IDAHO: Old days look pretty good

I was quite surprised at your editorial of Feb. 24 “Hall of Shame Keeps Growing.”

And I certainly agree with your position about Idaho continuing to send out a negative image as the Spud State with increasing number of people with nutty thinking, behavior, and beliefs.

Having grown up in N. Idaho, left the area for some 20 years, and then came back in the early ’80s, I can attest to the change in people, attitudes, and behavior. I grew up around ranchers, loggers, miners, business people, doctors, lawyers, pastors, politicians, and other persons in the communities of N. Idaho.

Some of these folks were certainly “characters” but most had some social redeeming qualities and the community wasn’t damaged by their behavior and/or beliefs.

As outlined in your editorial, over the past 30 years, a new group has been emerging in N. Idaho as well as other parts of the state.

On the national scene, we’ve had the Sen. Larry Craig Minneapolis restroom event, Rep. Bill Sali linking abortion to breast cancer, Sen. Mike Simpson threatening to throw Sali out the window, devout Sen. Crapo and his DUI, and Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and later as Sec. of Interior, remodeling a bathroom in the house he was living in Washington, D.C. at a cost of $400,000 to taxpayers.

On the local scene, we’ve had Butler of the Aryan Nations with his compound north of Hayden, Rep. Phil Hart refusing to pay Idaho state tax while collecting a salary as a Idaho state representative, Cottonwood Sen. Cheryl Nuxoll comparing federal health insurance companies to the plight of Jews and the Holocaust, School Board member Brent Regan linking Obama to black guns that are scary, former Rep. Mike Jorgenson and owner of the Copa cafe in Hayden throwing employee Chavez to the floor in his cafe because Chavez questioned lowering his pay and not telling him until he got his check, and then more recently, business executive Joe Hundley of Hayden, while on a commercial flight, slapped a black toddler and called him a N- baby because the child was crying due to pressure changes when the plane was landing.

I wonder if these modern Republicans, in contrast of the Democrats of old, signal a new culture of thinking and behaving?

I suspect that the miners, ranchers, and loggers of old even with their swearing, fighting, drinking, and redneck ways, look pretty good compared to the crop that now seems to be taking hold of Idaho and giving the rest of the country an image of Idaho people and their ideological views that are too extreme, damaging, and destructive for some of us who knew a different Idaho.

D.L. MARTIN

Hayden