Letters to the Editor
Susan Wood
Published Letters: 379 Editor's Choice: 27
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Great way to promote America's image as a liberator
[Read the article: Abortion under siege in Mississippi]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not only is this report scary for American women, but I shudder to think what will happen when Al Jazeera gets hold of that footage of Koran desecration, and those T-shirts that say "Islam is a lie." Not that anyone in the Middle East was taking Karen Hughes seriously anyway, when she babbled her happy talk about how nice life is in America for everyone including Moslems. But what little honor we have left to lose in the Islamic world will certainly be tarnished by this display of Islam-bashing. The good news is that it's probably not possible for most Moslems to hate America more than they already do after the ham-fisted Iraq occupation, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and the black site prisons.
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The sky in THIS universe is blue
[Read the article: Unfamiliar taste of victory]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Did some of the other letter writers really read this article? And did they see Colin McEnroe's earlier article about how Lieberman has gradually lost the support of his constituents over the years? He of all people knows there was more to this race than Iraq. But I think the headline "Lieberman Loses" was appropriate and important, because that's the news that's jolting complacent incumbents nationwide this morning.
Susan Wood
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The honor and dignity of the Oval Office
[Read the article: The path to Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So, which President has higher moral principles, Clinton or Bush? When Clinton was nailed dead to rights in a lie, he admitted it and apologized. At the time it didn't seem he had any other option, so no one gave him high marks for moral standards for doing it. But now we know that he could have just gone on lying in his teeth and trying to confuse the record, the way Bush has done. So I think the choice is clear as to which of them has a sense of morality and which one is so grandiose and deluded that he has lost his moral compass altogether.
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Au contraire, Tracy!
[Read the article: Overly fit and underfed]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The fashion page is THE ideal place to print this information. Look at it this way, who needs to see it more -- the kind of woman who wants to slip into a designer size-4 dress, or the kind of woman who reads the health page?
Sue
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I'll still take Webb any day over Allan.
[Read the article: Allen on race, Webb on women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This may surprise you, but a lot of women who consider themselves feminists, myself included, happen to agree that it's not a good idea to have women in combat. We're not dealing here with stereotypes about character and emotion, but with some very basic, intractable facts of biology. Women, on average, are smaller, less muscular, and slower on their feet. Granted, there are some exceptions. You'd probably rather have Venus Williams in your foxhole than a man who's about as physically fit as I am. But we're talking norms and averages here. And one thing I have in common with Venus Williams is that I can't pee, you should pardon the expression, standing up. That may sound trivial, but think how it slows down an army on the march if half the soldiers need those few extra minutes to relieve themselves. When I was younger, another thing I shared with Venus was the possibility of getting pregnant. Obviously, a pregnant soldier can't fight, and let's face it -- human nature in a co-ed situation is human nature. Mr. Webb's remark about "horny women" may have been unfortunate, but it meets the true definition of a political gaffe, in that he inadvertently told the truth a bit too bluntly.
Susan Wood
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metaphor
[Read the article: Quote of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the metaphor Tim has in mind is Bush -- a jalopy with a lot of power that Cheney drives, but not very skillfully. The War on Terror is the cliff over which he is busy driving the old jalopy.
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Context is everything
[Read the article: Jim Webb on "towel-heads and rednecks"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Oh puleese. Are we so politically correct these days that we can't tell the difference between an epithet that's used with quotation marks around it and one that isn't? Webb was obviously describing the mindset of people who use pejorative epithets, not using them in his own voice. Quoting people who are in turn quoting someone else, and presenting the statement as though it were the speaker's own opinion, is a tactic beloved of people like Ann Coulter, and that's the level on which this kind of criticism takes place.
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They're ready.
[Read the article: About those exit polls]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If by some strange chance the official voting results should differ strikingly from the exit polls, in favor of the Republican candidates, I have no doubt that Ann Coulter et. al. already have their commentaries written up and ready for publication. Remember how in 2004, Coulter's instant reaction to the strange discrepancy between exit polls and official results was a full-screech attack on the liberal press for supposedly deliberately skewing the exit polls?
Yeah, right. It wouldn't convince poll watchers in a third world country, but they may just pull it off here, after we've spent 6 years passively letting a Fascist putsch destroy the Constitution.
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Haven't we seen this movie before?
[Read the article: "I'm guilty of sexual immorality," Haggard tells his flock]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Haggard isn't the only gay man who had regular conference calls and visits to the White House; remember Jeff Gannon/Guckert? I'd like to see the sign-in/sign-out sheets for Haggard as well, and to ask a few hard questions if the sign-outs don't match the same day's sign-ins. Let's also not forget that Haggard's New Life church isn't the only place that tends to remind one of Village People and the 70's disco aesthetic; what about Bush's Top Gun photo ops, in his revealing flight suit, looking for all the world like a homerotic love object? The whole Republican cult of machismo looks to me a lot like suppressed homosexual panic.
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Flight suit
[Read the article: "I'm guilty of sexual immorality," Haggard tells his flock]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hornet Driver, don't pretend to be naive. Bush never needed to wear a flight suit for his "Mission Accomplished" folly, because he didn't need to arrive by fighter jet. He could easily have taken a helicopter; the ship was in San Diego harbor, for heaven's sake, although they turned it around for the cameras so that Bush could have open sea behind him for the Mother of All Photo Ops. The only reason for the jet was so he could make a Tom Cruise entrance -- in a flight suit.