Letters to the Editor
J.C. Miller
Published Letters: 322 Editor's Choice: 34
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determination: not at all funny
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So I guess it actually turns out that, after all, Silverman was never funny.
There’s no more denying it: males who prefer their humor from other males, males who routinely attack females, who include “hotness” in their evaluation of a comedienne’s work, who imagine themselves banging Silverman as they watch her perform, all fail to discern comedic elements or social insight in her material.
That says a lot.
Sarah will be devastated to learn.
It’s a loss. Something that felt so real . . . . . but upon incisive critique . . . . never was.
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adult relationships
[Read the article: From dating an Asian man to living with him: Parents still don't know]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]LW,
Your willingness to ask for help and set boundaries and the insight you indicate suggest a certain level of maturity. Which is why it will not work for you to try to be with a little boy, or as you less generously expressed it, someone whom you experience as “cowardly and infantile”. Your boyfriend is in fact a boy friend who has never differentiated from his mommy and daddy.
If he had, and if he had the courage to love you, then he would have cut off contact with these two controlling boundary violators at the first sign of interference in your relationship. He didn’t, and he won’t until he grows up.
You deserve to be with an adult.
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"The reason all the major religions have a tradition of forgiveness . . . . "
[Read the article: The Gavin Newsom sex scandal: Why did his lover tell?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]um . . . . . not quite. If we force ourselves to do the necessary and discomforting work of deconstructing (i.e. thinking about) “forgiveness” we may reach some unpleasant yet very productive insights.
This becomes possible if we unplug, that is, free ourselves from doxa provided by our domestication, and observe the phenomenon of forgiveness from an outside vantage point. What we see is a transaction between parties, typically with a power differential, and nonetheless with these elements: following a boundary violation to which a healthy response might be to distance or demand change in relational behavior, instead the potential “forgiven” utters certain scripted, powerful sounds (“I’m so sorry…I was wrong…I was a fool…It was the alcohol…I’ve learned my lesson…I will never again…”). The “forgiver” then typically utters the prescribed responses (“Well, alright, I forgive you…We can …”).
The metacommunication is hidden. Forgiven: “I need to get back what I was getting from our symbiosis [possibly including social status regained from a public forgiveness]”; forgiver: “Because I need to get back what I was getting from our symbiosis, I will accept your scripted utterances in lieu of evidence of real change.” The exchange re-establishes a homeostasis, a quid pro quo, by virtue of utterances in lieu of the work involved in change and growth.
Most importantly, the function of forgiveness is to obviate and distract attention from the need for and discomfort of independence, boundary-setting, insight, growth, and change - the intrapsychic equivalents of a root canal. This is what makes forgiveness so wildly popular and why is is integral to insitutions, like 12-Step, whose function is the provision of escape from personal change and growth. In religion, of course, it is used as a formalized control of access to the pseudo-spiritual and access to a false sense of relief from distress.
The unaccessed emotional/psychic conflict we all feel around the ambiguity and constructed nature of “forgiveness” is why the Newsom issue acts out as high moral drama. We are unsettled by it.
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ANS and marriage
[Read the article: Anna Nicole Smith -- the "tragic girlfriend" we all knew?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kennicott’s essay does seem particularly insightful (as well as kind to Ms. Smith in contextualizing her choices) as does Ms. Clark-Flory’s addition that the “sexual economy” of marriage is ultimately understood in terms of underlying biological drives: about survival, procreation, and the features of mating systems and behavior which further those needs.
As long as opportunities to gain resources needed for a secure and meaningful life are differentially available to the sexes, women and men will both suffer. The greater the opportunity for women to independently support themselves and gain control and resources, the less likely they will relate to men with calculation and cynical self-interest. The very drives and traits which men seem afraid to relinquish because they are unconsciously associated with mate attraction (competitive acquisition and control of power, status and resources) undermine the potential for men and women to freely relate to each other, and undermine the true security that might result from attraction, attachment and bonding free of calculation, sexual economy, and thus of anxiety and mistrust.
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What rubytuesday said
[Read the article: Goodbye, Vickie Lynn]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is as insightful as anything I’ve read on Ms. Smith. Like Cintra on edge with Kennicott’s social/historical insight and more.
Who could hang a name on you?
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tom, I must disagree
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You and Ms. Havrilesky are plying entirely different crafts. Your use of an obviously extensive knowledge of television as a medium and of the industry to create your own cynical take on culture is often impressive and well written. Potentially even more effective if not laced with the venom that seems to blind you to what many readers appreciate in Ms. Havrilesky’s contributions.
Heather watches what TV reflects about us and then (I like to think), fighting off nausea, disgust and shock, puts together a riff that seems generously (considering the material) biting and humorous and shot through with (I hope to God what is) facetiousness and irony.
She doesn’t wish for her infant’s wonder and innocence to be transformed to a forced choice between angry cynicism and delusional optimism. She wishes that she could hope for more than that. Robot monkeys agree: Heather works this theme park for neurosis fairly well and, more importantly, in a way that allows for some therapeutic laughter.
And Heather’s continued willingness to access and use personal, inner experience and vulnerability to create and share meaning, knowing the venom and abuse it will elicit? I can think to characterize that only one way – courage.