I write to comment on the continuing debasement of the Medal of Freedom. Starting with Barack Obama, accelerating under Donald Trump and now a new low under Joe Biden, the medal has lost its meaning as the highest civilian award in the United States.
Biden has made the award a reward for celebrities, donors and sports stars. Some with merit — such as Hillary Clinton, with a lifetime of public service — are sprinkled in, but not many.
I propose some new guidelines as a bar to receiving the medal: If you got rich by your “merit.” This would cut out most celebrities and sports stars. If you ever gave more than $10,000 to the party of the president awarding the medal. If you are a foreigner, unless you are a Winston Churchill or Simon Wiesenthal.
The merit should benefit the people of the U.S. as a whole, not an interest group. If you are the pope, you probably laugh when you are awarded it. You are already the pope.
A somewhat tongue-in-cheek proposal, but it would be a good start.
Ronald W. Cobb Jr., Loop
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L.A. firefighters are heroes, yet some critics focus on race
Alongside the Los Angeles-area conflagration sending lavish homes up in flames, there’s a puzzling minor disapproval being expressed on the internet over the racial identity of some firefighters and their supervisors. As if they all don’t follow the same official playbook on how to fight fires and save lives, and haven’t done so for years, likely for as long as the “how to” rules for firefighting have been in effect.
Public crises such as conflagrations sometimes bring forth both the best and the worst in characterizing progress toward egalitarianism. Hopefully, the authorities will wisely ignore such comments as being what they are: Dying efforts to keep racism alive, having nothing to do with ability or outcomes. There has yet to be a report of anyone whose life was saved by a non-white firefighter denouncing the deed for having been colorblind. Heroism is heroism. Sometimes progress can be made needlessly more tiresome than is good for public morale or common sense.
Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park
Health care insurance has flat-lined
Most people across the United States are fed up with private health insurance companies and their endless greed. From being denied the care they need to ending up with massive amounts of medical debt, countless people are hurt by this industry in our country every day. Compared to our current system, the U.S. would also save $2 trillion over 10 years by guaranteeing health care for everyone with the Medicare for All plan. We need to take care of our people. We need Medicare for All.
Piotr Solowiej, Des Plaines
Yes to Canadian health care
As a lifetime American and Chicagoan, I think it would be great if the U.S. became Canada’s 11th province. Not only would a parliamentary system, rather than a presidential one, make it more difficult for a demagogue to become prime minister, we would also be treated to a health care system that actually works, instead of the mess we have here.
CR Green, Uptown
Still locked out of Blackhawks games
Well, we’re halfway through the hockey season and we still can’t view games on Comcast. What happened to the days when you could turn on the TV and watch whatever you wanted to watch without streaming or beaming?
Christopher Berbeka, Palatine
Death of a great man gives birth to hope
During this past year, I have been so depressed by the division and hatred that has swept our country. But after listening to the funeral service for President Jimmy Carter on WBEZ last week, I am inspired.
President Carter was a model of civic leadership. If we take up the challenge and follow his example, then in the years ahead a government of good and decent people, by good and decent people, and for good and decent people shall not perish from the Earth.
William Dodd Brown, Lincoln Square
Trump spits on tradition
There are plenty worse things that Trump has done and will do and who needs yet another rant about him.
But this thing about him whining about the flag flying at half-staff on his “big day of triumph” (and his minions, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Mike Johnson, actually raising it for him) is an unspeakable act of spitting on our traditions.
Kenneth J. Schadt, Loop
Sell the Bears
Yet another reprise in the ongoing saga of the lamentable, congenital, self-destructive mindset that permeates the Chicago Bears organization and strains anew the inevitable fragile bonds of fan loyalty.
It’s not the coaches or the players or the team. It’s the owners. If they possessed the most minute knowledge of what the game of football is all about, this perpetual misery would have ended decades ago. Instead, they want to win on the cheap and purchase bargain-basement managerial talent that is simply devoid of any relevant knowledge remotely related to that effort. Blame them.
They are the ones that cause this yearly agony which everyone is called to witness. The greatest gift they could afford the fans is to sell the team to an organization that has the talent, skills, resources and commitment to excellence that would finally manifest itself by producing a winning group that would justify that effort; and one in which the long-suffering fans could finally be truly proud.
Ed Maloney, Rochester, New York
A green light to invade
Given our current news cycle, hopefully, Greenland will invade us.
Jim Koppensteiner, Niles