Letters: Readers discuss #MeToo at Christmas, bringing back Kareem Hunt and 44 senators

Just a song

Amazing. Radio stations are banning the 1944 song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” But wait, they’ve been playing and continue to play rap songs that are gross in their depictions of how to treat women. Isn’t that what we would recognize as a double standard?

Are the 1944 Christmas classic lyrics really the root of all #MeToo evil? This ridiculous assertion is right up there with the craziness of the many frivolous lawsuits filed daily in our highly litigious society.

To all you who are waving the banner: Get a life and stop spoiling it for men and women who have one. American society has far more realistic issues to deal with, without another distraction that makes us all wonder what we’re coming to.

P. Michael Duckett

Overland Park

Bring Hunt back

Although Kareem Hunt was in the wrong, what the Chiefs did in releasing him was worse. A local television station interviewed Chiefs fans, and a majority thought the team overreacted and should not have released the star running back.

You can add me to the list. The Chiefs need to correct it before another team picks him up. And we fans can persuade them to do it. Let the front office know how you feel.

If the Chiefs think they can go all the way this season without one of their star players, they are mistaken. You can’t replace a player who was the NFL’s top running back last season and had scored 14 touchdowns this season. Running back by committee won’t work.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of not having been to the Super Bowl in 49 years. Finally, we have a team that’s exciting to watch, a team that doesn’t score only one touchdown or field goal by halftime, a team with a leader in Patrick Mahomes the likes of whom fans haven’t been as excited about since Joe Montana. It’s a team that can go all the way — with the help of Kareem Hunt.

Bruce Kips

Shawnee

Give it a break

Is there anything more irksome than has-been elites, like the 44 former senators who wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post hectoring the current elites, and thus indirectly the pitiful poltroons who elected them? (Dec. 12, 17A, “The U.S. Senate must defend our democracy”)

The signatories purported to be bipartisan, but look at the breakdown: 32 Democrats, two independents who caucused with the Democrats and 10 Republicans. That’s 23 percent Republicans — hardly reflective of the current state of affairs, when polling consistently shows the electorate split roughly 50/50 over many of the significant issues facing our nation.

I would also remind the has-beens that the current bunch has sworn the same oath to the Constitution. So get over yourselves. The Senate by design is one of the least democratic institutions of our government. A single senator with a bee up his backside for any reason (or no reason at all) can bring the chamber to a near-standstill.

I’ve been a denizen of the geezerhood long enough to remember the Korean War, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, race riots, the Berkeley free love/free speech protests, the assassinations of political and civil rights leaders, a president resigning in disgrace and another impeached, 9/11 and the continuing fallout.

We will endure.

David Overman

Parkville

Protect our waters

My family and I are victims of lax water regulation. Although I have not yet suffered from kidney, bladder or liver cancer, or any of the other myriad illnesses from that exposure, other members of my family have.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, private industry on private lands dumped carcinogenic chemicals into the drinking water at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where my family lived while my father was stationed there from 1957 to 1960. Additionally, aircraft fuel leaked from storage tanks into the drinking water of Camp Lejeune Marines and their families.

This contamination of the drinking water created levels of carcinogenic chemicals up to 3,400 times the upper limits of safety.

This contamination could have been prevented by the regulatory requirements of the Obama administration’s interpretation of the Waters of the United States rule.

Under the Trump administration’s new interpretation of the waters protection rule, private property contamination and leaking fuel tanks will not be subject to regulation by the Environmental Protection Agency.

There is no need to grant relief to private industry to poison the American people. The Obama administration’s interpretation of the Waters of the United States rule should stand.

Richard Randolph

Lenexa