Letters to the Editor
Holly McLachlan
Published Letters: 559 Editor's Choice: 3
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Unusually honest... and provokes pity. He was once Somebody worth reading.
[Read the article: Angry, hateful liberal bloggers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...It is this 1963 Commentary essay by Norman Podhoretz (.pdf) -- our nation's leading warmonger, Godfather of Neoconservatism, top foreign policy guru to Rudy Giuliani, and loudest advocate of attacking Iran. The essay is entitled "My Negro Problem -- and Ours," and in it, Podhoretz argues that "I am convinced that we white Americans are . . . so twisted and sick in our feelings about Negroes that I despair of the present push toward integration." -- Greenwald
And the article, which should be read in full by anyone commenting on it, was written by a thoughtful, competent mensch, who was not by then afraid of much of anything. He has fallen so far. Now, he's a querulous, garrulous old man returning to childhood insofar as fearfulness -- and dissembling.
I've been going through my late father's papers from that time. He kept many articles on the "Negro Question", most of them elegant screed against 'upsetting the applecart'. Of course, the applecart was tipped over, wrecked, scrapped and recycled during the intervening 45 years. They knew things had to change, but they feared the results, and not without reason. The neighborhood my Dad grew up in disappeared due to white flight, neglect and water (9th Ward). Podhoretz's neighborhood is likely vibrant -- due to either to immigration or gentrification, depending on where he was in Brooklyn. But it's not his place anymore and hasn't been for years. And LaGuardia is dead, the Dodgers are in L.A. and Quill no longer runs the city maintenance unions.
I'd sound like a New-Age ninny if I advised him to 'embrace change' -- but he'd be a mensch again if he would. Instead, he's an increasingly sclerotic old pest, coasting on laurels earned back when he could write like that.
It's the younger men following him I find hardest to respect. They might be less chickenshit if they'd survived a few concussions. He has age as an excuse.... but he's too far gone to receive the credit that he does.
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Podhoretz
[Read the article: Angry, hateful liberal bloggers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]yes, Whyaskme, holly maclachlan(sp) liked it too (she's black) -- david sugarman
I am white.
I didn't "like" Norman Podhoretz's 1963 Commentary article -- but it was honest and, compared to much of what was being written in the point-headed journals of that era, it was decent. Even people who lived through that time period have a tendency to forget what their preconceptions were, what their expectations were, and how they thought then.
I don't have high hopes for Glenn getting as decent an answer out of the ADL regarding favoritism towards rightwing trivializers of the Holocaust. But it should be a fine raree show tomorrow.
You need to start taking your medication again Mr. Zuckerman.
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Going 'Native' within 1) the intelligence services, and within 2) the Beltway
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away. -- the NYT
1) The FBI has many, many experts in interrogation. For that matter so do the municipal police forces of our largest cities. Why the hell would the CIA rely on Arab state intelligence services for aught save linguistic help? I haven't heard that Egypt has had much success in eliminating its radical Islamist factions, and the Saudis continue to export the lion's share of the world's suicide bombers.
2) Ondelette is right about 'won't' devolving into 'can't', just as Paul Dirks was right (way back) about the impact of fear on administration personnel and top bureaucrats immediately after 9-11. These organizations and individuals did things in the heat of the moment that weren't acceptable, then a few years of stonewalling and mendacity followed. Now, there is a concerted push to get all and sundry off the hook with respect to civil a/o criminal prosecution, for ever and ever. And virtually no one of influence has discussed this clear pattern, except Paul Krugman, who is readily dismissed as merely a partisan pointy-head.
Whenever can they find the time to govern?
Do they find the time to govern?
Perhaps we should just be thankful that they don't.
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The People do not know about it
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Bush policies become increasingly normalized, increasingly the symbol not only of Bush-ism, but America"
Therein lies the rub. Unless these policies & practices are thoroughly repudiated by current candidates & the next administration the unprecedented deterioration of American international standing will continue to plummet at a rate beyond even the vaguest comprehension of its' citizenry.-- DanJoaquinOz
Therein lies the rub. What CarolynC said is correct -- most reasonably aware voting Americans don't know about what is and has been done in the name of the United States of America. A fair number who do hear of any of this are convinced by their beloved radio talkshow hosts that these things either didn't really happen, were isolated, unrepresentative incidents, or needed to happen for us to be "safe".
It is even less 'seen' than Jim Crow was in the early 20th century -- we have no water fountains in public squares labelled "colored" to remind us.
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Not CarolynC, biogirl
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]apologies.