Letters to the Editor
William Timberman
Published Letters: 3298 Editor's Choice: 7
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@ jojo++
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the proudest phrases in American history was working-class intellectual. We used to have them, you know. I remember hanging out with some old guys in the ILWU hiring hall in San Francisco forty-odd years ago, veterans of the Abraham Lincoln brigade, who seemed to have read just about everything, and had interesting opinions about all of it.
The only one I know of now is Mike Davis, and I think he gave up driving trucks a long, long time ago.
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I was taught enough Japanese
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]to study karate, but not Zen. Then again, the mysteries of Zen are essentially those of living, and we all get to do that. Whether or not we take advantantage of the opportunity is another matter.
(Are we really all just a decaying bundle of the fads of the sixties? I'd like to think not, but then the burden of proof is on us, isn't it? Especially when shooter comes calling.)
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It shows
[Read the article: David Halberstam on today's American press]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My grandparents and great aunts and uncles were all more or less working class intellectuals. -- Paul Rosenberg
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, and especially blessed to find it in their own families. In my case, I had to go looking for mentors. Odd, I suppose, that I should have encountered so many of the same ones, being the descendent prinicipally of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, and even odder, when it comes to it, that I should have recognized their value.
Needless to say, I'm grateful.
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On being a whore
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here](With apologies to those who objected to the use of gender-specific invective in a previous thread.)
Do you remember the comment, again in a thread from a while back, that anyone who agrees to piss in a cup to keep his job has already given up his freedom?
Well, I never faced drug tests as a condition of employment, but I do remember signing the infamous University of California loyalty oath many years ago, and thinking at the time -- as GWB says about the Constitution -- that it was just a piece of paper, and telling myself that it was no more morally binding on me than a false confession which had been beaten out of me in a dark cell somewhere.
I also told myself that I wasn't exactly being asked to bayonet babies, so what was the big deal. Of course I have remembered these conversations with myself for a long time, so clearly it's the case that being forced to sign by my own desire for a decent job did make an impression on me. And of course, now that I'm older, I realize that when they need you to bayonet babies, they never just ask you to do it.
We spend a lot of time here discussing government inroads on the prerogatives of free men and women, but we speak rather less about wage slavery. I'm not sure that conservatives and libertarians would even agree that such a thing exists. From my perspective, though, it not only exists, but it's the principle reason why we were such easy prey for the right-wing.
We've learned, over the decades, to look the other way when our employers demand of us things which no free person can give them without being compromised. When the government demands the same things, we find it difficult to do more than sigh. (Well, perhaps some of us would go so far as to whine.)
For me, one of the most encouraging aspects of reading Glenn's posts, and the comments which accompany them, is the sense they give me that many Americans are unlearning the serf-like stupor which always going along to get along produces in a free people. If I'm right, I'd like to suggest that an investigation of the currently abysmal state of labor law is as important as the ongoing investigations of Republican corruption.
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@ jojo++
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Gawd, I wasn't trying to suggest, I mean I don't think.... Anyway, it was me who was leading the charge against the censoring of colorful language on that thread, while at the same time trying to conceed that women do get tired of being used as clubs by one man to beat another. So the reference here was intended as a kind of joke on myself, rather than a criticism of your metaphor.
Whore is the ancient term for those who sell their bodies, or at least the sexual use of them; to use it as a metaphor for those who sell their souls is, historically speaking, yet another reminder that women were once considered -- and may unfortunately be again, if Justice Alito gets his way -- to have no rights over their own bodies.
Which is an overly elaborate protestation, I suppose, and anyway, being a man, I'm not as sensitive to that part of the context. Whore seems a perfectly gender neutral term to me, but if some or all women think otherwise, I figure I should be willing to at least look at it from their perspective.
Not a problem with your metaphor, in other words, but rather the product of a few recently-inflicted bruises on my frontal lobes.
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And while I'm at it
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If there's an English confessor in the house, here my plee:
Would a kindly God please grant us the opportunity -- once a year would be nice -- to compile a list of our past year's typos, misspelled words, and crimes against both grammar and syntax, to publish it in a separate thread, and to do public penance for our sins?
Thanking you in advance for your indulgence,
WT
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SomeNYGuy maybe needs glasses
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those weren't feathers, SNYG, they were snakes, and I understand that they were removed in a private clinic in Lausanne....
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Right-wing dinner theater (casting call)
[Read the article: The Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, let's see...we now have Elephantman in the role of the august Herr Dr. Professor Unrat, from the Faculty of Aryan Studies and Disinformation, and RealName as the guttersnipe brownshirt recruit. All we need is the blonde femme fatale with the leather bustier and whip -- is there an Ann Coulter wannabe in the house?