Letters to the Editor
softdog
Published Letters: 186 Editor's Choice: 8
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The answer to the headline is: Yes, and why are you making excuses for this guy?
[Read the article: Does Huckabee believe wives should "graciously submit" to their husbands?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was stunned to read all the dumbass equivocation by Catherine Price for Mike Huckabee, which play right into the "women vote feelings not issues" stereotype.
She implies his odious politics are balanced a jokey band name which reuses a Chuck Norris meme which is years old. If Price thinks that is Daily Show quality humor, she's pathetic - I'll bet she'd be amazed by that list of wacky Chinese translations of movie titles.
Then she writes this incredibly dishonest response to the fact Huckabee signed a statement agreeing with the SBC: "Who knows where Huckabee really stands on what the relationship between men and women should be..." Oh bullshit. Everyone knows, Catherine, BECAUSE HE MADE A PUBLIC STATEMENT THAT HE SUPPORTS IT.
This is the sort of craven hedging and phony objectivity Glenn Greenwald dissects on a daily basis. Huckabee signed a misogynist statement and Price pretends there's a gray area.
The man has said AIDS victims should have been rounded up in quarentine. He is openly homophobic. He's against choice. He demanded the parole of a serial rapist based on anti-Clinton rumors. He is a right wing extremist and jokes don't matter.
The real issue here is Catherine Price's motives in writing this. Is there some bias which informs her pretending there's uncertainty about Huckabee's open statements, or is she just that shallow? A blogger or columnist with integrity would be honest about this, with the audience and herself.
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It's not better if you make it bigger
[Read the article: Kansas O'Flaherty ... Secret Agent]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maybe they will have corrected this error later, but at the time I read it the strip was 966 X 1588 pixels, making it so big even one panel was off the edges of my browser. Since this isn't true for any other toon, the problem is the image file, not my browser. It's like KO'F finds a new way to be inadequate every week. Again, don't care about what is going on because there's no real characters or plot and, now that they strained puns and references have evaporated, no humor or camp style. Just tiny notes of whimsy which make Funky Cancerbean seem like a farce in comparison.
Again, as many others have said, the pages of Salon is not the place to publish someone's half-assed attemt to learn cartooning when thousands of polished and professional strips are available.
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How do you define a few drops as a Shit Storm?
[Read the article: I now pronounce you ... selfish and condescending?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Carol LLyod writes "But talk about stirring up a marital shit storm! Outraged readers call Eslinger about every name in the book -- pompous, selfish, clueless, condescending, adolescent, rigid, unconvincing, infuriating, weak, ignorant, annoying, presumptuous and stupid -- to repeat but a few."
As of the time Carol's post went live. The Newsweek essay had a total of 20 comments.
8 praised the ariticle, 9 opposed it and 3 were blank or repeats. Two of the negative responses read like they were the same person.
This doesn't qualify as a shit storm in my book, but a near even split.
Maybe Lloyd exaggerates the response to make her own essay more interesting (not necessary, it could stand on its own).
Or maybe she's conflating the overall uproar when marriage is questioned with this particular essay.
Either way, such hyperbole irritates me, especially when it's made part of the thesis. It verges on outrage mining. She says the essay "doesn't seem terribly radical" even as she's priming people to read it in a state of agitation.
This strikes me as dishonest treatment of a thoughtful essay. I'm sure in a few hours there might be a real shit storm in the comments, but this will Lloyd will have been the one of the instigators, not the observers.
It depresses me, because this type of dishonest drama-mongering undermines a valid argument against weddings.
I don't really see how this rhetorical trick is different from Jerry Springer/Faux News style sensationalism.
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The "Legal" is no justification
[Read the article: I now pronounce you ... selfish and condescending?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the one error the essay writer made was not mentioning the legal steps she's taken, because this opened the door for traditionalists to make bad-faith arguments for marriage.
Given common law marriage and civil partner regulations in Californal, it's pretty much a given she can obtain many legal benefits of marriage without a wedding, and cover others with contracts and wills. This includes agreements about child support and custody.
The fact is, with civil partnerships and other measures being offered up in response to the gay marriage debate, there is increasingly no legal reason to get married beyond a tax break, and even this has eroded.
This is why homophobes and theocrats include anti-civil union language in anti-gay marriage legislation. Their goal is not only to block gay unions, it's to restore a questionable legal force to traditional meanings of marriage.
I think a more just society would reduce marraige to purely symbolic status. Separating the legal obligations of partnership and parenting wouldn't kill the institution, but it would remove a great deal of the baggage and undeserved moral power.
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Even if he let her in, it's okay for both to show her the door.
[Read the article: My partner is being stalked by a trolling MILF]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I still think there's room for telling her to back off.
Yes the boyfriend is the one who didn't draw boundaries and even invited the attention, so he's the one who needs to reinforce them. If he's finding this difficult it's because allowing someone to cross the line is a passive act, but getting them to back off requires direct confrontation. When you're passively letting someone come on to you, everyone can pretend nothings going on - when you have to actively reject them, it then becomes hard to tell the stalker to stop what hasn't been acknowledged.
So she may be baiting the girlfriend to come between them and now refusing to get the message until it is explicit. In the former case, it is proper for the letter writer to let her know she isn't welcome, if he's made aware of the problem and will back her up. Then she isn't in the position of wronged woman, but part of a couple ditching an unwanted intruder.
If the professional relationship is a concern there are professional, and if necessary, legal ways to impose limits.