Letters to the Editor
Gwool
Published Letters: 330 Editor's Choice: 39
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Did Reagan win the Cold War
[Read the article: Did Reagan win the Cold War?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was with Laura Miller, until such time as she chose to make the following claim:
Gaddis also assures us that Reagan had "long worried about the danger of nuclear war," which is hard to reconcile with the infamous incident (unmentioned in "The Cold War") during which, on live radio, Reagan joked that he had "outlawed Russia" and "we begin bombing in five minutes." This was one of several chilling indications the president gave that he had a somewhat tenuous grasp on the reality of the threat in the early 1980s.,/i>
That statement suggests Ms. Miller was not even a young adult when all that was taking place. Reagan's joke was not on live radio, rather it was as he was warming up for his national address and made a joke not knowing the Microphone was on. No one with any semblence of reasonableness back then considered it an ominous statement.
Had Ms. Miller waxed pedantic about Reagan's calling the Soviet Union the Evil Empire, she might have had more legitimacy, as that was, indeed, a comment of concern from the Gipper.
I heard Vernon Walters, Reagan's NSA chief, speak about what was going on back then in the early 1990s. (Or at least in Walters' admittedly biased view.) According to Walters, Reagan asked early on how we could beat the Soviet Union. The response back was economically. They had more military apparatus, but we had the superior economic engine. As such, through Star Wars we sought to outspend them. Pushing them into an arms race meant they sacrificed more consumer goods destabilizing their own country through this planned imposition of greater economic hardship on their citizenry.
All politicians have gaffes. Recently we had Bush and Cheney on a podium. Bush commented about what a jerk a specific reporter was to which Cheney replied "Big Time." Here's hoping an adolescent from this generation does not opine a quarter of century later that such an off-the-cuff incident was somehow representative of the ensuing administration and their actions.
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Writers, Quit Whining?
[Read the article: Writers, quit whining]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Something about Mr. Keillor's column rubbed me the wrong way. He is seemingly dismissive of that which he does for a living. While I will admit Mr. Keillor is correct to assert that writing is not as difficult as many will purport, it still is extremely difficult to make a living at it.
Of this I know whereof I speak. I, too, can bang out a column in little more than a half an hour and zap it off to an editor. I can play Erma Bombeck on steroids, or I can wax pedantic about matters political. My column; my choice. By sending that puppy right around deadline, I generally guarantee it is not edited for content given my political leanings and those of the newspaper are not necessarily in synch. It also means some of my twisted syntax sees the light of day and makes me whince. It won't make be do two drafts, but it will make me whince.
For you see, said columns only earn me $35 a submission which also makes me whince. That sure as hell does not cover the mortgage or college tuition years of which I am firmly ensconsed at the moment. Three teenaged boys and a princess-in-waiting leave many mouths to feed and minds to educate.
So, Mr. Keillor, I think you need to sit back and look at just how lucky you are. You get to write for a living. I get to do it for a hobby while trying to figure out how to leverage myself from my little collection of weekly rags (some might say weakly rags) into a position more financially remunerative such that I can exit the consulting industry and still feed my family and cover my mortgages.
Newspapers today thrash around in their own tar pits heading the way of the dinosaur as organizations such as Salon siphon away subscribers. Any nitwit can adjust their tin foil helmet, fire up a Blog, and ruminate on the evils of the Trilateral commission and delude themselves into thinking they are writers.
So speak of that, Mr. Keillor. How did you finagle people into paying for your words? Therein lies the secret, and therein lies the incredible difficulty of becoming a writer. At 47 I am running out of runway to get this Spruce Goose of a professional career off the ground. At my age, sleeping my way to the top just is not in the cards unless I set about to write an AARP newsletter for an editor who likes her paramour on the chubby side, but that would most assuredly stifle my creativity and probably compel me to drink.
Sincerely
Geoffrey Woollacott
gwoollacott@cs.com