The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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January 19, 2008

Your View: Signs on Highway 22 are all blights





I’m glad I waited before submitting this letter. I was sure The Free Press would get slammed in the editorials about its Jan. 14 front-page picture of the billboard along Highway 22. That headline made me smile and the letter to the editor in Thursday’s paper made me laugh out loud.

I thought it was a perfect choice for a picture — a better representation of visual clutter couldn’t have been selected.

North Mankato should be applauded for trying to control the amount of clutter we are exposed to. Billboards can be dangerous as they are a distraction for drivers.

As a society, we don’t seem to object to daily assaults on our senses. We fill up the land with industry, subdivisions, Wal-Mart parking lots and other garbage; we fill the air and water with pollution and the landscape with unnecessary visual clutter. Billboards are placed along highways for one reason: To sell us something.

I don’t need their help deciding what religion or product to choose. I never wanted to see that sign, or any others, along Highway 22. It is blight on the landscape and an assault to our senses — it truly is an eyesore.

I can’t speak for the Free Press, but I don’t believe they are “attacking” religion. Some groups are determined to force their message on the rest of us and to trash our landscape in the process. I’ll bet they are the same people who objected to the XXX billboard at the north end of Riverfront Drive a few years ago.

A billboard is a billboard is a billboard: An eyesore.

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