Letters to the editor:
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Protect the Poor? Pleeeaase!

With so much responsibility already, must Joe Sullivan [Insights, Oct. 10] now be a caretaker to Tennessee's benighted poor folks, whose unceasing cries for consumer guidance have pulled Sullivan away from other selfless labors? Apparently so. In the finest tradition of enlightened aristocracy, Sullivan has trained his moral authority on the problem of Tennessee's paupers spending their money precisely as they wish.

I hesitate to criticize a well-intentioned and otherwise intelligent man, but Sullivan's arguments against a state lottery are as faulty as they are numerous. I hardly know where to begin, but such obnoxious condescension deserves, I think, an obnoxious response.

Alleged ethical problems aside for the moment, I just can't see much danger in annually pouring half a billion dollars (mere demographic arithmetic "projects" well more than three hundred million) into Tennessee's impoverished educational systems, whether said money reaches preschoolers, collegians, future auto mechanics, or even some pampered rich kids.

As for the "problems," I wonder if Tennessee's legion of "poor" people grow tired of so much gratuitous moral counsel from so many not-so-poor people. Uncompensated advisors such as Sullivan are convinced that Tennesseans without much income must be without much intelligence either and therefore must be told how and how not to spend their dollars. I hesitate to question the popular assumption that "poor" people would purchase the great bulk of Tennessee's lottery tickets, for the question itself seems to endorse all the "problems" of letting stupid poor people spend their money as they wish. And yet, if common sense still has a voice, it suggests that middle- and upper-income citizens might be at least as willing to part with a few loose dollars as poor folks constrained by tight budgets.

Of course the prevailing wisdom is that poverty drives foolish people to spend essential income on nonessentials. In fairness, though, if we are to monitor poor folks' spending habits judiciously, we must do so comprehensively. While the purchase of a lottery ticket guarantees the slimmest chance of tremendous monetary wealth, how many other purchases which poor folks are prone to make offer little or no chance of reward? I refer to the whiskey, beer, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, cheetos, popsicles, M&M's, frosties, slurpies, french fries, double whoppers, and 10,000 other items that stupid poor people buy every day despite the poor payoff of such purchases.

And what do our sage counselors tell the thousands of lottery winners—that buying winning tickets was irresponsible? Is purchasing a chance at 40 million dollars less responsible than smoking a carton of cigarettes during one month's cumulative break time at the factory? Than buying a jolt cola for the six-year-old who likes sugar? Just where does the rich man's moral obligation end? Will he have time to enjoy his wealth if he must thwart every foolish monetary expenditure by every foolish peasant in Tennessee?

And then there's the "imprudent" model of Georgia's Hope Scholarship, "indiscriminately" awarding tuition money—as if our peasant population, presumably too stupid to attend college, isn't a significant beneficiary of so many deluded lotto purchases. Indeed the worst-case scenario of a state lottery seems to be that some low-income Tennesseans, like some of her middle and high earners, will spend more money than the laws of probability would seem to advise. But even poor people have the right to be autonomous consumers; to donate, incidentally, to state education; and to dream, however foolishly, of vast personal wealth.

Douglas McKinstry
Knoxville

OK, We're Boneheads

Casey Clausen was off the field for a fractured clavicle, not scapula [7 Days, Oct. 17]. Missing this detail was surely an honest mistake and not the product of spending too much time implying UT fans are uneducated. Right?

Zachary Wyatt
Knoxville