SPORTS SALARY ISSUES
The May 13 Monitor Weekly cover story, “Do they make too much?” by Phil Taylor, focused on current multimillion-dollar sports salaries. The “Why We Wrote This” explains that the article was written to address the question: “Is this just what the market will bear or are society’s values out of whack?”
While the article purports to engage with that question, it doesn’t adequately do so. Of the different interviews cited in the Monitor article, only two address the “out of whack” issue specifically.
The first of these two interviews is with an investment adviser, who asserts that because of the way sports now “unify us,” it could be argued that athletes are actually underpaid and that thus their multimillion-dollar salaries are not too high at all. Yet the fact that this man’s livelihood comes from investing the earnings made by players makes his point less than credible.
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The second interview addressing the “out of whack” issue is with NFL player Derek Carr, who speaks of some players starting charities to try to correct the “imbalance a little bit” between their salaries and those of most U.S. citizens. This is the one paragraph where the article delivers on its promise in the “Why We Wrote This” statement. In fact, had the entire cover article been about those players and their charities, it would have been much more in line with the Monitor’s approach to highlighting progress.
As it stands, though, this article is a defense of the pursuit of excessive wealth in professional sports.
Lynn Tarnow
St. Louis
JUST MY TYPE OF ESSAY
I recently caught up with the March 11 Weekly Print Edition in which Pamela Lewis wrote an entertaining article regarding her mother’s insistence that learning to type was an important life skill (“How I tapped into my success”).
Ms. Lewis’ recollection of her teenage experience brought back my own fond memories of my high school typing class. Even though I do not remember what motivated me to enroll in that course, it turned out to possibly be the most important secondary education subject I studied.
Typing allowed me to succeed in college (Olivetti), in postgraduate studies (Remington), the military (Selectric), and now as a lawyer (computer keyboard).
While I have forgotten almost every fact that was taught me at Miami Senior High, my fingers still remember every required keystroke that makes this letter possible.
Don Slesnick
Coral Gables, Florida
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