Waste of space

Editor:

The world is in chaos. The once all mighty US dollar has lost half its buying power against the Euro. Our economy is in the doldrums.

Our Congress is so absorbed with petty politics that it is ignoring matters vital to running our country.

Our trillion-dollar national debt is spinning out of control. Medicare and Social Security are on the verge of bankruptcy. Our cities are being overrun by illegal aliens and our people are constantly on the alert to the imminent possibility of a terrorist attack.

Our men and women are dying in Iraq. Our kids are being shot and killed while in school. And shoppers are being cut down in malls.

Yet, your Dec. 9 column dwelling on University of Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson sitting out the remainder of this season, his pending divorce, and whether or not he will coach next year, is a waste of valuable newspaper space.

That you’re not alone is no excuse. Other local media are guilty of similar paternal provincialism with their maniacal frenzy over the Olson situation.

But let’s put this Olson euphoria in its proper perspective. Lute Olson did not capture Osama bin Laden. He didn’t end the genocide in Dufar or negotiate a peace in Iraq. He didn’t find a cure for cancer or AIDS.

He is not a Poet Laureate or a Nobel Prize winner, a war hero, scientist, head of state, military general, record-breaking athlete, corporate CEO or, heaven forbid, a presidential candidate.

Lute Olson is a basketball coach — admittedly, a good one, who has done much for the community which he serves. And he’s very well paid for his efforts (one of the state's highest-paid public employees). With incentives, he receives over a million dollars annually, which certainly is more than Nobel Prize winners, presidents and generals.

But his admission to the Basketball Hall of Fame notwithstanding, Lute Olson remains a basketball coach, just one basketball coach among the thousands of basketball coaches teaching kids how to bounce a ball and shoot a basket in gyms across the United States.

Nothing more.

Editorial pages could and should be put to better use.

Theodore Kurrus, Green Valley