Glen Kuiper’s blunder put a spotlight on KC’s Negro Leagues museum and Arthur Bryant’s | Opinion

Tourism boost

As a lifelong baseball fan, of course I just had to listen to the worst minute of Glen Kuiper’s professional life when he used the n-word (by accident, he says) referring to Kansas City’s Negro Leagues Baseball Museum while calling a Royals-A’s game. (May 22, 7A, “Bob Kendrick shows us the way with Glen Kuiper”)

But besides cringing, I also learned about Arthur Bryant’s, and I researched the restaurant.

And now I’m considering flying out to Kansas City for a weekend, going to the Negro Leagues museum, a Royals game and maybe the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum and definitely eating a lot of barbecue.

And the irony of it all just hit me: Before I retired as an advertising copywriter, I struggled to find ways to make my clients better known. And here, a slip of the tongue by a white announcer might put money in the pockets of Black people who work for a restaurant many would never have heard of, or patronized, if not for this unfortunate statement.

By the way, when Elston Howard — formerly of the Kansas City Monarchs — became the first Black player for the New York Yankees, he was concerned about his treatment when the Yanks visited Kansas City in 1955. His teammate Phil Rizzuto took him under his wing, making him feel comfortable and accepted.

So, before I have barbecue, I’ll have a glass of red wine in honor of my fellow Italian.

- Jim Vespe, Mamaroneck, New York

Not in Kansas

As Americans, we are very aware of the mass shootings that happen daily, and some of us are becoming desensitized to the idea. Sadly, America’s youths are not spared from this senseless violence.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine and Kaiser Family Foundation, firearms are now the No. 1 killer of kids and teens. After the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, state leaders there severely restricted sex education from schools and have introduced bills calling for training children as young as third grade to use battlefield tourniquets and other bleeding control techniques.

Will Kansas be next for these detrimental and traumatizing changes in schools, instead of addressing the root of the problem, which is our lax gun laws? As a Kansas constituent, I urge Sens. Jerry Moran and Roger Marshall to co-sponsor an assault-weapons ban to help me, a fearful young person, like so many others in schools who are tired of unannounced, traumatizing lockdown drills and don’t want to have to look for hiding places and exits in classrooms.

I urge you, Senators, to take this step to protect Kansas kids from being the next names on the news.

- Sammie Magee, Louisburg

Represent whom?

After the tragic multiple shooting at Kansas City’s Klymax Lounge, I send condolences, thoughts and prayers. (May 24, 2A, “Family mourns rapper, father killed in Klymax Lounge shooting”) My condolences go to the victims’ families and friends while my thoughts and prayers go to lawmakers.

My thoughts are that it’s time you elected legislators serve your constituents rather than National Rifle Association leadership and gun manufacturers. Enact laws that make communities safer, at the very least, by restricting possession of assault weapons to authorized personnel.

My prayers are that if you regard yourself as a Christian, a Judeo-Christian or another faith-based human being, you will legislate according to tenets that respect lives, especially respecting lives over weapons. As we are well advised, thoughts and prayers without action make a mockery of faith.

I am not a member of a “well regulated militia” and do not own a musket, but I do support the U.S. Constitution, including its Second Amendment. However, I do not emotionally or irrationally over-interpret that amendment to allow unrestricted ownership of guns because I realize that “the right of the people (a collective term) to keep and bear arms” is not violated even when a “well regulated militia” prohibits some individuals from keeping and bearing any arms they want.

- Michael Lindsay, Eau Claire, Wisconsin