Thurston Twigg-Smith: Uncensored
Last week I wrote about Thurston Twigg-Smith who used to own the Honolulu Advertiser then sold it to the Gannett Corporation for approximately $250 million dollars. He had one of his numerous anti-Hawaiian bashing letters printed in the very newspaper that he used to own. Today Oswald Stender hit the nail on the head in his letter to the editor. Unfortunately I haven't had time to censor my response to Twigg-Smith's letter that targeted Hawaiians once again which of course is a hate crime when you target and single out a group of people. This is how my letter looks so far: "Stop targeting Hawaiians you fucking elitist, rich snob who used to own the Honolulu Advertiser. Stop fucking with Hawaiian history and trying to fucking rewrite it. Also stop trying to twist the truth. Fuck!" However I have a feeling that they will censor me *LOL*
Anyway though I am disappointed with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs because they do not help ALL Hawaiians which they are mandated by law to do and will continue to be on their ass so that they help Hawaiians... here is Oswald Stender's letter which I like:
TWIGG-SMITH'S VIEW OF HAWAIIANS SKEWED
Thurston Twigg-Smith needs to come down from his Makiki Heights museum and visit the Hawaiian communities he says are "doing quite well by any standard" (Advertiser letter, Aug. 26).
In the Hawaiian communities, he will find the real story, not the one being spun by his Grassroot Institute cohorts in their desperate attempt to kill the Akaka bill. If he goes, he will find the Hawaiians who, by and large, are nowhere near privileged.
If he doesn't want to make a personal visit, he could go on-line and check out a host of Web sites proving that Hawaiians remain at the top of all the wrong lists. In addition to other information, he will find statistics kept by the Center on the Family at UH-Manoa (uhfamily.hawaii.edu /index.asp). There he will see numbers showing Hawaiian children with the highest percentages on free and reduced lunch, the lowest SAT scores, and the highest teen birth and child abuse and neglect rate. Recently, I learned that large numbers of Hawaiian children are in the foster care program due to neglect and abuse.
Twigg-Smith makes another outlandish assertion, writing, "Is there really a class of people called 'Hawaiians'? Not really." Such insensitivity! Where has he been?
Twigg-Smith wants to kill the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and all the programs OHA administers. The eventual goal among his fellow litigators and attorneys is to eliminate all programs that help Native Hawaiians, including the $70 million a year provided by the federal government through 160 acts of Congress. In their efforts to accomplish this, he and his Grassroot friends continue to try to rewrite history.
Oswald K. Stender
Trustee at-large, Office of Hawaiian Affairs
Seen at http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050906/OPINION02/509060314/1108/LETTERS
This is how he looks:
Though he is very wealthy I appreciate the fact that he points out how Twigg-Smith's view of Hawaiians is skewed. Also not all Hawaiians are wealthy like he is but one good thing about him is that it shows that he cares. That is, he is a compassionate rich dude. Some tidbits about him:
"His mother, Emily Kamalolo, of pure Hawaiian blood, died when he was 2. Emily’s Danish husband Albert Stender remarried and left the Islands, leaving Oswald, his two sisters and a cousin in the care of their maternal grandfather and an auntie in Hauula."
"He was the only trustee who was welcomed on campus," said teacher Kawika Eyre, who founded the faculty and alumni group Na Kumu O Kamehameha in 1997. "When the other trustees were on campus, we would scurry around trying to protect the children, because programs were threatened and people where threatened. [Oswald] was the one trustee who brought aloha to our campus."
"As [Oswald] told me many times, this school [Kamehameha Schools] rescued him when he was a child," [Kamehameha Schools archivist Janet] Zisk said. "He owes his life and who he is to this school. There came a time when repayment was needed and he repaid the debt. It’s really a beautiful story."
Seen at http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/2000/May/07/localnews3.html