wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Subject: A Frank Exchange of Ideas
Brian -- I was truly offended when you referred to an anonymous Amazon review to "balance" your interview with James Risen.
It is a sad day when a journalist who is doing his job and finds evidence of administration law-breaking is paired with "D. Donaldson" who calls Risen a traitor and refers to my part-time employer as "The New York Slimes." I don't think it elevates the discourse and it shows me that you are working with some sort of political correctness calibrator that is nothing short of loony. To be frank, I was shocked to hear you read that slur in your own voice.
-NC

Subject: From the other:
Risen's answers are totally self-serving.
Does he think that his leak was less injurious to national security than the Plame leak?

My heart bleeds for Abu Zubaydah. God, what a comprehensive capitulating performance! What's the next book, "AlQaeda Freedom Fighters"?

We want: secret prisons, warrantless surveillance, whatever it takes.
Everything he is whining about, we are for. If his viewpoint prevails, we are doomed.

Question: is he preparing for jail time?
-CA

Subject: The War on Three Kings?
I dont see banning the lords prayer or bible studies from school or the
ten commandments as doing anything else, but making kids and then adults
less moral and worse human beings.. I dont see any other results from
banning these things ....nothing.
-TV

Subject: Seperate!
Public school pupils should not be marching in the parade. Teaching about it is a great idea, but no one should be required to march in it. That's forcing someone to (apparently at least) endorse a religious belief that they may not agree with.
That said, and although I am not Latino, I think that schools should be closed on Three Kings Day. It's is obliviously a major holiday for the Hispanic community.
-TB

Subject: Learning by doing
I believe that there is no better way to learn about a custom than to participate in it. Just as you can't learn about 3 kings day without participating, you can't really learn about a muslim call to prayer without hearing it for yourself, or any other custom for that matter. Seeing and doing is far different that reading about a custom.
-JF

Subject: Small potatoes
I found your segment on public schools participating in Tres Reyes parades interesting, but you are mistaken if you think that public schools' participation in Tres Reyes parades is at the margins of New York City schools' involvement in religion. Schools in African-American communities all over the city have active "Gospel Choirs" which perform at "holiday" assemblies at Christmas-time. The songs they sing are not relatively innocuous "spirituals" like "Go Down Moses" which many of us sang in school as kids; they are full fledge gospel songs, full of references to "Jesus", "the Holy Ghost", etc., making a Three Kings parade seem pretty mild by comparison.

Nor, incidentally, are these manifestations "equal opportunity", teaching about all of our city's cultures. If you doubt this go to some public schools in predominantly African-American communities and search for references to Diwalli, Ramadan/Eid-il-fatr, Hanukah, or any Bhuddist holidays. (My work took me regularly to many such schools.) If you find any at all, which you may in a few schools, they'll be overwhelmed by the preponderance of attention to Christmas. In a year when Christmas, Ramadan and Eid, Diwalli, and Hanukah all occurred in close proximity, in one school I visited I counted over twenty-five bulletin boards devoted exclusively or overwhelmingly to Christmas, two which also mentioned Hanukah, several which mentioned Kwanza, and none that mentioned Diwalli or Ramadan/Eid. When I mentioned this to a supervisor I was told that it was natural, given the community in which the school was located.

Incidentally, the most common speakers at public school graduations in Brownsville, for example, are (in equal parts) religious leaders and politicians.
-RL