Letters to the Editor
highwayscribery
Published Letters: 5 Editor's Choice: 1
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Bad Press
[Read the article: On Wright, Bill Kristol's wrong again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I blogged Kristol's faux pas at highwayscribery. The next day I saw how "San Diego Union-Tribune" had run the piece without the disclaimer, which, as I had pointed out, made the attack piece pretty flimsy and worthy of journalistic disdain. I contacted the "Trib" and linked to my blog piece, which I sent out to about 200 reporters locally and nationally. The "Trib" agreed to run a correction this morning, which is now posted. The "Trib" claimed "The Times" sent out the clarification under separate cover and that it was all a question of "human error." I contacted the "public editor, Clark Hoyt, at "The New York Times," to confirm what the "The Trib" said. He has not responded yet and may not giving highwayscribery's status as punk blogger. This may seem like nitpicking, but it comes in the shadow of one million extrapolations and tea-leave readings into Barack Obama based upon someone else's speech. My time in newsrooms taught me corrections of this kind are treated with the highest level of seriousness and I doubt thing would be so much laxer that a syndicated mess of a column would go out unflagged. Is it not suspicious or do I have campaign fever and need a break? Does the simple correction the "Trib" ran undo the damage of tens of thousands of San Diegans reading an attack piece premised on a lie? I'm going to try the "Times" from another angle, but maybe you guys think this is worth pursuing.
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What For?
[Read the article: Time columnist: Gore-Obama in '08?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This handwringing about a "meltdown" and "mess" in the Democratic camp is the product of media boredom between primary events and the Clinton group's growing desperation. We had a primary season, Obama sealed the nomination by compiling the most delegates and votes. There is no nightmare scenario, just a split among superdelegates reflecting the dimensions of support for both candidates themselves and a face-off between the senators from Illinois and Arizona in the fall.
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Silly
[Read the article: Why Hillary Clinton should be winning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is a ridiculous "plant" of some sort. It takes the current reality and pulls the rug out from under it as if the Obama strategy would have been the same under a winner-take-all scheme. A brilliant organizer, Obama saw the "eccentricities" (infinitely more democratic in my estimation) of the party primary system and crafted a strategy for winning. In a winner-take-all situation he would clearly have adopted a similar top-down, ham-handed, commercial-driven effort focused on larger states that doomed Clinton's campaign. I don't understand the purpose of this piece other than to lend the Clinton campaign's whining some creedence. The bit about Michigan and Florida is utterly partisan and ignores the fact Ms. Clinton signed the same pledge everybody else did. Shame on "Salon.'
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The blue-collar heroine
[Read the article: How 1968 changed Hillary]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I find it the most interesting development of the campaign that Sen. Clinton is popular in the hollows of West Virginia and rust belt union halls. I was stunned in February when she was given a chance in Virginia because there were so many NASCAR men supporting her. (!) And I've never fully bought into the assumption that the blue collar vote was hers. The Clintons were the first DLCers with their centrism and willingness to sell the working guy/gal down the road with their NAFTA-based trade policies and corporate fundraisers. How do we explain that suddenly the New York senator is champion to those she understood least over the years and vice versa? The possible answer frightens me.
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Aupa Espana
[Read the article: España 2008]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Monkey Pants, you're as gracious as the German squad that failed to kick the ball out of bounds when an opposing player was down. Did it not strike you as odd that Schweinsteiger was dribbling toward a felled man to find out what was wrong? Did you see that at any other time in the tournament?
Sour grapes.
After scoring the most goals and giving up the fewest, after never losing a match and proving that a team can be defensive and attack in the same game, the Spanish side set up a "path of honor" for the losing German side to walk through on their way to the podium.
Torres' goal was a remarkable feat; a triumph of the physical in its beating three different players, and of the refined thanks to that simple flick in the split-second window open to him.
Spain are champions of Europe!