Shipp's Georgia criticisms no laughing matter

Editor:

Columnist Bill Shipp quotes ex-Gov. Roy Barnes about his desire to keep Georgia off the front page of The New York Times, which Shipp translates as helping Georgia avoid national ridicule. Shipp states it is too bad some current state leaders did not adopt Barnes' principle. Then Shipp uses his sly innuendo/ridicule to blast the rebel flag and the 10 Commandments and goes on to slam the state school superintendent and U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Zell Miller.

Whom does Shipp admire? The New York Times, the discredited BBC? Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' shining star and Jane Fonda's friend? Max Cleland, the former senator who so ably represented the liberal east's ideas all the time he was in the Senate supposedly representing Georgia? And of course the Saturday Night Live television program and its off-color humor. Such are the

people Shipp admires.

Shipp's belittling of Georgia ideas reminds me of a city girl many years ago whose use of the term "farmer" was a somewhat contemptuous appellation. My reply to her and to Shipp are quite similar: I was proud to be termed a farmer, and I'm proud to be termed a Georgia "laughingstock."

To me, a Georgia laughingstock is one who has some moral values, has a sense of decency, who believes there is a Supreme Being over us all, who believes we have responsibilities as well as rights and privileges, who believes we are created male and female for a very specific reason which is other than strictly self-gratification, and who believes that evolution does not explain the source of the Big Bang we are told was the beginning of it all.

These are only some of the ideas Shipp and his laughers find so amusing.

Thank God for such laughable, old-fashioned ideas. Shipp and his modern ideas are, I'm sure, in step with the laughers, but they are terribly out-of-step with all the values which have made the U.S.A. the envy of the world, and Georgia a wonderful place to live.

Are you sure you can't do better than Shipp in your newspaper?

Richard Netzley

Evans