Letters to the Editor
pacificwhim
Published Letters: 201 Editor's Choice: 37
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Wow.
[Read the article: Does self-help breed helplessness?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks, guys.
Funny thing, I've had people want me to ghost memoirs. One was/is a prominent religious figure who went through a huge personal transformation, very dramatic. It's not actually an uncommon thing. There are people with amazing life stories who can't write a lick.
Laura, your mother in law sounds like a classic case. Seligman, David Bach, Dr. Gary Small and others are legitimate experts in their fields (psych, finance and aging, respectively) and self-help authors like them have a lot to say. It's the people with no credentials who are dangerous. Typically, the ones I see are professional salespeople who conjure up some "program" of "steps" to help their suckers--er, readers meet some nebulous goal that can't really be measured, so there's no way to hold them accountable.
I wrote a real estate book a few years back for a great guy in Florida, and in it we debunked all the lies the "make a fortune with no money down" guys tell their dollar-sign-in-the-eyes pupils. It's a huge scam. One guy I interviewed told me he asked one of the top names in the real estate boot camp business how his big weekend workshop went and his only answer was, "Well, all the checks cleared." That's the mindset you're dealing with.
I've written two self-help books I can recommend in the last year, small books that are being self-published by their authors, but whose message I totally get behind. You can tell the thrust of the content by their titles. One is "Change Sucks, Get Over It" by Butch Nicholson, and the other is "It Just Might Be You" by Chip Eichelberger. Both come at the subject from a novel viewpoint for this business: changing your life is hard, expect some pain, expect some work, if you want to get out of where you are, put on your big girl panties and deal with it. I'm not getting any share of sales of either book, but if you want to see the kind of empowerment message that should be getting more attention, instead of simple-minded garbage like "The Secret," buy those books.
In general, if you come across self-help material that's not 100% sunshiny and positive, tells it like it is, isn't afraid to tell you, "this won't all be fun and games," treats you like an intelligent person and expects you to work and sacrifice to see results, odds are it's worth buying. The rest is just typeset robbery. By the way, read the book “Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America helpless” by Steve Salerno.
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Everybody sing!
[Read the article: We almost forgot!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Happy birthday to you...
Happy birthday to you...
You've brought our constitutional democracy to the brink of collapse with your innumerable violations of domestic and international law and rampant acts of power-mad corruption...
Happy birthday to you!
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WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE?
[Read the article: Webb amendment blocked]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Combine this with the story about Bush telling Congress to go screw itself when it comes to having Harriet Miers testify and you get the picture. As a previous LW wrote, Bush and Cheney don't give one ripe shit about the will of the American people, the rule of law, the Constitution or the powers of the legislative branch. They care only about absolute authoritarian power and the ability to wield it without limit.
What in hell is it going to take for us to impeach these monsters???? We're like a battered wife who forgives her abusive husband after he beats the living crap out of her for the 92nd time. Eventually, he's going to kill her, but by then it's too late for her to get the message.
It should be clear by now that Bush and Cheney have no intention of letting themselves be influenced by anyone or anything but their own inner circle, their neocon ideologues and their corporate pimps. The ONLY prayer we have is to impeach, and when the verdict comes back to convict, Nancy Pelosi, as commander in chief, can order the Marines to remove these psychopaths from the White House forcibly.
I ask again: WHAT'S IT GOING TO TAKE? How long will be be Bush's bitch, Congress?
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Plenty of "real" poker out there
[Read the article: Requiem for a poker game]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This piece takes a histrionic tone that's simply not called for. There's plenty of old-school poker going on; just avoid the splashy tournaments at the Palms and the Rio, fahchrissakes. At smaller casinos on Fremont Street in Vegas, at card clubs in L.A. and in poker rooms in places like Reno and Carson City, you can find plenty of old timers who smell like Luckies and play the old fashioned way: to have fun and maybe win a few bucks. I learned how to play from my dad and I've played with the old codgers and the young web-geeks, and I'd rather play with the codgers anytime. Even if you get your clock cleaned, you walk away from the table having met some great characters.
Mr. Burton, step away from the WSOP. Saying poker's being ruined by Internet players is like saying baseball's been ruined by Barry Bonds when there are hundreds of great minor league teams playing. Poker's just dandy, thank you.
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Say it ain't so, Joe
[Read the article: Quote of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even Joe "GOP Kneepads" Leiberman won't step to the plate to stick up for poor, poor 'berto? Man, that's sad when your favorite lapdog won't even give you a lick. Joe must be off waxing Cheney's car or polishing Bush's knob or something else equally obsequious for him to miss a butt-kissing opportunity like this one.