Letters to the Editor
mamelin
Published Letters: 4
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Really - Anderson Cooper
[Read the article: Blowhard 360]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What is this fact-free rant about, exactly? And what is it doing in the War Room, and not in The Fix? Is it so awful to take the oppportunity to discuss disease and starvation in Africa, even if it's with a famous slightly-weird movie star? Isn't the crime Michael Scherer accuses Anderson Cooper of exactly the kind of thing Larry King or Charlie Rose commit every night? I'm no Cooperite - in fact, I'm Aaron Brownian, if anything - but this tirade smacks of slow news day - and a day North Korea plans to test a nuclear missile ain't no slow news day.
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Does anybody else feel this cynical?
[Read the article: Quote of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Isn't it becoming obvious that we're being groomed by the media to think of John McCain as the next POTUS? Similarly, aren't all the articles declaiming about the Democratic Party's lack of positions just an excuse not to talk to individual Democrats, some of whom really do have ideas? These headlines about McCain's pronouncements seem to assume a Presidentiality - - if that's the word - - that he doesn't yet deserve, and give him the imprimateur of media approval that has previously been awarded to George the Horrible. The news about the New York Times's holding back of messages damaging to Republicans, not to mention its hounding of Bill Clinton (it seems like a lifetime ago), while putting the lie to left-wing bias, also is causing me some little despair about the possibility of change in this country.
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Enough.
[Read the article: Maf54 (8:08:31 PM): Get a ruler and measure it for me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know the Republicans do this sort of thing all the time, but the Arkansas Project is over. There's plenty of things to razz our crummy President about without making things up, joke or no.
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I love and admire Bergman's work.
[Read the article: Remembering Bergman]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's what I don't love about a lot of the posts here - both in the letters above and, often, in the tone of some of Salon's critics (not O'Hehir, for the most part): I can hear in them the sound of two arms folding.
Soon after, out come the Paglian tropes about snobbery - so quick, and so predictable, and so self-satisfied. They all really mean "I have nothing to learn from anybody!" - the yelp of the true snob. "Look! I care nothing for the sacred cow! I smash her! I smash her!"
I can say that that "Cries and Whispers" and "Wild Strawberries" and "Fanny and Alexander", among others, have made my life richer and more interesting. And I have had good conversations about these films, and these led to observations from those I talked with about life that moved and sometimes surprised me.
Maybe one of the above jeerers at the funeral is right - maybe "most people" don't care about Bergman, and would all post here their indifference to his death, and sneer at his mourners, were they to read to the end of O'Hehir's encomium. I can't be bothered to try to convince people who hold so much contempt to open their minds. It's no shame to fold your arms suspiciously, though it's no honor either.
But for those who haven't seen a Bergman film in years, or who might never have seen one, and are willing, I say this: like any great artist, Bergman only gives to you if you open yourself up to an artistic experience. But what he offers then is really quite amazing.