Rap or Beethoven?

Dear Editor,

Friends, McCookites, countrymen, lend me your ears. The high volume of forum letters regarding the race track is a fact. The huge variety of opinion is deafening. But only sound reasoning will produce any conclusion.

This requires philosophical training. Everything is a matter of personal taste. What is proper to one person may be wrong to another. Who is to say? I like oranges, another prefers apples.

When walking down the street, I hear a loud, thumping, banging sound from a vehicle's boom box that shakes windows six blocks away (referring, of course, to contemporary rap music).

What do I do? Shake my head and mutter "moronic noise of a person who has bad taste and is broadcasting it publicly?"

No. I realize that HEAR in America, freedom of expression is protected by the Constitution. Some persons would say von Beethoven's 5th Symphony is noise and would complain if it were blasting forth from the fairgrounds some fine summer evening.

Do we live in a plutocratic, philistinistic society? Certainly not.

Steve Stramel

McCook