I have read Cy Baumgartner’s most recent letter to the editor, “Indispensable women of Alabama,” several times now, and I’m still unsure if it is satire or if he really means what he wrote.

There is not enough space here to respond to what Mr. Baumgartner has to say in his letter about capitalism, sustainability, patriarchal domination and economic stratification.

I can understand how someone would be thankful that women in Alabama voted in the senate election and helped to elect Doug Jones and to defeat Roy Moore.

However, I cannot understand what that has to do with “irresponsible and exponential breeding” or with an “antidote to siring rednecks.” Also, I cannot understand how the Mercer Island Reporter allowed “rednecks” to be printed in the Reporter. (Just for the record, I am not particularly politically correct, but I think Mr. Baumgartner is trying to malign poor, rural, white people with his choice of the word “redneck.”)

Let us try to imagine if Mr. Baumgartner were to refer to some other group in such an offensive way and called for an antidote to having more of them populate the planet. Do we need an “antidote” to siring any particular type of person? Who decides what is “irresponsible breeding”?

About the best I can say about the letter is that Mr. Baumgartner is not advocating for the government to step in and make those decisions. He seems to be advocating that education is the answer to these perceived problems. I am all for education, but maybe Mr. Baumgartner and the Mercer Island Reporter need the education.

Mark Froio

Mercer Island