Letters to the Editor
Garry Owen
Published Letters: 2821 Editor's Choice: 151
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"you lefties"?
[Read the article: Destination: Mexico]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"odd that you lefties at salon would present a guide to the literature of mexico that mentions only 3 mexican authors..."
Oh crap, here we go again.
The concept for the "literary guide" started innocently enough. The editor said, "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a travel guide devoted not to restaurants, hotels and museums, but to the literature of a place? ...
"the Guide promises to recommend the best books -- fiction, history, memoir or otherwise -- to take with you on your travels. ... the Literary Guide will point you to the books that offer the best virtual tours around."
But that's not good enough for a few elitist snobs who wandered into this feature site and immediately started bitching about there not being enough indiginous authors to suit them.
From day one they came here with their snotty, dismissive psudo-intellectual dismissal of other people's taste. They are incensed that no one has delved deep enough to find their favorite author among the recommened.
So instead of just writing a nice letter saying, "I would like to include my favorite Mexican/Chinese/Dutch author among your recommendations, they are compelled to shit on the editor: "How dare you be so stupid and zenophobic as to not recommend MY favorite, you stupid LEFTIES."
Never mind that HIS favorite is written in native Nauruan and badly translated if at all, and it might take you a year or more to find a copy in a rare book store.
Then there was the conceited snob who huffed that she had spent more time in (insert country name here) than the travel writer who had the audacity to recommend anything when after all, SHE is the true expert and nobody should recommend any book about a place unless they understood the local culture as deeply as SHE does.
This feature was started not as the complete graduate-level bibliography of world literature, but as a quick guide to a book or two you might like to read while jammed into your 24" wide airline seat on a 20-hour flight to South Africa.
Lighten up.
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I'll tell you who has "no idea" you raving lunatic!
[Read the article: Destination: Mexico]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Read my letter slugged "you lefties" below.
You'd need a step ladder to get down off your high horse and you don't even have the guts to sign your own name.
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Sue 'em, sue the hell out of them
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The very fact that Eckard's has devoted pages and pages of their employee handbook to this very topic of low-level employees using bad judgement and making wrongful accusations is constructive evidence in writing that they were aware of a problem with their staff making mistakes on this issue for a long, long time before this incident and that they knowingly and recklessly failed to properly supervise this particular photo clerk.
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Upgrade to "Plus" for $44 per seat
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's the most expensive real estate in the sky? The five inches of pitch you can buy on TED, UA's low-cost carrier. I haven't flown anywhere in years until recently so I was nervous about doing the whole transaction on line. When it came time to select seats, I ran smack into United Airlines latest game. The entire cabin forward of exit rows over the wings of the Airbus 320 were blocked out. But, the website informed me, that I could improve my forced stress position on a four hour flight considerably if I wanted to buy an upgrade to economy "plus." And so I gamely gave United another $100-plus to make my family a little more comfortable.
At the gate, we passed by the chilled display cases offering salads and sandwiches to take on board, figuring that the $5 "snack box" would be just as good as a $9 chicken salad sandwich.
As we boarded, I had to chase three young and very aromatic hippies out of the seats I had purchased. In fact, United's brilliant marketing campaign had failed to include a memo to flight attendents who were quite busy that morning evicting squatters from the "plus" section upon the complaints of the "upgraded."
As soon as the door closed and the ramp pulled away, a Stew came on the claxton and said "Ok, anybody who has been eyeing a better seat, now's the time to do it. Suddenly I felt like one of the characters in an old Warner Bros. cartoon whose head turns into a giant sucker with a bow around his neck. I played by the rules, bought the upgrade, and now all those people who didn't were sprinting for the empty upgrade seats.
I plan to ask for my money back. I won't hold my breath.
As the drinks cart came down the isle, I pulled out a wad of one dollar bills and bought the snack boxes for my family. As I opened it, the cartoon sucker head reappeared between my shoulders. This was nothing but a box full of barely digestable snacks you could get at any 7-Eleven. There was a small packet of beef jerky, a little packet of corn chips and a plastic tub of salsa, an envelope with some trail mix (without peanuts of course) and a single greasy Mrs. Fields' chocolate chip cookie.
To add to the fun on the Friendly Skies this trip, the movie was "The Shaggy Dog" both on the outbound and the return flights.
I just wonder what flying on United would be like if they used their ingenuity to come up with ways to make all passengers more comfortable instead of thinking up more schemes to jiggle a few more dollars out of their weary, bleary, hapless victims.