Lessons from
spectacle of mourning

Diana, Mother Teresa
were extreme opposites

In Saturday's edition of Insight, the article "Scientists fascinated by Diana cult" made for a timely and interestingly ironic comparison of the deaths of Diana and Mother Teresa.

By circumstance of birth, one individual is born into wealth, social position and physical beauty. Another, by choice, chooses poverty, charity and a life devoted to service by actual deeds, emphasizing that which cannot be purchased or possessed.

To my chagrin, in their expression of grief, most people chose to celebrate in a cult-like manner the life of one who represents someone whom they could not become.

Wayne Wong

Diana doesn't deserve
her public canonization

I fail to see the heroism and virtue which people ascribe to Princess Diana. By God's standards, she failed.

As a parent, she achieved nothing extraordinary. For this challenging duty she had the help of nannies, cooks, maids, secretaries, chauffeurs, tutors and prestigious boarding schools.

As a rejected spouse, she capitulated her personal integrity and avenged her husband's adulterous act by committing the same self-indulgent, immoral deed.

She performed no triumph in the human plight by inflicting her body with bulimia and suicide attempts.

Her charitable works are commendable, but we should expect no less of anyone with the opportunity such as her station and privilege in life afforded.

I ache over her tragic death. But I am saddened because, like many others, she sought temporal happiness only to lose her life in the end.

Further, I am saddened for this mesmerized generation that revels in the "I am victim" syndrome, idolizes beauty and glamour, and glorifies self-fulfillment at the cost of true virtue.

Polin D. Ho
Apostolic Faith Church

Civilization will sink
unless something is done

We have lost touch with the basic values of hard work and love and commitment to God, family and friends. We gorge ourselves on the latest sensational pablum the media feed us but remain unsatiated.

Tragically, it is we who are the victims and victimizers, who have created our own monsters and are unable to see that we are following the pattern of past great civilizations in the process of decline.

Now with the deaths of two extraordinary women, Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, we are further shown the contrasts between the deeds they accomplished and the media's choice of coverage.

How do we choose to lead our lives? Both the media and entertainment industries have the potential to inspire us to seek the meaning in life. We ourselves have the strength to re-establish a safe and sane world.

Melissa Yee

Let the royal family
decide how to mourn

The passing of Princess Diana is mourned by many, in many ways. But what a bunch of mawkish louts have arisen in England, that "precious stone set in a silver sea," who would presume to dictate how any family -- royal or common, public or private -- should display their mourning.

Howard G. Driver

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League of Women Voters
should change its moniker

The president of the League of Women Voters of Honolulu wrote an Aug. 28 letter advocating a bipartisan congressional effort to "deal with political attack ads disguised as 'issue advocacy'." Very strange. Political attacks and issue advocacy are, after all, what democracy is all about.

If the league president indeed speaks for the membership, the organization should be renamed the Political Temperance Union.

Quentin M. McKenna
Waimanalo

Participating in sports
is a privilege, not a right

The Star-Bulletin's Aug. 23 editorial deriding the retention of the minimum grade rule for participation in extracurricular activities in Hawaii's public schools was outrageous.

As a teacher in a private business school, I have witnessed the lack of knowledge held by Hawaii's high school graduates. While teaching the world time zones, I found that none of my students knew how many degrees were in a circle. Neither did they know anything about Charles Lindbergh or Douglas MacArthur.

Your weird notion that being excluded from playing football causes kids to join gangs is ludicrous. If some choose to take violent turns, we should build prisons to warehouse them, not be blackmailed into dumbing down the majority so that the minority can "feel good" about their ignorance.

Participating is a privilege. It is each student's personal responsibility to maintain the required grade point average to earn that privilege.

Turning out graduates with a 0.8 (D) average and allowing dunces to play sports may seem humane, but both actions guarantee failure in today's competitive economic arena.

Carol Sword

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Same-sex archive

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