Love/Hate Mail
A ratings review
What's going on with your new four-star movie rating system? I have serious questions about the following ratings:
Black Hawk Down ♦♦
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ♦♦
A Beautiful Mind ♦♦♦
The Royal Tenenbaums ♦♦♦♦
Having seen all four of these movies, I believe that you have given inferior marks to the first three. I agree that The Royal Tenenbaums is a good movie, but I don't think it is better than A Beautiful Mind. Furthermore, I believe your ratings are out of step with the awards banquets that precede the Academy Awards and with the box office receipts.
I look at your ratings to see if I should see a particular movie. Most of the time I would not bother to see a two-star film. Fortunately, I didn't rely on your ratings before seeing Black Hawk Down and Harry Potter. Obviously, your ratings are useless to me if they don't coincide to a large degree with my taste.
Buzz Heidtke
Suntrust Bank Building, Nashville
Well-honed skill
Ms. Garrigan is just the staffer to write the “Name-Calling” column (Political Notes, Jan. 31). She has honed her name-calling to an art with respect to state Sen. Marsh Blackburn.
Jon Johnson
CJJ@TNFinancialResources.com (Nashville)
Some Baptists are for it
In response to your Jan. 24 editorial, “Why the Baptists Are Right,” I know all Baptists are not against a state lottery. Baptists, like many denominations, represent thousands of people with diverse backgrounds and opinions, many of whom currently buy Georgia or Kentucky lottery tickets. The Scene states that those who favor the lottery—Democrats and African Americans—should be against it. As a pro-lottery Republican businessman, I'm concerned about your attempt to cast supporters of the lottery into these groups. I believe that the only way our state can compete in the future is to make sure that our children have every educational opportunity, and that these opportunities are similar to those enjoyed by children in neighboring states. While the lottery alone will not move Tennessee to the proper level of funding for education, it will help.
Your supposition that most lottery tickets are purchased by the poor is in direct conflict with a recent Gallup Poll about gambling in America, which found that people with incomes of $45,000 to $75,000 were most likely to play the lottery, and those with incomes under $25,000 were least likely to play. It's true that for a person with a low income, a lottery ticket purchase represents a great percentage of that citizen's income, just as is the case with all fixed-price items such as milk, bread or sales tax.
The true difference, which you acknowledge, is that the lottery is voluntary. Your argument that the budget problem should be fixed before a lottery passes is naïve, as several years of spiraling state revenues have not produced any tax reform and the outlook is even grimmer this year. Your editorial further ignores the reality that Tennessee already has two lotteries—Georgia's and Kentucky's. The question for voters is how much longer do we want to send our money to educate children in Georgia and Kentucky?
Ted Welch
611 Commerce St., Nashville
Some aren't
Thanks for writing the editorial, “Why the Baptists Are Right” (Jan. 24). I am a Southern Baptist and very much against a state lottery. I totally agree with everything you wrote.
Glenn McSpadden
gmcspadden@ccgmail.com (Old Hickory)
A bad bet
Good thoughts on the lottery (“Why the Baptists Are Right,” Jan. 24). You forgot to mention the hidden taxes that accompany a lottery, such as higher child support delinquency, petty theft convictions and higher alcoholism rates, just to name a few. If people want lottery tickets, they can take a pleasant Sunday drive to Kentucky and get them.
Jay McCanless
j3187@bellsouth.net (Nashville)
Patriots forget
What are you talking about, Ben Taylor (Pop Life, Jan. 24)? We Americans are supposed to pretend Sept. 11 never happened. Bush told us to; he even gave the date a hokey name, Patriots Day. Our patriotic duty is to shop and attend church. Our media have chucked out amazing forms of escapism to keep us distracted. Even the news has participated with a daring mini-series called America Strikes Back!
Mark Griffin
dfgriff@yahoo.com (Russellville, Ky.)
Turnabout
Matt Pulle's claim that “the morning daily is passing off the work of others as its own” is ludicrous (Desperately Seeking the News, Jan. 24). Perhaps he's not familiar with the whole news services concept. Newspapers subscribe to news services to provide a depth of worldwide coverage that otherwise would be impossible to attain. The Tennessean pays Knight-Ridder, New York Times News Service, The Associated Press and others for use of stories—in whole or in part—then edits those stories for local readership, content and space availability.
It's not unusual for two or more news services to have completely different angles on the same topic and to employ different sources. So, here's the real beauty of the concept: Copy editors can combine wire stories! This practice is neither unlawful nor unethical. When such stories are combined for publication, The Tennessean slaps on a Tennessean News Services byline, which in no way suggests that the piece was written in-house. It also is far more economical than a byline that includes, say, New York Times, USA Today, Associated Press, Washington Post, Gannett and Leon Alligood.
And while we're on the subject of proper attribution, in the same issue of the Scene, I noticed the absence of credit on photos of Andrea Yates, Bill Cosby, Radney Foster and Larry Daughtrey, among others. But I'm sure that was just an oversight.
Alison Boston
albboston@att.net (Brentwood)
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