Letters to the Editor
WeikuBoy
Published Letters: 487 Editor's Choice: 62
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Log Cabin Ducks for a'L'Orange
[Read the article: Sullivan's travels]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I would like to join my fellow Salon readers in asking, Why is there no accountability for the Andrew Sullivans and Tom Friedmans who helped to sell the Iraq War? Why do they get to keep their prestigious jobs and generous expense accounts, etc.? Especially as there are many others who saw clearly that it was a doomed mission based on lies, and who therefore might have made a difference, yet continue to toil in relative obscurity. I do understand why the Scarboroughs and Sullivans are coming to Salon hat-in-hand, most anxious to reposition their brand as the pendulum finally seems to be swinging away from Bush-Cheney neo-fascism. (We'll see.) But their apologies are much too little, too late.
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The Key Word is "Shooting"
[Read the article: Why doesn't shooting girls count as a hate crime?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That girls were singled out as victims in the recent Pennsylvania and Colorado school shootings (as distinguished from the several other recent school shootings, and from the less recent Colorado school shootings) hardly went unreported or unnoticed. I believe it made these crimes still more horrible, by adding a sickening dimension of sexual violence to the gun carnage that has become more or less common throughout the United States.
The reason there hasn't been more of an outcry has nothing to do with the gender of the victims, and everything to do with the fact that guns have become politically untouchable, despite the wishes of a solid majority of Americans. As long as the gun "enthusiasts" in the electorally-supersized small rural states continue to value their "hobby" over the safety of children, the gun carnage in America will continue; and we all know it. And thus its value as "news" diminishes a bit with each new occurrence, over which we can only weep.
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Hey Kenny Boy, How's the Weather Down There?
[Read the article: The truth about Carly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know next to nothing about HP; but this article and especially the responses it has generated are among the most interesting things I've read recently. The whole story is right here, not just of what has happened to the American economy since Reagan, but also of gender relations in America, and how the corporate media covers both. That is to say, always from the point of view of the celebrity CEO's, and almost never from the point of view of their employees -- especially those who have been laid off without the benefit of $20 million severance packages. None of which is meant as a knock on Rebecca Traister, but rather as praise of Salon for providing this forum for reader feedback.
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Selling Snake Oil to the Rubes
[Read the article: A fight on the right: Do Republicans "deserve" to lose?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've listened to most of Rush Limbaugh's shows during the past two and a half weeks. Three things struck me:
1) How partisan he is. Don't laugh: I imagined him as a right-wing conservative; but as PGroce pointed out, he's not about principles at all. He's just an advocate for the GOP.
2) How boring he is. Because of his relentless partisanship, his positions are completely predicable. Republicans arr right, Democrats are wrong, Bill Clinton is the Devil. (Yawn.)
3) How defensive he is. Right-wing republicanism, ascendant throughout his radio career, peaked with the neo-fascism of Bush-Cheney, and jumped the shark with Terri Schiavo. Now he's finally on the defensive; and like all bullies, he can dish it out but can't take it.
His extremism, titillating at first, quickly settles into a predictable pattern. A large portion of every show is devoted to convincing the rubes how well off they are. They might not have health care or good paying jobs, but if they work hard and vote GOP, they too can grow up to be Ken Lay or Jack Abramoff. It's like "What's The Matter With Kansas?" in action.
The question I have, after listening for two weeks, is not why there is no left-wing version of the right-wing noise machine. After all, I (and I dare say we) want the truth, not faith. The question I have is, who exactly is his audience (and how can these people be so stupid)? The answer has to begin with John Dean's recent work on the authoritarian personality.
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Where Can I Get A Glass Ceiling?
[Read the article: The truth about Carly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As fate would have it, 'Today' this morning mentioned the severance packages of several recently-fired celebrity CEO's, and included HP's payout, described as $42 million. Carly wasn't named, however; so it might've referred to another "failed" master of the universe.
$42 million or $20 million, post-Reagan CEO's occupy a rarified atmosphere, akin to royalty, in which the difference between success and failure is unimaginable wealth versus even more unimaginable wealth. The absence of real accountability attracts powerful friends: and while the GOP is busy eliminating taxes on her bonanza, Rush Limbaugh will be working himself into a lather telling the rubes without health care that greed is good. Whatever gender issues may or may not have plagued her reign (which sounds like a reign of terror), winning the corporate lottery is the real truth about Carly.
Hold the phones: A court just ruled that the former head of the NYSE might have to give back up to $100 million of his $180 million payout as "excessive". Never mind, I guess.
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Joe's Ugly Choices
[Read the article: "Ugly choices" in Iraq -- but after the election is over]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Jeez Joe, how much money have the republicans lavished on attack ads this year? How much protective body armor could have been purchased instead with all of that money?
How much time have you yourself wasted in Salon calling other people names? If you don't want to volunteer for Iraq, that's cool; but how many of the 20,000 newly-disabled vets could you have visited and possibly cheered-up in that time?
Talk about ugly choices. If you and the other gung-ho jingos had spent even one-tenth the time you waste fighting the libs in fighting the true enemy, Osama bin-Forgotten would be dead and al-Qaeda would no longer threaten the West. Instead, you profess blind support for the GOP chickenhawks whose lies about non-existent WMD and connections to 9/11 [read:oil] have killed as many as 600,000 mostly innocent people, with no end in sight.
Bad decisions, Joe.