Readers Write: Jan. 15

Remember King not as toothless icon

The best tribute we can pay to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s memory is to not make him a feel-good, toothless icon.

In his lifetime, many whites viewed King, not as a paragon of respectability, but as a dangerous radical. While resolutely nonviolent, King believed that creating the “beloved community” required disrupting an unjust social order.

King mournfully concluded that most white Americans were unconscious racists and that our government was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

If King was alive, he would be militantly fighting the latest attempt to eradicate his legacy on issues from voting rights to racial profiling. And the powers-that-be would be branding him an extremist and spying on him, just as they did to him in the 1960s and are doing to Black Lives Matter today.

STEVE BABB, LAWRENCEVILLE

CNN dominance at airports troubling

I’m sure that most everyone who visits the Atlanta airport notices that the only news channel offered on all of their big-screen TV’s is CNN. I guess a lot of it has to do with CNN being based in Atlanta. However, most all of the major airports use CNN as their default news network. It is evident by the ratings that the only viewership CNN gets is through the captive audience of those sitting in the airport waiting on their delayed flight. It seems that CNN has convinced airports that they are the only provider of “fair” news. Now that’s a hoot. Allowing one news network the right to encroach on our public spaces is ludicrous, especially since we are growing more and more to distrust this network, as evidenced by their recent phony reporting on anything to do with President Trump. Its unlikely CNN dominance will ever change. My remedy is to get out my iPhone and watch another news network.

TIM GROZA, GREENSBORO