Letters to the Editor
Mister Marker
Published Letters: 271 Editor's Choice: 8
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I Blame Lindsay, And The Parents
[Read the article: Don't blame YouTube, MySpace for teen beating video]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I was growing up in my working-class town, in the 70s, all kids learned a simple rule:
Don't let your mouth make a debt your ass can't pay.
We didn't need cops to police us; we policed ourselves. We had bullies, but they knew who to pick on and when to stop. In a town full of tough, self-reliant kids and parents who didn't fuck around, that was the only law needed (except for the really bad stuff like car stealing, burglary, rape and murder).
Since my contrary opinion has led to the usual round of imbecilic assumptions, allow me to tell an instructive story from my own childhood.
From kindergarten on I was picked on, often-times violently. There was one bully in particular, named Jimmy, who lived about a block from my house and so took the same bus. He was positively relentless even though he and I were about the same size while growing up. Finally, one day just before the end of 4th grade, as we were walking home and he was doing his usual routine (tripping me up, throwing rocks, shouting taunts, etc.) something inside me just snapped. I turned on him, yanked his lunchbox away and brought it down on his melon head. HARD. I then swung it up against his chin. HARDER. Then I stomped up and down on it until it was as flat as a pancake. Then I forcibly stripped off his favorite, leather "Fonzi" jacket and crammed it into the tar barrel on the back of a roofing tar truck parked in front of a house across the street. I finished off by chasing the now screaming and crying Jimmy all over that street, tripping him, busting him in the nose, teeth, side of the head, whatever I could reach. Finally exhausted, I took up my own lunchbox and calmly walked home, leaving Jimmy in a sobbing heap.
Now this happened in broad daylight at 3:30pm, in a suburban neighborhood where most of the wives were at home. I KNOW they heard and saw what happened. I also know that Jimmy's parents saw what I'd done to his lunch box, his jacket and HIM. No police, no knock on my parents door and, more to the point, no one in the neighborhood yelling for me to stop. Why? Because for the four previous years those same folks had watched Jimmy beat on me and bully me endlessly, day-in and day-out, and they knew he had it coming.
Just like Lindsay did. Just because the taunts are digital doesn't make them any less hurtful or relentless. And as others have pointed out, where the hell WERE the parents when this was happening? Why did the instigator's parents allow Lindsay to stay in their home when she belonged with her own parents? Where were they when this happened??
A few quick responses. Yes, this beatdown was NOTHING. When I was in school girls got shiners on both eyes, broken noses, broken bones and half their hair pulled out. The result for the attackers? Expulsion, about all that should happen in this case. Those of you screaming for "20 - 30 years" (like YOU, sergiosanteria) are vastly more inhumane than the adolescents who pulled this stunt. In fact you're moral cretins. And AlecsMom? Apples and oranges, dear, apples and oranges.
And the moral to my own little story from elementary school? From that day until my graduation from high school I was NEVER bullied or teased again. The word got around that I was not to be messed with. I never had to lift a finger in my own defense again, as my reputation did it for me. This I discovered at my 10th high school reunion.
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Thanks for the Other Link
[Read the article: You must watch this: Randy Pausch's "last lecture"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This one stops 12 minutes in and won't fucking budge.
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Pinker Is a Fraud
[Read the article: Big Think: Steven Pinker on hypocrisy, veiled threats and taboos]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He stole most of his "ideas" from Noam Chomsky, whom he now has the effrontery to refer to as "out of date." This man, and everything he says, utterly infuriates me.
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The System Wants Us Working For Other People - Preferably Corporations
[Read the article: What every freelancer should know]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is even more obvious now, after reading this article and the letters in response, than it was in late '94 when I joined the freelancers/ICs SIG of the Society Of Technical Communication. Every single Independent Contractor, and most of the freelancers, expected to be audited every single year as a matter of course. It sounds like things have changed for the better in that regard, but the bottom line is that our stinking socio-economic system wants us all chained to a desk - and not our own, either.
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FARHAD!!!
[Read the article: Fake Springsteen praises Windows in heroically awful corporate video]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]While watching that video my face melted and my penis fell off.
I want them back, Farhad! I WANT THEM BACK NOWWWWW!!!
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Tina Fey, As Head Writer, Presided Over Seven or Eight of the Worst Years in SNL's History
[Read the article: Feminism is the new funny]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why ANYONE thinks that woman is funny is beyond me. Only now - ironically with the help of her pal Poehler - is SNL starting to awaken from the coma it has been in for so long. The presence of Andy Samberg hasn't hurt, either. Reading that O'Teri, Gasteyer and Shannon "ripped it up" on SNL nearly made me vomit. I mean, really, compared to whom? Curtin, Radner and Newman? Or perhaps Dunn, Hooks and Sweeney from the show's second hey-day from '86-'93?? Anyone making such a comparison is out of their fucking mind.