Published: June 30, 2009 07:02 pm      

LETTERS: July 1, 2009

Mayor should be upset no charges were filed against Wilder



Embarrassing moments happen to all of us. Most of us, though, aren’t attorneys contracted with the city councils or school boards. Also, most embarrassing moments do not end up in local and national news services. Also, most people who have these embarrassing moments don’t have high public profiles.

Yes, the mayor should of been upset at the police, but not for the taking of the pictures. The mayor should be upset that there were no charges filed. Besides public intoxication, there could of at least been charges of public littering.

As I see the problem, it seems there are two issues. A public figure who when caught being trashed, should of at least showed contrition — some sort of atonement. Instead, he took the playbook from a Clarksville official: “I only had three drinks.”

This could be a mantra for local public figures.

The second issue is that by no charges at all, like littering, it sends a message of a double standard. This double standard exists, not just in Jeffersonville, but the county and state.

Maybe, if the police handled all public intoxication cases as judicially as the “trash-can bandit,” there would be less people in jail. The mayor said all people should be treated with dignity. Let’s make it so!

— Steve Fetter, Jeffersonville





Reader disgusted by media’s focus on Wilder



I don’t really know Larry Wilder that well, but my reaction to his picture splashed in the paper and news is one of surprise at the lengths news media has to go to for the value of entertaining gossip.

One’s reputation is a precious thing and the attempt to steal that from someone is the worst theft possible.

Did it make you think, “Boy, I’m glad someone didn’t snap a picture of me when I was not at my proudest moment.” Can all of us think of a moment from the past when we are glad it wasn’t publicized? I mean, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) — say, “Those of you without sin, cast the first stone” or, in this instance, those of you without sin, snap or leak the first picture?

— Patty Simmonds, Jeffersonville



Reader: Wilder comes across hypocritical in trash can fiasco

I have known Larry Wilder since he started practicing law in Jeffersonville. I may have given him his character and fitness interview when he applied to take the Indiana bar examination.

Larry is a good lawyer, but his antics keep him from being a great lawyer, or as we say in the trade, a lawyer’s lawyer. His most recent antics remind me of a comment that Mr. Bennett made about his first son-in-law in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.” “He is as fine a fellow as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to us all.”

I can only speculate how Larry wound up in the infamous trash can. I am surprised that the trash can and its strewn contents are not for sale on Craigslist or e-Bay. Being the most famous trash can in the United States last week, maybe it should be displayed in the new Clark County Museum.

Larry criticized his critics last week for taking delight in his mistake. However, many lawyers capitalize on the mistakes of others and that is how they earn their fees. Another one of Mr. Bennett’s famous quotations in “Pride and Prejudice” is “For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn.”

Larry, isn’t that life?

The biggest question remains how Larry wound up in the garbage can? Circumstantial evidence leads me believe that when friends were returning him to his home in the wee hours of the morning, they spied the can and someone said, “Let’s put Larry in the trash can.” It was sitting conveniently near the curb on his neighbor’s property. Was this a practical joke gone awry?

That is the best evidence we have now. I would be worried about what had been in that can before he was inserted into it.

— Ernest “Bill” Smith, New Albany