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(Logo is the property of the Asheville Citizen Times.) Click on it to link to the newspaper's excellent Web design for sports and for one of the best entertainment sections in the area. That's the good news. The bad news is to your right to know. |
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| Naked Bike Run in Asheville, 2005 |
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| Naked Bike Run in Asheville, 2004 |
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| Naked Bike Run in Toronto, Canada, 2004 |
These are NOT pornographic photos. They are photos compliments of Naked Bike Run Web site.
The Naked Bike Run Web site says one of its purposes in 2004 was to protest America's continued involvement in Iraq and to protest for peace, civil rights and personal sovereignty. Since one year has now passed, we hope when the six came through in 2005 they stuck a purple finger in the air to thank this country's service to people in Iraq for peace, civil rights and personal sovereignty it brought to eight-million Iraqis. For more information on life in the Middle East, see the trailer for a story on the plight of a teenage girl while living under the rule of the Taliban. No Naked Riders there, eh? To do that click on the movie title, Osama, to see the movie trailer. Or if a member, go to Netflix to rent the movie on DVD, which includes a story on the making-of the first film in a free Afghanistan, and what went on under the Taliban rule from an Afghan's perspective. The movie has English subtitles. |
The Asheville Citizens-Times (AC-T), a newspaper that sometimes reads more like the jaded New Jersey Newark Star Ledger than a newspaper whose boilerplate reads the "Voice of the Mountains," has been accused of pushing a liberal-left agenda on the innocent people of Western North Carolina. These people simply want to be left alone to their basic lifestyles that were taught to them by their parents and grandparents.
There is no large competition for the AC-T, so it is what it is, the only major news print outlet serving an entire area where local news is funneled through the eyes of a small "nest" of what many see as liberal editors.
This could be one of the reasons why a story of importance, one that speaks of a continued epidemic of STDs among the backbone of America's future, its youth, somehow found itself buried back near the comics by the progressive editors of the AC-T
Someone at the paper had to point with a finger saying, "That story must be put way back in this issue so few find it." How else could that happen, since we know stories just don't float by themselves to any spot on a page?
Many of those living in western Carolina have been here all their lives, trying to get along with the outsiders who have moved into their area for reasons of retirement or to build a second-home, as many residents from Florida have already done known as "half-backs.". It's a very polite and respectful area where three religious organizations have built centers, including one by Billy Graham that you might have heard of called The Cove.
The STD information provided belowwas originally released as a warning in the summer of 2004 by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. It documents the growing and serious crises of the spread of STDs among our youth and its infecting one in every two teenagers at a cost to America's medical community already in the billions of dollars.
Some editors of the Asheville Citizen Times literally not only buried the CDC's story near the back of its paper in 2004, but also condensed it into a tiny article printed on a lower left-hand page. Any advertiser will tell you this size and position for an ad in a newspaper is the kiss of death when wanting to get a message out. Therefore the story would be almost impossible to find by parents. The far-left newspaper understands that.
How arrogant! In essence, they thought their hands were clean.
This was the exact response we expected from the publisher when this issue came to light in 2005. It was communicated to him from our complaint in March 2005 to the owners of the Asheville Citizen Times, Gannett Publishing, which also owns USA Today, several British newspaper outlets, and many other newspapers in the United States, qualifying Gannett as a media empire parents would seem to rely on for accurate information that helps them protect their families.
Nor should there be any surprise with the ACT when one discovers the annual North American Naked Bike Run as they wound their way across North America, but also through Asheville's "rediscovered" downtown.
The bike riders were probably not joyous that they had to cover up their private parts while peddling through the downtown area, one that in the past year had welcomed their arrival. In 2005 they rode through with six riders, one a very sensible young lady keeping her underwear on (see pix on left.)
Gannett publishers, as mentioned the owner of the giant national newspaper, USA Today, never did acknowledge our concern that was sent to their CEO. We had asked how could a newspaper bury a very important story on STDs away from the parents of Western North Carolina, while giving front-page attention to the rumor that a movie producer might be wanting to buy another residence in Asheville's downtown.
This was at a time when Gannett had already been providing awards to the AC-T for some of its reporting, which obviously includes more than the news and we assume hopefully well deserved.
If you want to see the different STDs and how they affect the body and the ugly symptoms that go with them, which infected teenagers have to look forward to, click now on the files at the bottom of this page to be taken to a Web site on STDs run by NBC's Channel 5 in Chicago.
This public information may cause you to ask, "What is going on over at the Asheville Citizen Times that the newspaper would not want people in the area to be warned of this, since getting a STD can be a lifetime event or evolve to a life-and-death event."
With Asheville having one of the top 100 medical centers in the United States, there is no excuse for a newspaper to hide these important warnings from its readers, who sadly, as with many other communities, have only one major print source to depend on for their news.
There can be no logical excuse for a newspaper to suppress this kind of information except for a selfish political-correct agenda.
As a VP once told me when I managed a department for a Fortune 100 company, "The fish always stinks from the head."
You can't make this stuff up.
