Letters to the Editor
warrior dowager
Published Letters: 25 Editor's Choice: 2
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American President or American Idol?
[Read the article: The Oprah Winfrey show]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Seems that bread and circuses have finally entered the presidental race.
Yes Obama is charismatic, but will vision carry him through the daily realities of being President? Trade negotiations? Borders?
Tangled strands of Middle Eastern cultures?
Military solutions vs political or economic or
cultural approaches? Or already established contacts with international leaders?
Does Obama have the grasp of international history and politics? Has he already talked eye to eye with foreign leaders as Hillary has?
What is most troubling in Bush is that he has no grasp of the spectrum of international issues.
Charm is not going to steer Obama through those
most important and delicate negotiations.
One writer noted that Mrs.Obama will be the most
gracious first lady since Jackie Kennedy. This is not the Easter Parade.
No, Hillary's answers may seem to be dodging
questions, but it could just as well be that she is processing her answer through her depth of experience that produces no simple, clear cut answers.
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Camille with spite and malice
[Read the article: Hillary without tears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I ask you, how many male politicians would be submitted to such a dissection of someone against whom Paglia is openly biased. This is not
commentary it is a hatchet job. Would you were important enough to rouse someone to give you the same insults.
Think what you will, but cap your quill,
Camille. What Camille says about Hillary says
more about Camille than it does about Hillary.
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We are Lined with Eyes
[Read the article: A penny for your deepest thoughts]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The enteraction of people has changed with
the comeing of tv, air conditioning, a more
scattered population.
TV silenced families who listened to the figures on the screen, and air conditioning
drove people off the porch.
The "how was your day?" over coffee
was ritual in my parents' house hold. Enter TV
and the first question might be, "Did John
give her the ring?" "What happened in, not to,
"All My Children?"
People sat on the porch and spoke to neighbors passing by or walked over to speak to neighbors on their porches.
People did not move around so much and
neighbors bonded, often for an entire adult life.
Friendships moved easy in harness.
The content of talk among visitors fifty years ago was not so full of intimate topics and problems. There was a cozy and comfortable
bond, but also a distance that people inherintly
deleniated.
People today often have nobody to talk with.
Families scatter. Neighbors come and go. There is nobody close enough to hash out problems so
one mulls over them alone of lays a dollar down to bond with a therapist. People on subways do
not make eye contact. People have become more
individualized.
Little wonder we are lined with eyes.
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Obama and the Bobby Sox
[Read the article: Young voters are stoked]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Unless the young voters who flock to Obama had a sound course or two in political science, Obama has the charisma to woo high school and college students.
They know the Obama is smart, charming, in charge in a laid back way.
But does smart, charming, and in charge Obama
equate with experience, education, years of hands on and head to head politics on a much wider scale?
However lithe and charming and youthful Obama may be, to go eye to eye and toe to toe with the
most powerful, most schooled, most cosmopolitan
leaders in the world is not an inherent part of who he is as he aspires to the most powerful job in the world.
Charm and native intelligence and even a Harvard educaiton will only go so far. Experience, judgment, connections, mastery of various cultures, acquaintance with many foriegn nations and their leaders,experiening the unrelenting exhaustion of world travel, how to interact with a host of people who assist him daily.
Hillary knows all that already. People may say that she is not young enough, strong enough,
too often embroiled in her husband's pecadilos,
many different approaches to managing and leading.
Better a tough old bird than a fledgling.
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Pulling out the Big Guns
[Read the article: Pulling out the big guns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ophra is a big gun in some sense, but her sights have never been calibrated for baqging the Presidency.
This won't be a casting call in November and one can only hope that Ophra's constituency can tell the difference.
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Move in Obama
[Read the article: MoveOn endorses Obama]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If Move On endorses Obama,how many people who
are not in accord with Obama will divert their
support to Hillary? Or how disaffected Republicans who are exploring the Democrats will lean toward Hillary as a more seasoned candidate? Or perhaps some first time voters will
be drawn to Hillary as a solid politician,
not Obama.
Move On can be a mixed, very mixed, blessing.
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Theeer She Is Miss.....
[Read the article: Young voters are stoked]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Could this enthusiasm be akin to the Academy
Awards or Miss America or the Sugar Bowl or the Super Bowl?
Late adolescents can get pretty stirred up about
any number of things.
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Hillary/Obama
[Read the article: Don't call Oprah a "traitor"!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Experience in these troubled times trumps
charisma every time,
We got a cowboy. Do we need a rock star?
This is not American Idol, people.
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Ophra
[Read the article: Don't call Oprah a "traitor"!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I was an undergraduate in a small liberal arts college, a senior flung open the Tea Room doorcame and exclaimed to the students reading mail and drinking coffee or tea,
"I have been comPLEATLY TRANSPORTED!!"
I myself was worshiping at the feet of the lecturer but I kept my course and never wavered from the history of the Confederate Navy.
My classmate went on to become a church organist, so evidently his North Star may have looked on tempests--and was shaken.
Many voters today are comPLEATLY TRANSPORTED!!
But after the high subsides, will Ophra have made chosen a person with years of experience on this perilous and dangerus planet?
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What the US needs
[Read the article: Mike Huckabee wins first Super Tuesday contest ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is many many many T shirts with
Article 6 of the Declaration of Independence
emblazoned on them. Or maybe tatooed on
the palm of everybody's hand.