What happened to using English correctly?

I am not shy about telling people how much I detest LeBron James. People claim he does a lot for the youth in Cleveland. I counter that everything he does has some benefit for him and that’s why he does it.

If he really wants to do something for the children of Cleveland, then he should put his money where his mouth is — literally. I challenge him to learn how to speak proper English.

When you are interviewed and quoted on a daily basis, the best example you can give is to speak the language the way it was meant to be spoken. A June 10 story in The News-Herald — “James video raises eyebrows” — shows just how pathetic his language skills are. Here are two quotes from the article:

1. “Some people was on the fence.”

2. “I had to finally just be like, you know, Mom, it ain’t even really about (the Gilbert letter).”

One cannot blame his poor grammar on not having gone to college, because the two examples above contain grammatical errors that we are taught to avoid at the grade school level.

Imagine the impact he could make on the kids who hang onto his every word by speaking English correctly and encouraging them to do the same. Rosalie M. Troha

Mentor

Officer wrongly fired after rabbit incident

Last month, the city of North Ridgeville’s animal control officer was called out about some young rabbits that a resident had encountered.

A man was mowing his lawn when he accidentally ran over a baby rabbit, according to a story by Khadija Smith of The Morning Journal. The man had discovered five more rabbits and decided to place them in a bucket and call the police, North Ridgeville Police Capt. Marti Garrow said in the story.

When Animal Control Officer Barry Accorti arrived, he grabbed the bucket, took it to the tailgate of his truck and smashed the heads of the rabbits, Garrow said.

Accorti then brought the bucket back to the caller, asking for the rabbit the man had run over, Garrow said.

Accorti was not fired for the incident, but instead was terminated for his performance, Garrow said.

In my opinion, Accorti did nothing wrong. In the eyes of the media, it was an earthquake. They ruined a man’s life over rabbits. He may have a family to support, bills, hospitalization, house, car and so on. The media could care less. They got their man.

Now let me cite two commandments. “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor, and thou shalt not kill” the latter first, as this is repeated over and over. The doctors and nurses who perform abortions do kill thousands of babies in the womb each year; nothing is said or pursued by the media. However, in the North Ridgeville incident, the rabbit is elevated while the man is fired. Where does this make sense?

Now the other commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” In my opinion, the media has falsely accused a man of doing his job. Then it is magnified through the TV news. The media has falsely riled up the audience. This you call reporting. You make up news at the expense of a human being. May God have mercy on us. Jerry Hammond

Mentor

Trump has done damage to America

Donald Trump, president of the United States, is profane, vile, bombastic and a deceiver. He has no concern that Russia, our adversary, is accused of interfering in our free elections and putting our republic and democracy at risk.

He finds Russia and its leader, Mr. Putin, as examples of the power he wants to have to rule our country. He ran on a slogan of “drain the swamp.” But he also put billionaires in his cabinet, brought his family to work in the White House, and proposed setting up a health care system that would put 20 million citizens, poor kids and sick elderly in the dumper, while the top 1 percent would get generous tax breaks.

Same old trickle down, same old swamp. Our Republican House and Senate are more loyal to party than to country. Power means more than their responsibility to the people they represent.

Mr. Trump has made this country weaker by walking away from allies whose sons and daughters fought and died shoulder to shoulder with us. Mr. Trump’s base continues to deny the damage this man is doing to our country. I hope there are some statesmen in our government who have courage, honesty and integrity to save our republic. Jacqueline Bell Eastlake

Who knows more?

At the very end of the 19th century — in 1899 to be exact — Ambrose Bierce published a brief fictional piece, “Moxon’s Master,” about a machine that could play chess. Perhaps this was the genesis of the idea of artificial intelligence.

If we fast forward to the present, we have IBM marketing “Watson,” a supercomputer which won at “Jeopardy” against two of the game’s greatest champions. Purportedly, this mechanism can actually think much as humans do.

Well, half a century ago, computers were creating and playing music. Small wonder, then, should their knowledge and creativity supersede that sapience ascribed to creatures of flesh and blood? William Dauenhauer

Willowick