Letters to the Editor
Susan Wood
Published Letters: 379 Editor's Choice: 27
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Now, let's not pile on.
[Read the article: A bad day for Rudy Giuliani]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't like Giuliani much better than most of you, but anyone who's under a lot of physical and mental stress and spends a lot of time shaking hands with strangers in crowded halls could catch flu at this time of year. Judge not lest ye be the next one to wake up with aches and pains and fever and chills.
That said, this could be the excuse Rudy needs to make a graceful exit. His prostate cancer was quite real, and a legitimate cause for concern, but it did give him the same graceful out in 2000. We'll see if he takes it or not.
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Was there a strategically placed lamp just behind his head, making a halo?
[Read the article: This is not an attack]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Or by any chance some sort of white objects behind his shoulders that could suggest wings, like Lady Tottenham in "Wallace and Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit," in that wonderful church scene? Just curious. As an art historian, I'm into iconographic studies.
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"Where's Sally and hundreds of other New Orleansians?
[Read the article: Peggy Noonan is a serious "grown-up"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wonder if Noonan had occasion to remember her heroic image of Bush rushing into a burning house to save the children after Hurricane Katrina? He wasn't in any hurry to save DROWNING children, or adults, was he? But Noonan obviously doesn't have the capacity for self-examination that would allow her to recognize the irony of her earlier mash note to her hero.
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Episcomom, there's a book I'd like to recommend to you.
[Read the article: Mike Huckabee's leap of faith]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's called "Creation of the Sacred," by Walter Burkert, about the anthropological and evolutionary roots of religious thinking, and you won't like this, but it makes the case quite convincingly that "fear of God" means exactly that. Why do primitive people offer sacrifices to their gods? Because their gods represent anything more powerful than they are -- the forces of nature they can't control -- and they are trying to appease them by offering them something so that they won't take everything. Think of the classic scenario of Russians on a troika fleeing a pack of wolves, and in desperation throwing one of the passengers to the wolves to save the others. Our early ancestors learned that if there was any reason to think that something dangerous was watching you that you couldn't see (say, a rustle in the bushes that might or might not be a saber-toothed tiger), you were more likely to survive if you acted on the assumption that there was something there. And that extended to thinking that wind, floods, fires, and earthquakes were caused by sentient beings that you could manipulate with ritual.
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Saltpappy, about that apocalypse . . .
[Read the article: Mike Huckabee's leap of faith]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]you know, the one at which we will all be resurrected in our physical bodies and summoned before the throne of God to be judged for our sins, and when we will find out that God shares all of your prejudices against gays and women who have abortions, even though Jesus never mentioned either of those issues even once? Well, uh, you guys have been telling us that the Apocalypse was going to happen any day now for the last 2000 years. Generation upon generation of Christians have died, turned to dust and blown away waiting for that "resurrection of the body." A lot of people who predicted with absolute certainty that it would happen in 2000 had to explain in January of '00 why they didn't really feel completely silly.
Now maybe something that hasn't happened yet but that you extrapolate from one of the most mysterious, opaquely written books of the Bible will actually happen someday. But although I know that the scientific method is anathema to religious thinking, could you just try a thought experiment for a minute and ask yourself whether the physical facts confirm your hypothesis?
Oh and by the way, I don't live on the east coast, don't go to cocktail parties and don't like latte. You guys need to get out more if you really believe those stereotypes.
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Shut up, kid, we're busy.
[Read the article: 9/11 Commission: Our investigation was "obstructed"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's a red-hot rumor in town that Edwards got another haircut and Hillary had an overpriced facial. Besides, I have to have my guru do the colors in my apartment and readjust the crystals.
SWAK,
Maureen Dowd
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Edwards of all people should understand how despicable this is.
[Read the article: Edwards on Clinton: Not tough enough?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The right, with a little help from damaged neurotics like Maureen Dowd, has been doing its best to feminize Edwards and portray him as a sissy because he was once (gasp) caught combing his hair before a TV appearance, and because he spends as much on haircuts as Mitt Romney probably does. It's what Glenn Greenwald calls the cult of contrived masculinity, and it's nauseating.
Meanwhile George Bush, both 41 and 43, brag about their ability to cry. Remember Bush 43 back in '00, when he was a candidate, describing in the debate how he'd met with flood victims, and held hands and cried with them, and helpfully explained that "that's what a governor does." (Not a President after Hurricane Katrina, however, it would appear). Somehow, crying proves the sincerity of Republicans but only the effeminacy of Democrats.
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Rush's knowledge of history is about as good as his expertise on warfare.
[Read the article: On Obama, the Post ignores shades of gray]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This country was not "founded on partisanship." If there was one thing on which the founding fathers agreed, it was that parties were destructive factions to be avoided. Of course, human nature being what it is, Jefferson's and Adams's supporters soon went their separate ways and eventually became, um, well, parties. But they had good reason to want to avoid the thuggish factionalism of Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. At one point in the 17th century, Whig members of Parliament used to carry a small but potentially lethal bludgeon called the "Protestant flail" with which they threatened to "bonk, bonk, bonk on the head" any Catholics who threatened their concept of homeland security. Jefferson didn't want to see that in America, which is why he'd tear his hair out in horror to hear the demagoguery of Limbaugh et al.