Letters to the Editor
Susan Wood
Published Letters: 379 Editor's Choice: 27
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He SHOULD resign -- from the GOP.
[Read the article: CNN: Craig resignation may be imminent]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Then he should declare himself either an independent or a Democrat, start caucusing with the Dems, and run for re-election as a Dem. He won't stand the chance of a meatball in a dog pound, of course, but he could make all sorts of good, wholesome trouble for the Republicans in the next year and a half. And in his speech declaring his decision he should come out of the closet, apologize to the many gay people he has directly or indirectly harmed with gay-baiting rhetoric and an anti-gay voting record, and promise that he's finished with that sort of behavior. But he should remind his constituency that a man of his age was raised to understand that if he was gay, he must deny it, must pretend to be straight, and must prove his heterosexual bona fides by attacking gays and declaring his revulsion at every possible opportunity. He should go on to say that he is a Republican because he believes in fiscal responsibility, not bedroom policing, but he said what he needed to in order to get elected, and now deeply regrets it. And then he should meet the Dem leaders and hit the ground running.
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Jim, that's one of the things that really drives them nuts.
[Read the article: Thompson pollster on Craig: Let's talk about Hillary]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hillary stood by her man instead of divorcing him. She was supposed to divorce him so that conservatives could jeer and point fingers at both of them for a marriage that failed. But they stayed together. So obviously there was only one possible explanation: Hillary was staying with him out of raw ambition, and it was outrageous, despicable that she should do so!
Well, I can see why the party of Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Dole, Ronald Reagan and many other divorced or twice-divorced pols might think that staying married is worse than splitting up, but just how is that a "traditional family value?"
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A governor named Butch?
[Read the article: Craig to resign Saturday]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's just too perfect. For a party that's obsessed with phoney masculinity and terrified to death of sexual ambiguity, I can't think of a better name. There are a lot of rude jokes just begging to be made about this.
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And one might also add that conservatives tend to assume a man is guilty even after proven innocent.
[Read the article: Thomas Sowell offers superb Exhibit of the Right-wing Mind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know it's a low tactic to invoke Ann Coulter, since she embodies the mindless worst of the authoritarian mind set. But when the convicted attackers of the Central Park Jogger were cleared, both by DNA and by the confession of the actual attacker, she was livid with rage. Those "animals" had raped a woman and left her for dead! How dare the liberal namby-pamby system let them go just because of evidence to the contrary? She ended her rant with a blast at the science of DNA evidenc, dismissing it as nothing but propaganda for the anti-death-penalty movement. Even for an evolution-denier, that is breathtaking.
A few months after 9/11, as you may recall, a couple of young Muslim students were briefly detained by police after an excitable waitress overheard a snatch of their conversation out of context and took it to refer to a bomb plot. Specifically, I believe that one of them said " . . . I can get enough to bring it down," and her imagination filled in the words "TNT" and "building." He was actually talking about raising enough money to have someone drive his car down to the Southern university where he was studying. In fairness to the waitress, these were the days when Bush and Ashcroft were urging all Americans to be Afraid, Very Very Afraid, and vigilantly on the alert for Suspicious Behavior. But in any case, after the students were questioned, their car searched, and the whole thing dismissed as a misunderstanding, our Annie was convinced that they must have done SOMETHING. Maybe they were purposely playing a prank on the waitress by pretending to talk about terrorism? Good enough, lock 'em up and deport 'em.
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Well, that was what his Daddy said, wasn't it, after making a total fool of himself in the debate with Geraldine Ferraro?
[Read the article: Bush on Iraq: "We're kicking ass"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So of course Lil'Shrubby thought that was what a manly man says when he wants to claim a win. Of course, both Georges, father and son, actually made of themselves what they claimed to have kicked.
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How many Patrick Henry graduates
[Read the article: Jesus is my dorm advisor]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]have enlisted to serve in Iraq?
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Jef, it's not about rational thought.
[Read the article: Losing bin Laden]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's about instinctive human reactions to fear of death. The New Republic had an excellent cover story on this a couple of weeks ago. Psychological studies have shown a definite corrolation between awareness of mortality (asking experimental subjects a few pointed questions about what they expect to experience during/after death, e.g.) and their tendency to express trust in a leader, as well as patriotic sentiments and intolerance toward "outsiders" of any sort. In times of crisis, we'll rally around whatever leader we've got, no matter how dismally Following the alpha male is a primate survival instinct, and it obviously kept enough of our ancestors alive long enough to breed. (The ones with incompetent alpha males Darwined themselves, of course, but we're descended from the ones who lucked out). So when Bush and Giuliani remind us of 9/11 every chance they get, they know exactly what they're doing. And so does Osama (or whoever impersonates him in that forthcoming video), because Al Qaeda has a way of releasing their videos every time they think it will help Bush stay in power. Now, that ought to tell us something, doesn't it? Not that Bush is working for them intentionally, of course, but that they know a good cat's-paw when they see one?
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Remember that the first two panels of a Sunday strip are throwaways
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]because a lot of newspapers don't print them, depending on space available. So cartoonists learn not to put anything in them that's crucial to your understanding the punch line. If the first two panels here seem unnecessary, it's because they are.