To the editor:

Pity the poor editor of the Journal-World’s letters column, who must daily trudge through submissions from some of the worst cranks in town before occasionally turning up a gem worth printing. Mine probably belongs to the former category, but here goes anyway. For my pet peeve concerns nothing more portentous than the file photo of Gov. Sam Brownback that runs alongside columns announcing his latest policies.

The photo shows Brownback with eyes askance, jowls flapping, mouth open. It looks for all the world like the likeness of a bleating sheep!

Not that I am a fan of the governor. He is a mean-minded Uriah Heep of an official who soaks the poor, aggrandizes the rich and tries at every turn to undermine the state’s systems of social services, public education, fair taxation and practically anything else citizens value. Too often, he descends from the high road of public policy to strut the sawdust trail. Yet, I belong to the old school who believe that a head of state ought to be accorded a modicum of respect by virtue of his office. I have met the governor on several occasions, and, while no matinee idol, he certainly merits a more flattering pictorial representation than this.

May I suggest that this hideous photo be replaced, or at least alternated, with another one he has used in his campaign literature? It shows the governor full-face and grinning like the Cheshire Cat (the man does have a nice set of teeth!). Although it may strike some as something cropped from a college yearbook, it would impart a certain air of dignity to a man who may not deserve it, but whose office does.