Editor,
I am a student at CNM, and rarely do I look at an article in the Daily Lobo, but Tuesday morning a co-worker handed me the paper and showed me a letter, nearly the same letter printed a month or so ago in the CNM Chronicle. From the few articles I've read in the Lobo, I perceive the paper to be well-produced, but I must admit that I am disappointed to see the Daily Lobo contributing to the virulent manifestos of Don Schrader.
Many people tell me that the man means well. Fine, save the Earth. But I am extremely adverse to judgmental criticism. I'm sure we all want to conserve, recycle and use local businesses, but let's compare Schrader's situation to my own. Schrader is more than 60 years old. I believe he is a homosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that) based on comments he's made on channel 27. I assume he has no children to take care of. It's easy to talk a lot of smack when the only person you have to take care of is yourself.
I'd like to see Schrader haul four kids to a supermarket (for his fresh raw vegetables, nuts and seeds), then take the children to a baby store to pay almost two times as much for diapers. Then take the children to the local hardware store, cleaners, school, soccer practice and then make it to school and work himself. All of this in an effort to avoid using Wal-Mart.
I think that Schrader is cold, lonely and judgmental. He thinks technology exists only for the war machine, but does he forget that technology has cured diseases, that technology has made necessary bureaucracies more efficient, that technology has promoted literacy and availability of information for the same folks who Schrader claims he is representing? But Schrader doesn't want to hear that. He is too busy with his show on Channel 27 describing how he uses his own urine and his personal politics dealing with his sexuality.
An odd thing I noticed about Schrader, as I've had the displeasure of running into him all of the time, is that he uses school computers and resources. But he brags because he doesn't have one in his home. Although he didn't state it in this article, he often likes to brag that he doesn't pay income tax. This isn't even valid in theory. To a common working-class person such as myself and countless others, it is a huge insult. It tells me simply that since 1979, or whenever, Schrader doesn't work.
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What, pray tell, does Schrader do outside of his home to help society? What confounds me the most is that the local media actually subscribe to his philosophical garbage, and many locals I have spoken to have described him as a "staple of Albuquerque." Really? Is this the way Albuquerque wants to represent itself?
Jason A. Graves
Daily Lobo reader
