Letters to the Editor
Hecate
Published Letters: 40 Editor's Choice: 6
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Stars
[Read the article: Obama gracious in N.C. victory]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nooo, red stars are selected by the editor. Gold stars are premium subscribers. It's a complicated sneech code.
And thank you Joan, for saying something positive about Obama. But yeah, he's pretty much always gracious.
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Millenium Talking
[Read the article: A new low in Clinton bashing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What an interesting discussion this has turned out to be--most of them don't stay coherent after the first hundred posts. This one has people actually trying to understand each other, bonding, joking, complicating their positions somewhat. It also has masturflamebaitors, a hysterical troll posse, deadpan irony, and most hilarious of all, the goofy influx of Joan supporters from the various Hillary support sites, all typing exactly the same vacuous way to go against the mean patriarchal media driveby huggie posts---aaand the ones keeping score on them.
I would like to enter the discussion partly because I've enjoyed so much of what some others have had to say (MPhillips's nuanced reasoning was particularly inspiring. I'm sorry I can't reference you directly. There's no way to search through over 1,000 posts here). But partly also to return to the main topic.
Ms. Walsh, I am truly puzzled as to your intentions with this article. You must know how biased and inflammatory both the subject title and the first line is. You can't possibly believe that all the people in the world with any opinion of Hillary either support her or think she is a monster. That really doesn't make sense--as hundreds of thoughtful readers have already (with varying degrees of patience), pointed out.
As many others have already pointed out, it is perfectly possible to be repulsed by the sexism that fuels some of the public discourse about Hillary and be equally repulsed by her own campagn tactics.
Do you really mean what you are saying, or are you just trying to generate site hits by saying divisive, inflammatory and somewhat dumb stuff?
As for your appearance on Hardball--first of all, you looked fine. It made me realize that we really don't see high profile women--especially progressives--duking it out with the sort of rapid-fire quasi-hostile soundbite dialog that tv media seems to require. I was pleased to see this, and support you wholeheartedly.
I also agree with what seemed to be your core assertion--it ultimately does Democrats no good to demonize the Clintons or retrospectively revise the successes of the '90s. But that should have been your main point, and much more carefully stated nearer the beginning. Instead, you led off there with the same strange, weak and truly anti-rational assertion you led this op-ed piece off with--a baseless, emotion-driven, condemnation of 'Clinton bashing.'
You said you were certain that such bashing was coming from the Obama camp, even when it was pointed out to you that it was the AP who first released the story of Mrs. Clinton's equally inexplicable gaffe.
As an articulate progressive woman in control of a respected publication, your words matter. Many of us look up to you--or try to, because of who you are the position that you hold. But your defense of Mrs. Clinton is based on some seriously unsound reasoning--of which both this piece and some of your tv statements, stand as particularly egregious examples.
It's bad journalism, but it's worse feminism. Such illogic only reinforces stereotypes of feminists as incapable of self-reflective critique, rational thought, or reasoned discourse. Consequently, as impressed as I am by some of your readers, who make the nuanced, reasoned arguments that it is your responsibility as a journalist to make, I am intensely disappointed in you.
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@ Carol Richards
[Read the article: A new low in Clinton bashing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks, Carol. Your posts were among those I was thinking of when I was admired people who were trying to connect across differences, and who were alternately insightful and deadpan hilarious. Your dissertation sounds fascinating. I've made precisely the same arguments about TS Eliot that you do about Wittgenstein--that far from being the difficult academic private property he's self-servingly made out to be, he's actually a pop culture fixture (was it weeping last night, incidentally, who was posting chunks of The Four Quartets? That was awesome!)
And thanks also for the link to David Runciman's thoughtful piece. And yes, you're right. This is exactly the sort of self-reflexive, self-critical observation that I wish there would be more of here--both on why it is that people get locked into their own positions, whether or not they wish to, and the way that the media feeds that tendency to fix and fixate in a way that disallows for what I also agree is the much more complex reality of people trying out positions, talking to and respecting each other.
On the other hand, if we were all that reasonable, we wouldn't have precious moments like ShawnWM's jeremiads from the alternate future to entertain us.