Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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The dark side of literary
[Read the article: A hallmark of idiocy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mona: You are also correct that Amanda Marcotte is a skanky-assed wench no better than Michelle Malkin.
Is this really you, Mona? Well, I never....
In For Whom the Bell Tolls, as I remember, Hemingway lists as a curiosity a couple of Spanish curses. The original Spanish escapes me for one of the two, and I don't have a copy of the book handy, but the English translations are colorful enough:
I swim a mile in a soup made from your testicles.
and
I piss in the milk of your whore of a mother.
Now of course these are the traditional manly kind of curse, like a peacock spreading its fan, or Achilles insulting Hector before the walls of Troy, but as archetypes of disdain they serve pretty well. They're also from a pre-literate age, when people had a different sense of time, and expected care to be taken in all endeavors, even in cursing an enemy.
I'd submit that such invective has an ancient history, and is a legitimate way to let people know just how much you believe them to be trespassing against you -- as much a part of our literary heritage, in other words, as the sonorities of the King James Bible, or of Shakespeare's plays.
The problem with it is that historically, psychologically, such a curse is a prelude to combat, a way of screwing oneself up to do a very fearful, if not unnatural thing, i.e., to attempt to kill someone else.
Deprived of that context, it becomes meaningless noise, part of the background mass-culture ugliness, just another example of our denatured modern life. As such, we'd do well to let it go.
Unless, of course, we intend to restore the curse to its ancient glory. If so, my advice would be to be careful what you wish for.
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Floats like a butterfly....
[Read the article: A hallmark of idiocy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Judging by the tramp, tramp, tramp of morons this morning, I'd say that Glenn has found a tender spot on the right-wing rump yet again. Please, guys, go back to patting your rico, there's nothing to be gained here except lumps and bruises.
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You give them too much credit
[Read the article: A hallmark of idiocy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Holly, their concern isn't with truth, justice, or comportment. Tactics is what gets their wee black hearts going pitter-patter. Fortunately for us defenseless liberals, though, their tactical mentor is George Armstrong Custer, whose inimitable way with the savage hordes informs their eveery gesture.
Heh.
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Purity
[Read the article: A hallmark of idiocy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll be happy to stipulate that your hands are clean, doctor, and your insights righteous, if you'll kindly fold up your pieties and move along with the rest of the carnival.
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A Modest Malediction
[Read the article: Cheney's contempt for American public opinion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm one liberal who doesn't want to see Cheney dead, not before his time, anyway. I would, however, like to see him in the care of burly attendants somewhere. Perhaps the Malkin Sisterhood of Ignorance and Malice Home for Senior Government Officials has a bed available.
I'd even contribute to a fund to compensate said attendants for allowing the old sack of bile to strike at their ankles with his cane.
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Yes, very complicated
[Read the article: Cheney's contempt for American public opinion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Paul Rosenberg: Actually, it's more complicated than that.
There's a reason why Seymour Hersh's most recent article reads like the History of the Peloponnesian War. As with Thucydides, attributions of motive are largely left to us to supply; the task Hersh has set himself is simply to assemble the pieces for us. What seems ominous to me, though, is that in our case, the Athenians have mistaken themselves for the Spartans. No good can come of that, I can assure you. Chickenhawk doesn't even begin to describe the malady, or hint at its consequences for any of us currently residing below the Acropolis.
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Always the counterexample
[Read the article: Cheney's contempt for American public opinion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]jojo: And there are closed systems: see any religion.
See Buddhism, see Sufism, see the Tao Te Ching, see...well, any religion's sidepaths, back rooms, odd practitioners, etc. Much of what we think of as free thought was around long before the Enlightenment.
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On crankiness
[Read the article: Cheney's contempt for American public opinion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Jojo, no apologies necessary. Considering the subject matter, avoiding crankiness would itself be evidence of satori. Even clownsense, who gives every devil large and small his due, is hard-pressed to stay centered when considering the Cheney.
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Amusing indeed
[Read the article: Cheney's contempt for American public opinion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A conservative encyclopedia sounds a but like Aryan science to me.
On another note, the previous thread is crawling with carpet-chewing right-wingers, all excited about dirty words on the left. Yet here, in a discussion of the dirtiest word of all, Cheney, we get nothing. Guess they don't like him either.
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I think -- unkindly -- of my fellow Democrats
[Read the article: Why do so many neoconservatives lack the courage of their convictions?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn, I can't tell you how much I enjoy seeing you hound these irresponsible jerks. (And yes, if there are any morons from LGF or the Free Republic listening, I know that I'm insulting neoconservatives everywhere. So let me be perfectly clear; the insult is intentional, and in my opinion, richly deserved.)
What concerns me more is what the Bill and Hillary Clintons, Joe Liebermans, Rahm Emanuels, James Carvilles, etc., do to escape from the increasingly narrow ledge they've been perched on for the last five years. If the time hasn't come yet to renounce the American hyperpower, world-managing mythology, when, precisely, will that time come? Do you, my fellow Democrats, intend to go all the way to Armageddon in defiance of your own constituency? Do you really want another dose of the -- drum roll -- Viet Nam era? That's where you're headed, you know -- battle speed, damn the torpedoes, etc., etc. Muy buena suerte...you're going to need it.
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Back to the important things
[Read the article: Is "Howard Kurtz" a software program?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Now that the Death to Cheney campaign has been such a resounding success, can we get back to our strategic planning for the War on Christmas? I'm organizing a battalion of dedicated yarmulkah-wearing far-leftists in my home town to chant Happy Holidays! in our Wal*Mart Super Center parking lot this November. If all you other heroic liberals would do the same, the war would be over in no time,and we could bring all the boys home by New Year's, confident that no one would ever dare utter Merry Christmas again anywhere in our fair America.