It’s Just Wrong

The final Mr. Wrong column and the final Maakies cartoon in the same issue (9/12/2012)?!? NOOOOOO!!! I’ve lost my will to live. Thanks for a million laughs over the years Joe & Tony. You guys rule.

Jonathan Mayo

Baltimore

Editor’s note: While Mr. Wrong’s column in issue #37 was indeed his last, Maakies was just fucking with you. He’s back this week, on page 160.

Road to perdition

There’s an old women’s lib joke that goes, “If they can put a man on the moon, why not all of them?” That’s the feeling I got after reading Baynard Woods’ article “Sex Trade” (Feature, Sept. 5) If these four women profess to not be in the “trade” anymore (except if they need a little “extra”), why can’t all of them figure out how to turn their lives around? Here I will cease distinguishing these four from the dozens who ply their filthy trade in my back yard, sometimes on my doorstep. This issue is not about transgenders, why they have chosen this lifestyle and why they have found a safe haven in the lower Charles Village/Old Goucher neighborhood. It is, rather, the totality of the illegal prostitution industry in this area. And it is an industry—replete with pimps and look-outs, cell phones tuned to the streaming police scanner feeds, ensuring that by the time police arrive (if they arrive) in response to yet another weary 911 call, there will be nothing to be found. I am not nave enough to believe that we can get back to leading a normal life that doesn’t include being awakened from already fitful sleep at 4 AM by hoards of prostitutes flouncing down the middle of the street screaming at the top of their lungs at passing drivers, cursing their failure to stop and hire their services.

These prostitutes have taken “disrespect” to a level not to be believed: Disrespect for themselves, for this community, for basic human decency. Several years ago this “problem” was centered in Mount Vernon. Those folks drove the industry north; now it’s our problem, and we are not getting much meaningful or effective interdiction. Were this taking place at the Inner Harbor, or Fells Point/Canton, the street the Mayor lives on, or any one of scores of other locations within the city with more political clout, it would be mopped up in record time. It is happening here and now because a calculated decision has been taken by the Mayor’s office and the Police Commissioner that here is where this activity will be allowed. There is no other explanation.

Edward Ericson’s sidebar companion piece (“Not in My Backyard,” Sept. 5) barely scratched the surface of the perdition that the community is rapidly approaching. The anecdotal evidence presented can be reiterated by scores of other residents. At some point we will finally conclude the terrorists have won, and take what’s left of our lives and sanity to the ‘burbs at half the property tax rate.

Mayor Rawlings-Blake: Ignore this issue at your peril; we will be around long enough to vote in one more election. Councilman Stokes: You’ve worked hard on this issue; work harder. New Police Commissioner Batts: Get up-to-speed quickly because, like Howard Beale in “Network”, “[we’re] mad as Hell, and [we’re] not going to take this anymore.” To the customers, “johns”, and vans that nightly ferry these human parasites into and out of our community: Go somewhere else. You have been warned.

Name withheld by request

Baltimore

Logical Fallacy

S.D’s letter to the editor (“Residents React,” The Mail, Sept. 12) in which prostitutes (and drug dealers) are equated with bank robbers is a logically flawed piece of writing that contains a false analogy. Despite the fact that bank robbery and prostitution are labeled crimes by the government, it does not change the fact that they are fundamentally incommensurate. Bank robbery, a legitimate crime, involves a person initiating force to violate the individual rights of another while prostitution involves a voluntary agreement between consenting individuals. There is no violation of individual rights involved in prostitution and, as such, there is no actual crime being committed. Criminalization of prostitution is another example of government—at the behest of the majority—violating the individual rights it was created to protect. While the other issues S.D. raises regarding actual crimes that violate property rights are a legitimate cause for concern they do not justify the illogical blurring of the essential distinction between true criminals and those who involved in victimless “crimes”.

Amesh A. Adalja MD

Butler, PA