Letters to the Editor
Silenced
Published Letters: 1358 Editor's Choice: 75
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But it's a hollow victory, Joan
[Read the article: Silencing "Opus," again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nobody's laughing at that dumb strip. Instead everyone's trying to explain why it's funny. That's the death knell for humor, Joan, when people need an explanation for why something is funny.
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In fact I'm even starting to feel a little angry
[Read the article: Silencing "Opus," again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How tribal women dress is not the problem in the Middle East that we're even TRYING to solve.
They have much bigger problems than their clothing.
Why is the clothing worn by tribal women supposed to be funny?
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I'll tell you what makes me sad
[Read the article: Silencing "Opus," again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd like to insert a line here about Salon's courage in running these two strips, but I didn't see anything that made me think twice about them -- except the news that others wouldn't publish them. We're proud to have Breathed as a contributor, and sad about what this episode says about newspaper publishing today.
I'm sad about what this strip says about Berke Breathed's talent and comic imagination and even what it says about his basic understanding of the Middle East and the difference between urban and tribal Islam.
It's an old Dumb Westerner Trick to conflate tribalism with Islam. The Qu'ran, like the Old Testament, does tend to reinforce ancient tribal customs, but that's because, as with the Old Testament, tribal people were the dominant population during the period when it was written.
This cartoon encourages atheists and progressives to keep grooming their stupidity so they can keep playing the Dumb Westener Trick while convincing themselves they're vastly superior to typical Dumb Westerners.
I'd like to add one last thing: tribal customs that restrict women also require men to pay a terrible price. Tribal men are expected to kill or be killed to defend the social and economic standing of the tribe.
Why don't any progressives ever care about them?
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edayres
[Read the article: Bill Richardson on greening SUVs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're leaving out people who ski in the winter. It's much easier to pack up for a ski trip if you have an SUV or a minivan. You can change clothes in it. It's big enough inside to haul all of your gear. Nowadays with shaped skis, the skis are short enough to ride inside with the passengers. But you can't fit skis inside a regular car.
Lots of people in America lead active lives who aren't "sportsmen" as you call them or live in wilderness areas.
If they only have enough money for one family car, then it's going to be the car that can haul them to the ski lifts comfortably in the winter.
I drive a big minivan, not as big as an SUV, but still, it's bigger than I need around town. But it's our only vehicle. We take it to go skiing in the winter. And we drive to Colorado every summer. We need a car that big to haul our stuff and our dog.
I get why Richardson wants to preserve the SUV, because he comes from New Mexico, and a lot people in New Mexico ski and camp and so on.
Skiers are definitely concerned about global warming. This is a sport that could disappear completely if the world gets hot enough.
You should try to work with these people instead of against them. You're on the same side, believe it or not.
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What's so ironic about Joan's pose here
[Read the article: Silencing "Opus," again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She's so against censorship.
But if you read Salon, you could be convinced that marijuana no longer exists. Cocaine and heroin and crystal meth still exist, but there is no longer any marijuana in America.
And no candidates have any position whatsoever on its medical use. You're never going to find that information from Salon.
And the Bush administration is doing everything RIGHT on this topic -- because you'll never find Bush criticized in Salon for his ongoing and escalating rough treatment of the seriously and chronically ill.
I'm getting a pretty good laugh now. But not from this cartoon, which I still don't get.
It's absolutely hilarious (in a kind of sick way) that Joan Walsh, of all people, is riding on such a high horse against censorship.
And it's also sickly hilarious that she's indicting the mainstream media, which is a place where you CAN go these days to get informed on current marijuana policy and current events relevant to said policy.
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I have a corroborating experience for this assertion
[Read the article: Want a baby? Get a massage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's more, in 2006 she published a paper demonstrating that women who didn't ovulate had "excess levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in their brain fluid."
I had to take prednisone for four years. It felt like the Devil had moved into my brain, because I just felt angry and stressed the entire time.
One of the other side effects of this chemical means of deliberately raising cortisol was my ovaries stopped working and I stopped having periods.
So I believe based on my own experience that this is a real effect she's talking about.
It makes evolutionary sense. If the local environment is so inhospitable that the mother exists in a continuous state of "fight or flight," then her chances of surviving that harsh environment would be much improved if she were rendered infertile by the stress.
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Science is not just a social construct, sorry
[Read the article: Want a baby? Get a massage]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Berga's work has been greeted with criticism -- including the assertion that she's going back to the Freudian notion that women can cause their own infertility by thinking antimaternal thoughts.
See, if you believe in science, this is no problem, because if you believe in science, then you already think of Dr. Freud as Dr. Fraud.
And if you believe in science, then you already know that stress chemicals are released in response to external stress that feels life-threatening to the person in question.
And the part if the brain that releases them isn't the part of the brain that is in charge of conscious thoughts like those "anti-maternal" ones that concerned old Dr. Fraud.