Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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How smart was Carlos?
[Read the article: The FBI's lawbreaking is tied directly to President Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Smart enough to get himself bitten by ratllesnakes in the back of the beyond? :-) I'm reminded of something Ed Kienholz said years ago, when being interviewed about some of his more fanciful sculptures:
People tell me I'm crazy, and then they go home and mow the lawn.
You don't gotta be a pomo to be aware that perception and conception are often indistinguishable skeins of something profoundly elusive, or that the way that human beings go about turning one into the other is fraught with all sorts of, ahem, difficulties.
That's why Paul's sociopaths, or Chris's theories about the World Trade Center, give so many people pause. If you don't doubt your sanity sometimes, you're a putz, but if you let daleyrocks rattle you, you're a fool. Interesting times we live in, yes? And damned hard to practice rational politics in, which is the part of Glenn's narrative which he usually -- and very graciously -- allows us to elucidate. Still, I agree that we should let the children sleep, and not overindulge ourselves in meta-anything, lest we lose our audience.
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An interesting point
[Read the article: The FBI's lawbreaking is tied directly to President Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Casual observer, I blame myself for the OT nature of the Castañeda digression in this thread, but this late into it, maybe one small additional comment won't matter.
You're certainly right that behavior of this sort can undermine the integrity of institutions, and practices such as those which govern the granting of PhDs. On the other hand, I believe that in this particular case, what you had, at least in part, was a guerilla action against an institution which was already thought corrupt by people with origins in the Third World.
What western anthropology departments had to say about pre-literate cultures, and people of color generally, was often considered to be both colonialist and offensive by the people themselves -- those who were aware of it, at least -- and the desire to strike back was part of the political Zeitgeist at the time. Frantz Fanon was only the tip of the iceberg.
That said, Castañeda undoubtedly profited from his clever deception, and intended to do so; there's plenty of peripheral evidence that he was a con artist of sorts. He was also quite a brilliant proponent of the creative impulse, and critic of the way it is typically shown to the back of the bus in academic environments. The comment of his which I quoted was telling in that regard. Unfortunately for him, I think, the books became huge popular successes, not on the basis of their creativity, but as literal proof of the supernatural. He found himself in a bind which he couldn't escape; ambiguity, the usual fiction writer's defense against interpretation, was simply not available to him any longer. He did the crime, and was forced, in a sense, to do the time.
When all is said and done the issue -- as I said earlier -- is complex. I guess you had to be there.
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When partisanship is stupid
[Read the article: Blind faith in the Bush administration]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Although the right wing is repeatedly presented with horses, horses visible to everyone, mind you, their spokesmen keep insisting that we're seeing zebras. Their motives may be deranged partisanship, or something even darker, as Paul Rosenberg, among others, has so eloquently brought to our attention, but their methods are looking increasingly stupid.
This whole business does remind me of Watergate, and the famous picture of Rose Mary Woods twisted into a pretzel to show how the tape might have been erased. At this point, I suspect, no one believes the Bush administration about anything, and a majority is heartily tired of having its common sense abused by shills like daleyrocks.
In my opinion, the unraveling is well underway, and from this point on, GWB will have to devote an increasing amount of time and energy shoring up his house of cards, rather than attending to his plan for global domination. We can look forward to at least two years of singing and dancing, but the audience is already leaving the auditorium, just as it did during Watergate.
Some folks think that, if pressed hard enough, Bush will bomb Iran, or declare martial law, or both, and make the implicit explicit, forcing us all to take more drastic measures to defend the Republic. If history is any guide, I'd judge this to be unlikely. On the other hand, history is sometimes an imperfect guide at best to what comes next. We shall see.
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Apparently
[Read the article: Blind faith in the Bush administration]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Apparently self reporting of violations and corrective actions is not enough. -- daleyrocks
A classic D-rockian non-sequitur. What were those folks who wrote the Constitution so worried about, anyway, eh?
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No, I don't know
[Read the article: The FBI's lawbreaking is tied directly to President Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]casual, I don't know about the status of his PhD. UCLA would be well within their rights to revoke it, of course. And no, I don't think that what he did was justified, no matter what spin one places on it. Then again, motives are always mixed, and right and wrong depend a lot on one's perceptions. Otherwise, why would hypocrisy be so prevalent?
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Gator90
[Read the article: What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Simply put, I salute you. If we all held ourselves to your standards, the world would be a better place.
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Actually....
[Read the article: Blind faith in the Bush administration]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I see you slipped one in while I was out, D. Well, if you must know, I'm a shill for Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Hamilton, Franklin and Washington. As everyone knows, they weren't socialists, they were communists. I mean, they did start a revolution, right? And they weren't good Christians, either, I hear. Better put yourself on orange alert; ain't no telling which one is under your bed.
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Is it not also written
[Read the article: What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that somewhere, everywhere and nowhere can sometimes be devilishly difficult to distinguish? Frankly, my dear, I do give a damn, but my brain hurts today. Maybe I'll just do like the dog, and snap up one of those blueberry frisbies clownsense is tossing about with such abandon. It's not so hard telling where they're at, is it?