspaper, you can't expect any one column to tackle more than one issue. The one you mention is a lighthearted look at the GOP's moral positioning in this election, and publishing it does not for a moment diminish our concern about jobs, inadequate pay or extra-judicial killings.

Royal Calkins

Choosing content

When the Herald opted to discontinue printing stock prices, then editor Joe Livernois justified his decision by stating that the paper's revenues were continuing to decline and that the prices were always available via the Internet.

Is it time to revisit this policy? Aren't there other items that are printed that are much less newsworthy?   For example, in March 6th's edition, several columns were devoted to point spreads for college basketball games, for NBA games, and for NHL matches. Plus this critical nugget: "1994- Jay Sigel stages the biggest comeback in PGA and Senior Tour history, rallying from 10 strokes behind to win the GTE Seniors Classic in a four-hole playoff with Jim Colbert."

Really, that Oral Roberts is favored by 9 points over Southern Utah is of interest to more people than the closing price for 3M or Bank of America?

David Swanson
Salinas

David, we'd love to print everything available every day, but there are limits, so we have to pick and choose. I'm sure everyone who wants a specific thing in could find an example of something else that could be jettisoned to make room. I, for one, would like to have detailed results of water polo competitions included most days. Our feeling when we stopped running the stock listings was that we were using a lot of space, and a lot of paper, to publish something that was easily available to most of our readers elsewhere. When we err, which we will, it usually will be on the side of providing unique content.

Thanks,
Royal Calkins

Duplicitous?

Well Sir, I applaud your efforts to bring the paper back in line to where it should be. Addressing local issues and creating a hometown atmosphere in our paper is a much better model than rarely hitting the streets and assuming that the wire service will provide everything, everyone on the Peninsula wants to know. We have plenty of places to find that information if we want it, and on that occasion, I find the Herald deplorably duplicitous. I look forward to the progress you will make for the benefit of all those that look forward to finding the information we don’t afford the time to collect on our own. 

Sincerely,

David

David: I'm hoping you meant duplicative and not duplicitous, but we prefer to be neither. Finding the right mix of local and wire news is a daily challenge, and we're hoping to eventually get it just right. Thanks

You found it

Dearest readers: This is the place to make suggestions for Herald news coverage, to ask questions, yell at us, send us love notes, whatever. I, editor Royal Calkins, will respond to most of the civil comments and you, of course, should feel invited to respond to the response.

Got something to say? This is your chance.

Cheers

Royal Cakins

Travels with The Herald

Our friend Marco has returned to work after watching his son play third base for the Mexicali team at the Little League World Series in Williamsport.

Readers might remember the column I wrote about my family's connection with Marco. The family gathered in El Centro for my mother's memorial service during the Labor Day weekend, and we dropped by Celia's Restaurant for lunch. Marco is one of the waiters at Celia's, and I was able to deliver a copy of the column to him.

He was still beaming from the experience in Williamsport, though returning from Pennsylvania proved a bit of an ordeal after Hurricane Irene closed the airports.

Our Man in Williamsport

The Mexicali Little League baseball team is on ESPN, slugging it out against Venezuela for a chance to advance to the finals. Little boys are mugging for the cameras and making amazing plays on the field. One of the happiest looking kids on the Mexicali team is my new favorite ballplayer, a shrimp named Vicente Bejarano. Number 3.

Vicente's father, Marco, was one of my mother's all-time favorite waiters. He works at a restaurant called Celia's, in El Centro, just across the border from Mexicali.

My mother wasn't herself the past several months, squeezed by the grip of Alzheimer's. But her companion, Darold, always made a point of "taking her out" every day to eat at restaurants where employees like Marco made her feel loved. Even on her worst days, Marco's brilliant smile cut through the fog of her fading consciousness.

Mom died last week. The family gathered in El Centro and, of course, we had lunch at Celia's.

Like the waiters and waitresses at all Mom's favorite spots, Marco teared up when he learned about our mother. Restaurant employees develop a special bond for their regulars and become part of the extended family. They take news like the death of Mom hard.

Later at lunch, Marco told us about his son, Vicente. The boy is in Williamsport, he said, representing Mexico at the Little League World Series.

Of course, Marco would have loved to be with him in Pennsylvania this week, but he couldn't afford the time off. His wife was there, though, and Marco got to watch his son play Mexicali's first game on ESPN against Chinese-Taipei. His excitement lifted our mourning spirits.

The next day, after the family spent the morning tending to Mom's final business, we checked in again with Marco at Celia's.

He was amped, his smile even more sublime. Regulars at the restaurant had collected enough money to send him to Williamsport. He'd get there in time to watch Mexicali's second game on Sunday.

He had no idea how he was going to get around once he arrived, how he'd pay the bills when he got back, but by God he was going to watch his son play. You never get a chance like that again.

My mother wasn't a born baseball fan, but she acquired the skill while raising six kids. She was a single mother, working a bunch of jobs but finding the time to root on her brood of little leaguers.

She showed up at all my games. She was there when my youngest brother, Tony, got shelled, in an all-star sectional final, by the first Mexicali team to earn a trip to Williamsport.

She never cared much for professional ballplayers. Her best baseball memories were scored at dusty little fields built for kids.

Near the end of her life, when Mom's children were scattered elsewhere and raising their own little leaguers, people like Marco were always there to smile for her. And now one of them was sacrificing a week's pay to watch his own boy play a game. Mom would've reached into her wallet to help, but she wasn't there, so we did.

On Sunday, we raced home to watch Mexicali's game against Japan, hoping to see Marco in the stands. In the fifth inning, an ESPN correspondent interviewed him, letting him share the story about the customers who got him to Williamsport.

There was that smile, that enthusiasm, that warmth, broadcast nationally and in HD.

It was like Mom and Marco had arrived in heaven at the same time.

Kindled

I've been slogging through my first Kindle novel, which means I'm getting adept at pushing buttons instead of turning pages.

Kindle is one of those hand-held electronic devices created to put bookstores out of business. With a Kindle, you can upload a book in the time it takes to back out of the driveway en route to the Border's.

Once your "book" is safely affixed to the memory chip on your electronic device, you may begin your reading experience. Reading a book on Kindle is like reading a book that took a more circuituous route — from pulp mill to printing press to bookstore — to produce. Except that it's different.

For my first Kindle experience, I selected Jonathan Franzen's latest, "Freedom."

Franzen follows the sad-sack Berglund family along its careening path to oblivion. The plot is rather trivial, along the lines of a routine romance novel, but Franzen's precise construction — and deconstruction — of the human dynamic is thrilling.

Whether read from a printed page or from a digital screen, the story doesn't change. I would have enjoyed "Freedom" equally had I purchased the book in poundage rather than in bytes.

On my Kindle, though, I can bookmark and highlight passages that are more easily retrievable, without dog-earring pages, without stickies or paper clips. My Kindle was a much more convenient travel companion, particularly on the plane, during my recent vacation.

Still, I am nagged by the diminishing status of the printed page.

I acknowledge and accept that my newspaper will eventually become a digital product, once the last of my generation has read its final newsprint obituary. Like Franzen's Walter Berglund, I am grateful that I can do my part to save a forest, if not a job at the pulp mill.

In fact, I am uncomfortable with the anti-labor inclinations implicit in electronic books. Paper is produced by men paid to wield chainsaws, to mix the brew at the mill. Traditional books are published on presses operated by human beings with mortgages and car payments. Traditional books are moved from points of origin to sales sites by truckers. Traditional books are sold from shops with atmosphere and with clerks who can point customers in the right direction.

More than that, though, a traditional book is a thing, something to keep, to return to, to trade, to give away, to donate. A full bookshelf serves as a proud monument to the memories and the wisdom imparted in volumes. Just as the great family photo must be enshrined in an album or on the mantle, and not in the limbo of a computer, the artful construction of words deserves its own special place.

I'm not sure my Kindle is that place.

An apple divided

From reporter Larry Parsons:

A few days ago, as I picked up some Gala apples at a grocery store in Salinas, I came upon one of those oddities of nature that tickle the fancy.

One of the four apples I bought appeared to be divided equally into near-perfect hemispheres of different color. One side was red, the other mostly golden. The line between them was straight, as if the creator used masking tape or a straight edge to apply the colors.

I showed the apple to a few friends and colleagues to see if my simple enjoyment in its split personality would produce similar reactions. Most of them agreed it was certainly a special apple. "Oh wow," they said.

I knew the veteran photographer wouldn't be impressed.

Photographers, you see, have encountered many pieces of fruit and vegetables tenderly carried by slightly wild-eyed people who claim a prosaic potato is the spitting image of the King of Prussia or a typically bumpy tomato has the horns of Satan right out of "Paradise Lost."

As the apple sat in the fruit bowl in my kitchen, it caused me to muse, speculate and cogitate. Not as much as the apple that bonked Newton in the dome, but more food for thought than your typical Gravenstein.

An odd ball in a natural world that favors curves, serrations, arcs and more complex geometric forms than a dull straight line, my apple seemed emblematic of the duality of existence — life-death, mind-body, male-female, comedy-tragedy, designated hitter-pitcher-must-hit.

Its hard-and-fast dividing line was a perfect metaphor for the country's polarized politics with its bitter divisions over government, taxes, war, budgets and Sarah Palin's new movie.

As I passed the fruit bowl one morning, with no apples now but Mr. Two-Face, I mentally wandered into the realm of Hegelian dialetics, vaguely recalled from a distant college lecture.

Let's see, history works like this. First there's a thesis. Then some folks don't like it, and they come up with an antithesis (especially effective when employing well-regulated and armed militias), and the upshot is synthesis — a blending, a compromise, a new thesis. And so on and so forth.

I know my apple's days are numbered, like everything.

I did, for a moment, consider preserving it in some clear plastic goop. But that would put me in the same league as the fellow with a summer squash that's a spitting image of Charlie Chaplin in "Modern Times."

Time marches on. History unfolds.

And apples, no matter how special, become applesauce, one way or another.

Crunch. Not bad, but not as good as the apples I remember as a kid.

Random Amgen Observations

There they are. There they went.

I've watched a lot of sporting events, but seeing the bikers at the Amgen Tour of California zoom past at 45 mph may have been the most exciting 30 seconds of sports I've ever seen. Or maybe not.

I spent a half-hour at Seaside City Hall this morning, wandering around the starting gate, absorbing the festive atmosphere. One of the sponsors gave away cowbells, which en masse is about the last thing anyone needs to hear at 8 in the morning.

So I headed up to Gen. Jim Moore Boulevard and South Boundary Road, which was on the biker's route. I didn't realize until I got there that the intersection was actually the start of the race. The start at Seaside City Hall was simply a formality.

About a dozen folks were hanging out at the intersection to cheer the riders along. And it was indeed fun to watch them zoom by.

The roads were closed, of course, and there was a bit of a traffic backup on Gen. Jim Moore, just as The Herald warned in today's publication. So of course some snotty woman shows up at the blockade and starts whining to the officers that she had to get to work, as though the race was some big surprise to her. Sheesh.

So that's pretty much the highlights, at least from my perspective: nice city hall event, cowbells, bikers zooming by at the real start of the race and the whiny woman trying to get to work.

And they say baseball is boring!

Panetta: The Parochial View

Whether the local hero is throwing TD passes on the football field or coordinating the elimination of Public Enemy No. 1, people love to root for the person they think they might have seen once on the rec trail.

So the sweeping expressions of local pride for Leon Panetta are understandable.

After someone has helped engineer an impressive feat on behalf of the citizens of the United States, the immediate reaction is to pay homage with an edificial monument.

Panetta has certainly earned the honor. He is, at the moment, the hero of the free world. Or, as Arjun Jaikumar of the Daily Kos tweeted Monday, "Leon Panetta's approval rating is 600 percent right now."

But I'm not sure renaming Monterey Peninsula Airport is the right thing to do. Not because it's cliche, but because it would be confusing.

As proposed by Jim Lauderdale in a letter to the editor Tuesday, the local airport ought to be renamed the Panetta Monterey Airport. Every inspiring local hero seems to have an airport named in his/her honor. Lindbergh Field. Reagan National. Bush Intercontinental. Mineta San Jose International.

No disrespect to Norm Mineta, a solid citizen in his own right, even if he didn't have a hand in finding Osama bin Laden, but Mineta is the problem.

Honoring Leon Panetta with an airport name might seem like an obvious choice, considering all the flight time he logs between Monterey and D.C. Unfortunately, the Panetta-Mineta thing is simply too confusing. Especially because San Jose is the major airport nearest Monterey.

Too many travelers are already baffled by the Monterey-Monterrey connection. Mineta-Panetta might be too much.

That is not to say Panetta should not have a public facility named in his honor. As far as locals go, he's about as famous as John Steinbeck, the noted author, and Monterey Jack, the noted cheese. Around here, he's one of the few we can identify without surname. Like Clint. And Dina.

Leon.

Whether balancing an out-of-control federal budget or rooting out the source of terrorism, Panetta kicks butt and takes names. He's the guy who brings order to a planet gone mad.

He is a man of accomplishment, I believe, because he used to be a Republican and he must have a bit of Republican in him still. Old-school Republican. The sort of Republican who ignores the rigmarole and gets things done with an efficiency that inspires pride in government.

Used to be, you needed a Republican in office to make sure the trains run on time.

These days, you're made to feel like an unpatriotic nincompoop — or a Democrat — if you point out that the trains are coming off the tracks.

It should serve as more than a footnote that Panetta was in charge of the Office of Management and Budget back when budgets were balanced. Balanced budgets weren't a big issue three years ago, but now, suddenly, it's the source of much righteous bloviation. If he's not too busy running the CIA and preparing to oversee the military, maybe we can give Panetta a crack at that budget situation again.

Panetta is the ultimate envoy. He's the fixer. Put him in charge of something and check it off your worry list.

So, yes, Panetta's name deserves to be preserved for posterity, affixed to a public facility.

The airport isn't one of them. Unless we simply want to call it The Leon.

Three guys at a table

Apropos Tuesday's posting, a friend sent this joke:

A Wall Street executive, a Tea Party member and a union rep were sitting around a table when someone brings them a dozen cookies. The Wall Street executive immediately takes 11 of them, turns to the Tea Party guy and says, "Hey, that union thug wants your cookie!"

Remembering the Fraud

The crash, the lost jobs and the exposure of fraud and greed on Wall Street barely rate a mention anymore.

It's reached the point that Charles Ferguson, the filmmaker who won an Oscar for Best Documentary on Sunday, felt obligated to apologize when accepting his Oscar before pointing out that no executive has yet been imprisoned for the financial calamity caused by Wall Street's enormous greed.

Even as we limp along on unemployment, as our homes are in foreclosure and our dreams are dashed, we shrug it off. It's like watching Monta Ellis get hacked repeatedly, with no foul called, and chalk it up to the innate corruption of the NBA. The big guys always get the benefit of the doubt. Lots of harm, no foul. Oh well.

Our attention these days seems to be directed at Wisconsin, where greedy public employees want to hold on to what they've got.

That's not entirely true. The public servants in Wisconsin are willing to give up some of their pay, some of their benefits. They're just not willing to give up their right to collective bargaining.

There is no doubt that government entities everywhere must make painful choices about the services they provide. Every city, county and state is forced to reduce and I don't feel too sorry for them. The private sector — businesses big and small — is reeling in their lines; government shouldn't be immune.

On the other hand, the tea party makes a lot of untoward growling noises about the ingrates who feed at the public trough. They'd have a lot more credibility had they expressed similar outrage about the crooks on Wall Street who pulled the rest of us down with their greed.

The Giants' ROI

I've frightened the dog with sudden whoops and with precipitous celebratory dances a couple of dozen times during the past two months as my San Francisco Giants pieced together a memorable and unlikely season.

They could somehow blow it this weekend and they could break the hearts of fans yet again. But this is a beloved bunch of Giants enjoying one of the franchise's most inspiring seasons thanks to a management group willing to spend to fix its product.

The Giants have been here before — a handful of times in my lifetime — but never with such a motley collection of screwballs, pot smokers, knuckleheads and castoffs. The season has been a dream, especially considering that the opening-day lineup offered little to inspire confidence among fans. I mean, really, did anyone seriously think the Giants would end up in the World Series with John Bowker in right field?

But that's why I'm especially grateful for the back-office boys at Willie Mays Plaza this year. In previous years, the Giants' bean counters expected fans to fill the seats simply because the brand-new stadium was cool or because Barry Bonds could hit home runs.

This year, management made mid-season business decisions that saved the team from another season of oblivion. They were the type of decisions that seemed counter-intuitive in today's slash-and-burn business environment.

Stuck with aging veterans who weren't performing despite their huge contracts, the Giants were struggling by the All-Star break. Attendance sagged and there was no buzz about the Giants, even among the hard-core fans.

Rather than whining about the economic environment, the existing huge contracts for non-productive players and taking their lumps, the Giants decided instead to get all revolutionary on us. Instead of trying to promote the chicken crap they had by calling it chicken salad, they decided to spend the bucks to rescue decent players from the MLB scrap heap. Imagine that! Spending money to improve the product! In this day and age!

Certainly, some of their acquisitions were simply steals. Pat Burrell and Cody Ross were under contract elsewhere and the Giants were able to pick them up for a song. The Giants brain trust made smart acquisitions, for the most part, but management had to know that they would be on the hook for huge new contracts with its new talent once the season ends.

Give 'em credit. The Giants bucked today's business trend. They gave their customers what they demanded. They weren't scaredy capitalists. And they've achieved success.

Take This Job and Work It

It comes as no surprise that Arturo Rodriguez can’t find many 100-percent born-and-bred Americans who are willing to take jobs in agriculture.

Rodriguez is president of the United Farm Workers of America, and its latest campaign, “Take Our Jobs,” invites U.S. citizens and legal residents to fill jobs that often go to undocumented farmworkers.

Rodriguez said the effort “spotlights the immigrant labor issue and underscores the need for reforms without which the domestic agricultural industry could be crippled.”

The campaign is a political gimmick, certainly, and it has attracted fewer than a couple dozen hearty souls willing to do stoop labor in every type of weather condition to cut, hoe, shovel, sort, pack or carry loads of up to 50 pounds.

Gimmickry aside, the underwhelming number of citizens who are taking advantage of the UFW’s offer is testament to the hypocrisy that is part and parcel of ugly anti-immigrant sentiments now so chic among today’s politically correct. One would think that the immigrant slammers and the unemployed who whine about “the wets who are taking our jobs” would flock to the UFW simply to prove the bleeding-heart liberals wrong.

But they won’t.

They won’t because they are American citizens, and citizens of their stature should not have to endure farmworker conditions and farmworker wages. They’d rather bellyache about Steven Colbert than do an honest day’s work.

I’ve tried working the fields. Twice. Not because I had a political agenda or a comedy act, but because my family needed the money.

The first time out, I was a 14-year-old hired to work the fields by a friend of a family friend who was willing to turn a blind eye to child-labor laws to get me the job. I worked under the full broil of 110-degree Imperial Valley heat, bent over for 10 hours each day for $1.35 an hour with no benefits, except for the generous half-hour lunch periods each day. After day three, I couldn’t answer the bell.

Three years later, I was recruited along with a bunch of my high-school classmates to drive tractors. Seven days a week, 12 hours a day, crappy wages. After a month of under-the-sun drudgery without a day off, a work action ensued. The work stoppage wasn’t led by some fire-breathing socialist-Latino labor leader; it was forced upon us by the aggrieved Anglo son of the foreman who snuck into the tractor shed one night and poured sugar in the gas tanks because he believed we were being treated unfairly. It pissed me off because my family needed the income.

Fast forward several years, to 1978. I was back in the Imperial Valley, covering agriculture for the local newspaper (and earning a wage comparable to what I made during my short-lived career as tractor driver). The UFW initiated a strike, set to begin on a Saturday morning. The walkout came in the middle of the lettuce harvest season, a critical time for growers.

A local farm association leaped into action, organizing its own “take their jobs” event. A couple hundred locals — the unemployed willing to take on the farmers’ cause, housewives who sacrificed their contract bridge gatherings and high school students — gathered in the fields to replace striking farmworkers on that Saturday morning. They showed up with much enthusiasm that first day, but only a handful returned the next morning. It was just too darn hard, too darn hot.

So the farmers had to hire a bunch of immigrants to replace the local gentry hired to replace the strikers.

Good luck with your efforts to fill American jobs with American citizens, Mr. Rodriguez. But please keep their wages low so my iceberg lettuce remains affordable.

It's True, Of Course

I received an anonymous email today from someone wanting to know if Sam Farr is a socialist.

The question was accompanied by a link to gatewaypundit.com, which announced (with no link or verification) that the Socialist Party of America has released a list of 70 Congressional Democrats who currently belong to the Socialist caucus. Rep. Farr is among those listed. Following the online posting is a parade of comments from intellectuals who subscribe to gatewaypundit.com, mostly saying that the list will come in handy when meting out the beheadings once sanity is restored to the nation.

Having read the list online, I can only conclude that it must be true.

It's a shame that Joseph McCarthy did not survive to experience the wonders of the digital age.

You Gotta Be Squidding Me

Local coverage of important issues! The seething national political climate! The General Plan Update! Whatever the last letter writer happened to say about Israel!

All hot topics, to be sure. But nothing seems to arouse more passion among newspaper readers than the Comics page.

The latest raging controversy centers on "Squid Row," the local strip about fictional artists drawn by Bridgett Spicer. Some people don't like it and have taken time out of their busy days to write letters of complaint about it. Many of them punctuate their opinions about the strip with exclamation points! Still others have risen to Squid Row's defense.

Not that it really matters, but the complainants never ask me which comics I like. I would guess that most people think I'm some sort of Comics Dictator and that I only run the comics near and dear to my heart. As if I was some sort of Hagar the Horrible fanatic.

For the record, here's my assessment of The Herald's current comics lineup.

For Better or For Worse: Never a big fan, I dumped it when it went into reruns. Brought it back after I almost got run out of town.

The Family Circus: To paraphrase the level of humor here, yucky icky-poo.

Classic Peanuts: For those who whine about "Squid Row," I challenge them to look at the first several years of Peanuts and tell me the art is superior.

Zits: In my opinion, the best of the bunch.

Pickles: I find myself identifying with Earl more and more, but I'm an old guy.

Sally Forth: Never a laugh-out-loud moment.

Dilbert: Is it a comic? Or real life?

Adam@Home: Mildly amusing.

Bizarro: Caters to my own twisted sense of humor.

Garfield: Jim Davis has managed to forge a successful career with the use of the same three gags.

Arctic Circle: I never take seriously the Squid Row critics if they don't also urge me to dump this unfunny and badly-drawn comic. For reasons I don't understand, the complainers are more inclined to attack the local artist — a neighbor! — than something that comes from a syndicate.

Mutts: See Arctic Circule.

Dennis the Menace: Old and cornball, sure, but he's one of our own!

Doonesbury: Some story lines are better than others, but there's hell to pay if an editor messes with this one.

Hagar the Horrible: We keep this one to prevent readers who use phrases like "conniption fit" from having a conniption fit.

Beetle Bailey: Had its day back when Fort Ord was active, but I can't imagine that anyone in today's modern military would find it relevant.

Baby Blues: How come the young children are drawn to look like monkeys?

Blondie: I've never met anyone named Dagwood, but I've known lots of Mr. Dithers. Blondie continues to run in all American newspapers because of the nostalgia thing — and for fear that Earth would spin out of its orbit if a newspaper somewhere dropped the strip.

Sherman's Lagoon: A friend told me it's the funniest strip The Herald runs. Jim Toomey tries to keep it fresh, at least, which is a good thing when you're dealing with fish.

Squid Row: If I could get 20 people from Monterey County to send me a comic strip every day, I'd replace all our syndicated comics with locals. Except for Zits. And Dilbert.

Civilized Discourse

The Herald takes pride in the civilized discourse among its readers tucked away in the Letters to the Editor column each day.

For the most part, we let the dialogue run its course. The voices are diverse and mostly wonderful. It's a place for both the thoughtful and the kooks to make public their observations.

We try not to meddle much, but meddle we must at times. Unfortunately, we get letters that are too obviously loose with the facts, too nasty in their tone or too ugly in the ad hominem. Even then, we will work with the writers, asking them to provide proof of outlandish assertions or demanding that they tone down the ugliness.

Sadly, many of the more unreasonable writers of letters believe that the hogwash they've submitted deserves consideration as an amendment to the Holy Grail. And they don't take kindly to our suggestions that they take the hogwash out. Because we want to help prevent them from humiliating themselves in a public venue, they will accuse of us of being nutcase liberals, mouth-breathing conservatives, anti-semites, anti-Americans, anti-babies.

There's no limit to the ugly names we've been called by people over their incoherent letters — and the more incoherent the letter the more likely the writer will shower us with their bilge when we try to help.

In the end, we do try to let writers get as many of their deep thoughts into the paper as possible. Sometimes to a fault.

Last week, for instance, we let in an assertion by a letter writer that a clergyman with whom he's been sparring in the letters column called him a "bastard" in a private telephone conversation.

The rabbi insists that he did not use the word and the letter writer insists that that's what he heard.

And because The Herald had no way to verify who said what to whom, we should have eliminated the sentence from the letter before it was published. The editor involved, Royal Calkins, says he was simply trying to be fair to both of the feuding parties and had managed to persuade both of them to excise some of the more intemperate remarks from their letters. In retrospect, he agrees he should have pressed harder.

In the meantime, and at the risk of sounding like a prima donna, I suggest that letter writers take a deep breath and run a lap around the block before sending us your profundity wrapped in vitriol.

Nine-Eleven, Went to Heaven

Saturday marks the ninth anniversary of America's slow decline into insanity.

The Associated Press story commemorating 9/11 this year, which The Herald will run Saturday, notes that the first eight anniversaries of the terrorist attacks were marked by somber, politics-free reflection. This year, it's quite a bit more zooey, contentious in ugly ways, with emphasis on a "Ground Zero mosque" and a kook who wants to burn the Quran.

Unfortunately, AP fails to mention that both the addled controversies were fueled by a national media that have apparently become increasingly comfortable raising daft rants up a flag pole in the name of advancing the "national debate."

From the outset, the nutjobs who whine about Feisal Abdul Rauf's proposed community center in Manhattan should have been ignored, just as the drooling Islamaphobe cult leader who poses as a Christian in Florida should be ignored.

The story of Rauf's community center was first written in the New York Times much earlier this year and was greeted with a collective yawn by New Yorkers — until political opportunists threw their rhetorical spin into the issue. And the next time you hear Newt Gingrich expound on the notions that government has no right to impede religious freedom or that Americans should be free to do whatever they wish with their property, remember that he unabashedly tried to bully the president of the United States to intervene to prevent construction of the center.

And why the media chose to follow the antics of the loon in Florida is beyond imagination. The guy has about as much credibility as the babbling liar at the next barstool. (First hint of lunacy: He's got a church in Florida.) But now the Rev. Terry Jones has generated a level of media cred and national publicity that a book deal is certain to follow.

The reflexive lurching toward the lunatic fringes bent on dividing us is unbecoming. And it should stop immediately.

In the meantime, the rest of America — the rational super-majority — will remember the lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001, and the many thousands of heroes involved in the rescue and recovery efforts. We will reflect on a day in which all of us stood unified in mourning and resolve.

Fantasy Baseball Tip

Fantasy Baseball Tip: When assessing your team for the final drive in the waning weeks of the season, rid yourself of all players wearing the orange-and-black of the San Francisco Giants.

Got Lincecum? Dump him. Thought Aubrey Huff would be the answer because he had an uncharacteristic mid-season power surge that turned out to be a mirage? Dump him. If the Giants really needed a schizophrenic bat and a player with no experience in games that really matter, they should have kept Randy Wynn.

Pablo Sandoval was a rookie sensation last year, but his sole contribution to the 2010 season is that he's gained even more weight during the hot summer grind and can barely waddle around the bases even when he manages to hit a ball over the fence. In fact, why is Sandoval still on the 40-man roster? So the Giants can sell more Panda hats to dimwits? (Overheard at AT&T Park on Saturday: "I don't understand the Panda hats." "I guess they'd be okay when you're hunting or something.")

Freddy Sanchez would never be a power hitter, of course, but the Giants curse has reduced this one-time batting champion into the Ray Oyler of the new millennium. I suppose you could keep Pat Burrell, if you get all enthusiastic for meaningless solo homers and bases-loaded strikeouts. And if you're ever looking for the always-exciting run-scoring bases-loaded double play, you might want to add Juan Uribe to your roster.

Matt Cain and Jonathan Sanchez are capable of striking out a lot of opposing batters, sure, but it takes them at least 120 pitches and several home runs to get through five innings.

On the other hand, the obvious silver lining of this month's Giants collapse is that it will be impossible to justify Brian Sabean's tenure as the Giants' GM after mid-season trades that demolished the "magic inside." Mike Fontenot turns out to have been the only player the Giants could have picked up that makes their fans yearn for Freddy Sanchez's return to the lineup. And the best we can hope for from Jose Guillen is that he'll be suspended for the season by the MLB for some reason and Bochy won't have to force him into the lineup every day.

Fans sensed the Giants brain trust was aware that 2010 would turn into the disaster it has become when the promotions department looked through the roster and concluded that a Bruce Bochy Bobblehead promotion might be a terrific idea.

The Hotel Paper

In San Francisco for the weekend, it occurred to me that there is one clear difference between quality hotels and operations that don't really care about the quality of their customer service.

The best hotels will deliver the local daily newspaper to the doorstep, or at least have a stack of 'em available in the lobby.