Writers Talk About Stormy Daniels, Fox News, Comfort Animals, the Holocaust and LGBT Rights

Infatuated with DanielsRe: "Stormy night at Bucks Wild," by Robert Wilonsky, Monday Metro & State column.Can the media's infatuation with Stormy Daniels sink any lower? Wilonsky pays to have his picture with her at a strip club, while her attorney files suit for defamation of character. Defamation? The fact that she has vivid sex with strangers, filmed in high definition, speaks for itself. How on earth can reporters cover that instead of focusing more on the wonderful progress on North Korea? Or acknowledge the blatant, disgusting treatment of press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner?The thinly veiled efforts to overthrow President Donald Trump become crasser and more obvious.Anton Skell, PlanoTrump gets his own medicineRe: "After-dinner jokes were hard to digest -- Reaction to roast falls mainly along political lines," Monday news story. So the rudest low-brow person ever elected to the highest job in the land is upset that comedian Michelle Wolf used disparaging, insulting and to-the-point remarks to describe his presidency and the sycophants that are part of it. Gee, what a surprise. Just because he insulted everyone while running for president, after being elected and doing it verbally and from the shadows [Twitter], he feels it is improper that someone stole his act. What a joke. It's hard to comprehend how so many opinion letters in The Dallas Morning News still support President Donald Trump and his trailer-trash form of government when his main accomplishment is to enrich himself and his billionaire buddies on the backs of the poor and middle class. I surmise that after the next tax season and the continued cost of gas and other necessities, even some of them may catch on. But, I guess as long as there's a Fox News, actual facts will never see the light of day and his administration is safe.Charles Elkins, PlanoPut animals in the backRe: "D.C. takes up flying animals -- Lawmakers aim to rein in critters that go along as emotional support," April 25 Business story.Let us not overcomplicate this issue of support animals. No need for complicated rules. Just recall the days when smokers were segregated at the rear of the aircraft. Place all those with the support animals at the rear of the aircraft. They can comfort each other and have not disruptions or complaints from the other passengers.Jim Naughton, RichardsonRemember small government? Thank God, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has taken up the gauntlet on an issue that worries the majority of Americans. Not surprisingly, it is not the frequency of mass shootings, or that schoolchildren are being killed, or the fact that military-style weapons are ubiquitous in our society. No, it is that too many emotional support animals are being allowed on airline flights.Apparently, the small government philosophy usually espoused by the Republicans has been forgotten by Burr as he tries to interject Washington into an issue that could be better resolved by the airlines themselves.To Burr and his fellow congressmen: Surely there must be something more important to work on than this issue. Start with term limits so we can get some new blood, new thinking and public servants into Congress who actually have the welfare of Americans as their top priority.Hans Voorn, FriscoRoosevelt ignored warningsRe: "Words of warning -- Holocaust museum project shows U.S. newspapers documented Jews' peril in Nazi Germany, says Rebecca Erbelding," Saturday Viewpoints.Erbelding noted that on April 2, 1933, hundreds of residents of Dallas signed a petition to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, urging the Roosevelt administration to "voice our public protest to the unbearable conditions imposed by [the Nazi] government on its Jewish citizens." Erbelding should have mentioned how President Franklin Roosevelt and Hull responded to that petition: They ignored it.Roosevelt held 82 press conferences in 1933. The subject of the persecution of the Jews arose only once, and not because Roosevelt raised it. A reporter asked if he had received any requests to speak out against the mistreatment of Jews in Germany. FDR replied: "I think a good many of these have come in. They were all sent over to the secretary of state." That was all. It would be five years and another 348 presidential press conferences before Jewish refugees would be publicly mentioned again by the president. How sad that an articulate president, whose expertise at communicating was demonstrated in such innovations as the fireside chat, fell silent when it came to the suffering of the Jews.Dr. Rafael Medoff, Washington, D.C.Director, the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust StudiesAmericans protested persecutionRebecca Erbelding's claim that the Dallas petition of April 2, 1933 asking the U.S. government to protest Nazi persecution of the Jews was "an exception . . . at the time" is mistaken. The White House and State Department in the first months after the Nazis assumed power were deluged with similar petitions from many parts of the country. As documented in my book The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower (2009), mass protest meetings against the persecution of German Jewry, like the one in Dallas, were held in many American cities during the spring of 1933. Moreover, on March 23, the Jewish War Veterans staged a street protest of several thousand people in New York condemning Nazi barbarity toward Jews and demanding that the British remove restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine. Four days later, 1 million Jews engaged in coordinated mass protests against Nazi anti-Semitism in many American cities. On May 10, massive numbers of American Jews again took to the streets in another national protest against the persecution of German Jewry. Contrary to Erbelding's contention, there was a "groundswell of national action," although the Roosevelt administration remained indifferent.Stephen H. Norwood, Norman, Okla.Homophobia in MansfieldRe: "Contract renewed for teacher in sexual orientation controversy -- Parent had complained that she was too open with elementary pupils," Thursday Metro & State story.Mansfield ISD appears to be a hotbed of homophobia. Among the parents speaking about Stacy Bailey and equal protections for LGBT teachers are comments like Tanika Dean's, threatening to take her daughter out of school if "certain people" get equal rights, and Robert Thomas, who likens it to having to be gay to be creative. Meanwhile, the Tarrant County Republican Party is emailing the board that LGBT equal protections are dangerous and stirring up the population to protest against equal protections.There are leveler heads. One Mansfield retired teacher notes how no one complains when teachers discuss their opposite sex spouses, only when a married gay spouse is mentioned is it seen as "sexual." These "certain people," these legally married gay teachers, must have the same rights as their straight counterparts. Yet Bailey's case clearly shows that a shrill and agitated Republican Party is determined to continue the victimization of LGBT teachers and students with hatred and discrimination.Brian Baldwin, Dallas/Oak Lawn  Continue reading...