Letters to the Editor
AKA Smith
Published Letters: 4574 Editor's Choice: 83
-
Nerdnam, a funny quip, but
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is it accurate? Saucerians are the predominant religion, equivalent to Christians. Asaucerians are those religionists who are not Christian, a rather broad category. So would that include Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Wiccans, etc.? I cannot believe the dominant religion would be so exclusionary. If they were, they would never say so out loud. However, everybody hates atheists. One of the atheists (MMO) even tried to appease the exclusionary ones by starting her own church to no avail. They are still hated.
By your reckoning, what the exclusionary ones must really want to avoid is the election of a A-Christian. That would be Marilyn Manson, the AntiChrist.
Just to piss off the exclusionary ones, I think we should run Marilyn as a candidate for President of the United States! Of course, he probably would have had a better chance if he still had Dita. She was on the WWD best dressed list, just like Jackie Kennedy.
-
Nerdnam, I think you've got it.
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Aparabolic is perfect.
I like the little red Mormon one. Cute.
-
To RobinS:
[Read the article: I feel terrible about leaving but I have to go]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Your last letter expresses the essence of both patience and integrity. You say:
"But I also believe in treating people compassionately even if they mess up, and having my actions come from my own integrity, not (at their core) changing because of how the other acts."
That is a morality to which we should all aspire. My own current goal is to try not to treat people as a means to an end but rather to try to remember that each person is valuable because humanity itself is valuable.
I confess that I have a hard time doing this. The truth is that I am an introvert who likes dogs better than I like people. That is why the word bitch never bothers me. I always remind myself that it really means female dog more than all that other baggage. Dogs are loyal, resolute, protective, and affectionate. They are also mostly honest. Part of this could be because they lack "language" and thus the capacity to enjoy one upping each other in insults.
The reason I don't engage much in exchanges with the female bashers at Salon is partly that they really don't bother me that much. The other reason is that, on the rare occasion when they do bother me, I am tempted to treat them as a means to an end. The end being to score a point by one upping them in an insult contest. That would not be pretty.
Oddly, what came to mind after I wrote that last sentence is my ex-husband and the chess we used to play. For the longest time we were very evenly matched. He would win a game; I would win a game. Sometimes he would win a couple and then, in reversal, I would win a couple. Then, a freakish thing happened. I won three games in a row. This had never, ever happened before. He never won another game. It puzzled me. It was not that my skills had improved. They were and remain quite mediocre. As an experiment, I tried playing worse and worse to see if he would win. However, he then played worse and worse himself, while clearly becoming agitated and frustrated that he couldn't beat me. We soon stopped playing altogether.
What was going on here? I realized that he had always been competitive with me and had always been trying to one up me. It was difficult for both of us. I knew I was smarter than he was, but I was not really a better chess player. It occurred to me that he had some sort of mental block, that he had been so devastated by my beating him three games in a row that he was now psychologically incapable of winning.
Ours was not a match made in heaven. I had married him when I was very young and he had been a sports hero in an extremely macho sport. He was also good-looking, the kind of guy other women came on to all the time. That was an ongoing problem. Similar to Ado Annie, he was a guy who couldn't say "No."
I am often puzzled as to why some men seem to resent so the progress that women have made. It is not as if we have even achieved pay parity. We do not yet have a woman president. Working class women are usually on the very edge of poverty if they are single. Why are guys like brightstar, Mike Dover, and Sam so upset? If women are so darned awful, it would seem that the solution should be simple: Have nothing to do with women.
I will continue not to respond much to the women bashers here at Salon. They are mostly repetivie, they don't address more substantive arguments, and time is limited. I prefer to respond to those posts which engage my mind, tickle my wit, and provoke my admiration.
Posts like yours RobinS. Also those of damnthatxanadu and edziu's muse and the more recent Anonymous, who as a clear understanding of the dynamics that went on in this thread.
To damnthatxanadu and edziu's muse: Thank you for your kind words about my words.