Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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On fatigue, scandals and community
[Read the article: What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Frankly, as casual observer said a couple of threads ago, there's a paradox in our endeavors here:
...I wonder if there is such a thing as 'target fatigue'. How many times can one become outraged before the whole internal system just goes numb.
The short answer is yes, there is indeed such a numbness. There's also a remedy. As Glenn's focus has evolved from legal and constitutional astonishment to passionate investigations of the nonsense which passes as conventional wisdom these days, we've most of us stuck with him, grateful for the heartfelt and articulate exposé of all that offends against common sense and common decency.
When I turned off my television feed five years ago, I despaired that there would ever again in my lifetime be such a thing as intelligent public discourse about what I perceived to be the real issues facing our country. The magnificent bloggers -- Atrios, Digby, Firedoglake, Billmon, Glenn, and Mona, among others -- have restored an invigorating balance to the universe of my discontents. Still, they've only whetted my appetite. I want more, much more.
I remember an earlier hunger.... At twelve or thirteen, I devoured whole libraries trying to find the secret code which would unlock the seeming ease of adults in the world, their graceful superiority. Well...can you guess how that turned out?
So, fifty years on, why do I spend so much time at this? A decent respect for the opinions of mankind is part of it, but mostly it's a sense of outrage at the rule of the lowest-common-denominator. How is it that in a country which produced Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Billie Holiday, Jackson Pollock, Margaret Sanger, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, George C. Marshall, Big Bill Haywood and Frank Gehry, we now have to suffer people who believe every word which comes out of Rush Limbaugh's petulant little mouth?
Yes, it's a rhetorical question. We know very well why; we're Americans after all. We were born knowing why. So, even though the same old idiocy re-appears every day, and tempers unravel, this is our fight, and I'm relieved to discover that none of us are ready to give up on it. As the twit in the White House said, bring it on.
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Well....
[Read the article: Our right-wing arbiters of masculinity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Children raised according to its precepts do not turn out as advertised, that is, as upstanding, morally autonomous beings. -- Paul Rosenberg
Sometimes they do, but they have the very devil of a time of it, and they have to be very lucky. The son who succumbs generally becomes either a prodigal and slave for life, or a hysterical parody of daddy who goes far away and destroys his own family.
The son who fights may become an axe murderer or a wandering Jew, but either way he'll inevitably conduct a lifelong dialogue with the ghost of daddy. Daddy, on the other hand, can never recognize himself in the son, and so is never forced to ask forgiveness for his transgressions. There's a certain lopsided symmetry to this which has driven many novels, and many drunken recriminations.
As for Ann Coulter, what immortal hand or eye...? It's probably best to accept her gender confusion as real, and her consequent entrapment as the darling of the weak and resentful boy not so much as tragedy, but as the wages of sin. Not her sins, mind you, but the sins of the fathers -- or of the mothers -- as the case may be. She's to be pitied, yes, but only after we succeed in prying her claws loose from the body politic.
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Hero worship
[Read the article: Our right-wing arbiters of masculinity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]D-rocks, Limbaugh is a genuine sociopath; you aren't. This puts you at a certain disadvantage when trying to wield his sword. You keep cutting yourself, and the jabberwock always escapes. If you must worship in someone else's temple, try to find someone who's not quite so free of human affect; you'll be much better off.
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A classic
[Read the article: Our right-wing arbiters of masculinity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn Greenwald: Did you later-add that link to Taranto's entire story? I did not see the embedded link earlier. -- Elephantman
I'm not stupid, you're a liar. How precious -- and how typical....
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You can't make this stuff up
[Read the article: Our right-wing arbiters of masculinity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sociopath diagnosis seems slightly off given his steady employment record. You can always hope I guess. No hero worship here. -- daleyrocks
Yes, a steady employment record...all that's required to pass the Republican mens sana in corpore sano requirement. No wonder they've wound up presiding over the world's most dysfunctional and malevolent loony bin.
And where, exactly, is here, D? Is there a there there?
No, I thought not.
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Because
[Read the article: Our right-wing arbiters of masculinity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why do those who reply to this slander (of women, actually) base their arguments on demonstrating how unmasculine these pathetic males may be -- instead of questioning why being more like a female is supposed to be degrading? -- Jody Aliesan
Probably because we're men. If women have an argument to make, it's up to them to make it, is it not? (Just to be clear, I don't believe that men shouldn't embrace the feminine, even in themselves. The slander, though, is that we aren't men, not that women are lesser creatures, although that mey well be an intended implication as well.)
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A question for D-rocks
[Read the article: Our right-wing arbiters of masculinity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Rush and Ann as figurines atop a wedding cake. Which would you dress in black, D, and which in white? Inquiring minds, as you're so fond of saying, want to know.
I know how much you hate getting tangled in the implications of your own propaganda, as any trained apparatchik would, but in this venue, that only undermines your credibility. If there actually isn't any there, there, D, your only recourse is to run away, and come back when you think no one remembers.