EW Letter of the Week

It was reactionary week at the EW, with 5 out of 13 letters from the non-thinking wing of the far right. Which is only to be expected, as they are often confronted with the non-thinking wing of the far left. So, the reactionaries are as much part of Eugene as the bike-riding hippies, so here's a letter from one of them. I picked this particular one because of the frequent use of the phrase "dirty hippies" and its complete incoherence.

DIRTY HIPPIE FLOCK

As a regular reader of this particular paper, I have come to expect a more left of center view expressed by most of its contributors. However, after reading the (1/24) issue I was highly agitated by the views expressed by Erin Gilday. She complains about May putting property values above community values or using the EW as a soapbox, instead of communicating with those involved. She fails to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who buy homes for investment purposes as well as habitation. When these people purchased their homes, they were moving into a nice, clean and respectable neighborhood. If they would have known about the pending third-world squalor resulting from the upcoming infestation, they probably would have moved elsewhere.

The fact is that dirty hippies like to live with other dirty hippies. No prospective middle class homebuyer is going to want to live in the squalor that has become of this neighborhood, and chances are that a dirty hippie couldn't afford one of these lovely homes. As for communication, how do you communicate with a person who would rather offend your sense of smell than kill a few bugs? Or a person who thinks squalor is a logical alternative to cleanliness? If they like living in third-world conditions, that's their prerogative; they can deal with the repercussions when they try to sell their homes. But don't drag your neighbors down with you.

Matt Brockway, Springfield