Saturday Thumbs
Saturday, August 30, 2008 12:49 AM PDT
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E-mail this articleAug. 30 Daily News editorial
Future is in good hands
Thumbs up to Reanna Harris and Nikole Clark, two young people whose charitable works brighten our day.
Reanna wanted to help out those at Progress Center who were helping her 20-month-old sister, Karley, according to Daily News This Day editor Cathy Zimmerman’s account of the two local philanthropists' good deeds. She raised $200 to buy snacks, toys and supplies the center could use. The cause that captured Nikole’s heart and motivated the Castle Rock girl to action was abused and/or abandoned animals. Nikole has raised $130 for local animal shelter.
Both girls had some help, enlisting family members, neighbors and friends to assist in their charitable efforts. With well-motivated leaders like Reanna and Nikole, the future would seem to be in good hands.
Scaring kids and parents
A big thumbs down to the vegetarian sponsors of a TV ad aimed at scaring the daylights out of hot dog-eating kids and their parents. The commercial shows kids talking and eating hot dogs in a school cafeteria, when one kid chimes in: “I was dumbfounded when the doctor told me I have late-stage colon cancer.”
No, we’re not on the payroll of Oscar Meyer. But suggesting that kids who eat an occasional hot dog are likely to end up with colorectal cancer is over-the-top and irresponsible. The studies cited by the ad’s sponsors were done on adults who ate 50 grams or more of processed meets a day for several years, and the increase their cancer risk was very slight.
Lifting a worthless ban
We turned a thumb down to the Olympia City Council some three years ago, when it declared the city a nuclear-free zone and then proceeded to carve a loophole out of the law big enough for the nuclear-powered sub USS Olympia to sail through in order to attend a local festival. It seems only fair that we extend a thumbs up to the council for rethinking this qualified ban on nukes.
A three-member council committee recently voted to repeal the ordinance and the full council is expected to do so next month. Opponents of the city’s nuke ban say it just makes for meaningless paperwork. They’re right.
English-only on the LPGA Tour?
The LPGA Tour recently adopted a policy requiring golfers on the tour to speak English, according to the Oregonian newspaper in Portland. Those who have been on the tour for two years and still can’t demonstrate proficiency in English will be face suspension.
LPGA Tour officials suggest the rule grew out of a concern that golfers who don’t handle English so well — mostly a large group of Korean golfers — detract from the tour’s entertainment value. But Rob Neal, a former LPGA Tour executive, isn’t so sure. He suspects it may be related to the current anti-immigrant sentiment.
In any event, the rule strikes us as strange. If language is a barrier, hire an interpreter. The game golf is the same in any language.
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