Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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It depends on your point of view
[Read the article: The warped reality of our media stars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Adnoto, you believe that I'm confusing the issue. My question is this: the issue according to whom? You, right?
Surely there's room to define the issue more broadly. It isn't a matter for me of trying to impress anyone, least of all you, rather it's that I believe that how and why the mechanisms behind this false conventional wisdom operate are of at least as much interest as the nonsense which they generate.
The reason I think so is that I don't believe that they can be successfully combated if we don't understand how they work. I suspect that the reason why your girlfriend laughs at us is that in China, on the one hand the mechanisms are more visible, and on the other, the effects are usually more brutal and more immediate. Surely why this is is so in China and not here is of interest.
It's always tempting to think that calling a spade a spade is the superior course of action; certainly it's the one most favored in our most treasured American myths. To do so effectively, though, you need to know the difference between a spade and a backhoe, and sometimes that requires a litttle uncertainty, and a deeper or more prolonged analysis.
If anyone here besides yourself thinks that what I've offered is frivoulous, or beside the point, they're perfectly welcome to ignore it, as are you. There's really no need to attribute ulterior motives to me in order to buttress your own case, which, like mine, can stand or fall on its own merit.
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The devil's due
[Read the article: The warped reality of our media stars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To backlash against something offends my ear too, but the future belongs to those who're going to live in it, after all. English has survived generations of us, and has arguably become more flexible as a result, if not also more powerful. If it didn't need defenders in the past, I don't see why it would now.
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The class weapon
[Read the article: The warped reality of our media stars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The example I love best is Martin Luther's reported defense of the vernacular Bible. Schau dem Volk auf's Maul, "Look in the people's mouth" was good advice then, and it's good advice now. Done well, it produces results at least as eloquent as anything exclusive to the upper classes. Neither Luther's Bible nor the King James Bible could honestly be said to have embarrassed its author, certainly. (You can hear a snippet of Luther's language spoken by the minister in the memorial service scene in Witness. Very eloquent, although in the film the setting and the music helped some, I admit.)
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Why GWB isn't Abraham Lincoln
[Read the article: The warped reality of our media stars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But I guess it is probably a lot easier to attend a funeral when no one can say you were the reason for it. -- Karen M.
Undoubtedly it is, especially if you deny it. The Gettysburg Address is an eloquent reminder of a time when the term public policy meant exactly that, and when its authors believed it was their duty to answer for the consequences.
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It's not that I don't like vegetables
[Read the article: The warped reality of our media stars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In such leguminous company it's perhaps better to remain silent, and yet...someone has to be heard clapping at the back of the garden. Let it be me. Bravo, all.
Please don't think ill of me, though, if I say that when I return in the morning I hope to find the broccoli gone, and the kitchen once again redolent with the aroma of frying right wing bacon....