Letters to the Editor
ashley
Published Letters: 13 Editor's Choice: 9
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Why all the hate here?
[Read the article: Our Jennifer fixation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You know, I thought the piece on Aniston was slight, but I don't get why there has been such a vitriolic firestorm of protest toward Salon and Rebecca Traister.
It took a while for me to get used to Traister's whiplash style. She can go from snarky fluff piece to thoughtful social commentary at the drop of a hat, and I'm not sure she's found her voice just yet. That being said, I think she's a talented writer, and reading her pieces is a lot like chatting over coffee with a silly but smart girlfriend.
The truth is that the Jennifer/Brad thing really has been in the news this year. Constantly. Inescapably. Don't blame Salon for that irrefutable fact. I know there are a lot of people who think Salon had bygone halcyon days of exclusively intellectual articles interspersed with incisive political commentary, but the truth is that it's always been an eclectic mix of pop culture and harder-hitting stuff. That mix is what's kept me reading (and paying) for over three years now.
If you go back a few years, you'll find not only Camille Paglia's rhetoric but musings on the social implications of Jennifer Lopez's ass. I also find it strange that last week's article about Kathy Griffin's divorce garnered a ton of positive letters. Maybe it's just that Pittifer (or Pittiston, or Jennibrad, or what the hell ever) has been done to death. Maybe it's pent-up frustration over Salon's mystifying new search engine (they really do need to tweak that thing). Maybe Traister rubs some of you the wrong way.
I just think it's patently unfair to slam Salon for a thoughtful piece about why Aniston has been on the cover of almost every single magazing in the free world this year. The content on Salon has always been hit and miss, but in my opinion the hits are far more frequent. It's simple to ignore fluff pieces. Why not just click right past them and move on to the articles that interest you?
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what a sad, arrested man
[Read the article: I'm married with kids -- and in love with a prostitute]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The most telling detail in this sordid little letter isn't the bit about "sexual nirvana". It isn't the writer's pitiful, delusional belief that his hooker du jour actually considers him a "confidant". No, the detail that tells me everything I need to know about this sad sack is that when he pays for sex with his "sexual dynamo", he doesn't have to worry about "who's picking up whom from school".
Why oh why do arrested adolescents like this have children in the first place? Why do men in love with "lust and longing" choose to make promises to women who will inevitably disappoint them with their inability to measure up to these men's sordid little fantasies? Why start a family when there's a whole universe of women who turn currency into a nice cozy fool's paradise?
There's an old saying that men don't pay hookers for sex, they pay them to go home. It's extremely convenient for the writer to be able to buy what amounts to a disposable sex toy. No muss, no fuss, no carpools! It's both pathetic and amusing how the writer insists that "his" hooker isn't "a typical" whore. (No, really - she's different! Even though I pay her for intimacy, the fact that she gives me what I want is really because of my scintillating personality and charm, not her need for a few extra bucks. She *understands* me!)
But it ceases to be amusing when I consider the facts: this jerk has a family, has responsibilities, has children. He obviously doesn't give a damn that he could be transmitting any number of incurable STDs to his wife, and the fact that he's been engaging in high risk behaviors for an unspecified amount of time tells me that he's not ever likely to quit his exciting habit.
To tell the truth, I think that Cary's advice is a bit off in this case. This guy needs to divorce his wife, who will be infinitely better off without him, and support his children from a distance. That's assuming he has any money left after he's done paying off his immensely sweet, sensitive, atypical whore. It's contemptible to put his wife and family at emotional and physical risk so that he can continue his squalid little double life.