Letters to the Editor
The Professor
Published Letters: 421 Editor's Choice: 26
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Said's legacy
[Read the article: How Edward Said took intellectuals for a ride]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I read "Orientalism" as a young student, I thought it was one of the clearest and most persuasive bits of post-modern scholarship I had ever read, and it continues to influence my thinking, though I work in a different field. As some have noted, Said was essentially inventing a new field of study, and when intellectuals do that there will of course be gaps and inaccuracies identified later. What else do you expect? No one had ever written anything like that before, and you expect him to get it perfect? The entire notion of 'proof' (as wielded in the article's tag line) is abusrd in the field of literary studies. It's proof to point out how there were Orientalists who liked the Orient? That was largely Said's point, not a refutation of it. We love the Other that is largely a figment of our own imaginations. Colonialism wasn't about hatred of the other, but was always framed in the narrative of salvation, the desire to make the other better than it was able to make itself. "Love the sinner, had the sin" crap.
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Out-Bushing Bush?
[Read the article: The last neocon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Does McCain really think that being the candidate who believes that 'total victory in Iraq is possible' will get him far with republican primary voters, not to mention the public at large? Even the majority of republicans believe something has gone very wrong in Iraq, and we shouldn't be there. Whom is he playing to?
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The point...
[Read the article: "Apocalypto"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What's interesting about Apocalyto, as O'Hehir points out, isn't just that it's a good or bad movie, or too violent, but that it is Gibson's umpteenth movie about a hero tortured (nearly) to death for his beliefs. Merits of the movie aside, Gibson's odd obsession is an interesting topic for an essay. The point isn't that it is a bad movie, or violent movies are inherently wrong, but that there is something seriously masochistic about Gibson's world view. Tarantino is simply trying to entertain, while Gibson seems to be working through some deep personal shit on a very public stage.
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Data fetishes
[Read the article: Dobson vs. Cheney]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sometimes data-based 'gotcha' games are a little annoying. Yes, you can spend millions of dollars and 'prove' that children raised in households with engaged, loving fathers are better off, somehow, than children raised in families with abusive/absent/rotten fathers. What a shocker. There are untold variables that play a role in a healthy, happy child, and whether or not one of the parents is good or bad is certainly a biggy, and is entirely irrelevant to the 'question' of same-sex parents. These arguments aren't about what the data show. They are about wheher you think homosexuality is evil or not. The most ridiculous argument put forward by the homophobic right is that it would be better for a child to be raised by a single loving parent than by two loving parents of the same gender. Granted, that's not a choice they want to make, but if you ask them whether Johnny should be raised by two moms or one, they'll pick the one every time.
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belief and pleasure
[Read the article: Seeing the light -- of science]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mostly agree with thinkers like Dawson and Dennet, but one angle they don't get, that I think writers like Armstrong and Numbers do, is that there is pleasure to be had in the 'suspension of disbelief,' and that to deny such pleasures is, well, a bit puritanical. I don't believe in God any more than I believe in Santa, or gnomes, or aliens, but I get the occasional rush of pleasure from letting myself believe in such things, for moments, sitting in my backyard looking at a night sky. That pleasure is an evolutionary endowment, as some have pointed out. It is the pleasure we get from fiction, and movies. What kind of life would we have if we were not allowed to enjoy any idea that did not have substantial scientific evidence to support if?
To those who wonder where Zeus and Odin went, they are both still with us. Zeus became Dios, and Odin/Wotan became Gott, or God. Monotheists didn't reject the entire pagan pantheon, they just picked the most powerful as a keeper (and the pantheon has crept back in: satan, 'the Son,' madonna, archangels, and demons).
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Partition?
[Read the article: Stopping the surge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Along with the other bad ideas being tossed around, no one has said much about partitioning Iraq. If Cheney wants to side with the Shi'a, and the house of Saud wants Sunnis protected, that might indicate splitting Iraq in half. As usual, the Kurds would end up screwed, with a new 'Sunniland' taking up much of northern Iraq in return for giving up Baghdad to Shiastan. It would also please Turkey, which doesn't like the idea of a semi-autonomous Kurdistan to begin with. The two new countries would certainly get along well with each other as we tip-toed away, just like North and South Vietnam did.
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Geopolitically confused
[Read the article: On to Iran?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have a basic confusion about what is happening in Iraq that maybe someone (not Bush) can clear up. We have a major friend in the area (the Saudis) who is bank-rolling the Sunni insurgency, and a major enemy (Iran) who is behind the Shia militia. In the midst of this civil war, however, we claim the Sunnis are the primary bad guys and want more troops to support the Shia government. We go on to chide Iran for 'meddling' in Iraq's internal affairs (cuz only we get to do that), though they support the same side that we do, and say nothing about the Saudis, who are supporting those we have identified as the enemy. Help?
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Another AG
[Read the article: The Alberto Gonzales School of Constitutional Interpretation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Who would have predicted nostalgia for Janet Reno? She was clearly the *nation's* attorney general, not the private defense attorney of the president. In fact, she spent much of her time at logger-heads with Clinton. It's impossible to imagine Gonzales (or his predecessor) overseeing an investigation of the president, as Reno had to do over and over again.