Letters to the Editor
sweet girl
Published Letters: 15 Editor's Choice: 1
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Rosie is a wonderful addition to The View
[Read the article: The Fix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I watched The View occasionally before, but since Rosie arrived I record it and watch it every day. She is smart and funny and brings enthusiasm and important ideas to this daytime talk show. Yes, she talks alot, but what she says is interesting. She also lets other people talk -- I'd bet they talk just as much as they ever did.
There has also been an interesting side effect of Rosie's presence on The View and that is on Elisabeth Hasselback. Because of Rosie's strength, Elisabeth has had to get stronger and smarter and she now makes much more sense when she argues political issues than she did before, when she tended to sputter and speak in half-thoughts. Elisabeth also seems to have much more self-confidence and makes much more interesting contributions to the show than she did when Meredith Viera was the white-bread moderator and let the inane things that Elisabeth said go unchallenged. Now, because Elisabeth knows what she says will be questioned, she thinks things through and speaks coherently. That is the sign of a good ensemble player -- you make those around you look better. This is not a show of shrinking violets, and that is what makes it interesting.
As for Rosie's need to lose weight, yep she does -- so do lots of women (and men). But, honestly, what does that have to do with the price of beans in China? It certainly doesn't have one whit to do with her personality or how she conducts herself on the show. Look at Oprah, for an easy example. She has the same personality when she is big and when she isn't. I like that Rosie is who she is -- a smart, funny, opinionated, entertaining woman who is candid about her personal failings and who has brought wonderful energy and dynamism to The View. Thinking that her personality would change -- and be better -- if she were skinnier is just a reflection of the negative and hostile feelings that many have towards people with weight issues.
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Describing Jews as money-grubbers is a false stereotype used to dehumanize
[Read the article: Not that there's anything wrong with that]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's how Hitler put it:
"Through thousands of years of the closest kind of inbreeding, Jews in general have maintained their race and their peculiarities far more distinctly than many of the peoples among whom they have lived. And thus comes the fact that there lives amongst us a non- German, alien race which neither wishes nor is able to sacrifice its racial character or to deny its feeling, thinking, and striving. Nevertheless, it possesses all the political rights we do. If the ethos of the Jews is revealed in the purely material realm, it is even clearer in their thinking and striving. Their dance around the golden calf is becoming a merciless struggle for all those possessions we prize most highly on earth.
The value of the individual is no longer decided by his character or by the significance of his achievements for the totality but exclusively by the size of his fortune, by his money.
The loftiness of a nation is no longer to be measured by the sum of its moral and spiritual powers, but rather by the wealth of its material possessions.
This thinking and striving after money and power, and the feelings that go along with it, serve the purposes of the Jew who is unscrupulous in the choice of methods and pitiless in their employment. In autocratically ruled states he whines for the favor of "His Majesty" and misuses it like a leech fastened upon the nations. In democracies he vies for the favor of the masses, cringes before the "majesty of the people," and recognizes only the majesty of money.
He destroys the character of princes with byzantine flattery, national pride (the strength of a people), with ridicule and shameless breeding to depravity. His method of battle is that public opinion which is never expressed in the press but which is nonetheless managed and falsified by it. His power is the power of money, which multiplies in his hands effortlessly and endlessly through interest, and which forces peoples under the most dangerous of yokes. Its golden glitter, so attractive in the beginning, conceals the ultimately tragic consequences. Everything men strive after as a higher goal, be it religion, socialism, democracy, is to the Jew only means to an end, the way to satisfy his lust for gold and domination.
In his effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations."
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Stereotyping racial and ethnic groups is destructive and should be avoided
[Read the article: Not that there's anything wrong with that]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Xrandadu Hutman asked a serious question about why stereotyping Jews in terms of their financial skills might be offensive. By quoting Hitler, and pointing out how he used the alleged financial acumen of the Jews as the basis for persecution and annihilation, I was attempting to provide a partial answer to this question.
I accept that Thompson was attempting to be complimentary, but using a stereotype that has been historically used to justify the slaughter of millions is difficult to accept as a compliment. Especially since, as with all stereotypes, it is not accurate about all Jews. It's as if he went in front of a group of African-Americans and said, hey, I'm just like you because I can dance really well and am very good at sports. Yes, on one hand, he might be being complimentary. On the other hand, by painting a complicated and diverse group of people as consisting solely of a one-dimensional stereotype, he would also be being offensive. That is what happened in this case.
Mr. Behrends, your response is the same as saying that there are African Americans who can dance well and who are good at sports, and this truth makes the perpetuation of a stereotype acceptable. It doesn't. It doesn't because stereotypes are demeaning and dehumanizing and don't recognize that every racial and ethnic group is made up of individuals who deserve to be evaluated on their own individual charactistics.