Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1152 Editor's Choice: 107
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Getting fashion to fit
[Read the article: Busting out]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Now, there is a time when my intention to please a man would have bothered me ... and maybe I've gone to the dark side. But all I can say is that this does make my boyfriend happy, and that does make me happy, and I don't think that's bad.
And why would it be bad? Imagine a boyfriend or husband who declared that he rejected the idea of doing things to please his partner as oppressive, false consciousness, or what have you. It would sound kind of lame.
Anyway, all praise to an article about finding ways to get fashion to fit one's self, rather than altering one's self to fit fashion. (I confess I was worried that the last part of the byline was going to turn out to be "... and get a decent boob job.")
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Lack of bigotry is the difference
[Read the article: Are you there, God? It's me, Rudy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If nominated to run in the general election next fall, Rudy Giuliani would be the first Republican presidential candidate in history.
If only it were so!
Actually that's not fair — the Republican party has been responsible for plenty of good presidents and other politicians. It's just that in the past hundred years they've been a bit scarce.
But seriously. As for Giuliani and Catholicism, it won't matter because Catholics aren't persecuted in this country the way they were even as late as 1960. Protestant bigotry was the common experience that unified Catholic Americans as a voting group, and its disappearance from the mainstream of American public discourse today has freed Catholics to embrace the great American tradition of voting one's own personal prejudices (or occasionally actual enlightened self-interest — at least, one can hope).
I would think that an Italian last name would be more of a hindrance than religion in the United States circa 2008 (though testing that sort of hypothesis seems verboten these days). Thomas Schaller makes a good point regarding the subtle ecumenism of religious American voters — that they're happy as long as they think you believe something with conviction — but it's not clear that any religion will do (as Lieberman showed in 2000 and Romney is showing today), nor is it clear that the appearance of secular conviction of the sort for which Giuliani is so well-known would prove inadequate.
So don't discount Rudy. It's worth remembering that the Republican base has shown itself perfectly happy to ignore the flaws, closet-skeletons, and long track record of incompetence and petty self-aggrandizement of at least one other candidate in recent memory, as long as he said his mea culpas.
And regardless of who wins the GOP nomination, how well they do in the general election will — as in 2004 and 2000 — be the Democrats' to decide.
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As interesting for the things not said
[Read the article: What would we see if we were behind your eyeballs, Cary?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cary Tennis is in top form with his response — perhaps as with so many of us he finds an occasional change of format inspiring. The passage with the Marx Brothers is sly — downright wicked given the unbroken stride of his solemn, earnest cadence.
And yet, as with Being John Malcovitch, all that we get is visual — things literally seen, or as they're imagined, and we find as Spike Jonez' character do that simply seeing is still inadequate. Cary Tennis is liberal with imagery but stingy with the narrative that underlies the experience. What thoughts rise unbidden at the sight of a book of folktales, or maps of far-off countries? Maybe this is something that all writers share — they want to show, want to set a scene for a reader to see, but the curtain still obscures all the fuss and frenzy backstage. What remains unsaid is as significant as what's included.
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Actually they have very good memories
[Read the article: Is Orange County too sophisticated for its own good?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Orange County's financial managers also remember the rest of the story: how the state of California bailed them out the last time their preening about private capital and investment-based public funding turned out to be a dumb idea. With breathtaking hypocrisy they demanded, and received, compensation for their losses from the same system of stable, tax-based public finance at which they had previously thumbed their noses.
(And by then hadn't they already done it once before, with a federal bailout back in the 1987 crash? I know that's internet prehistory but I seem to remember being surprised, in my naive youth, by how straight-faced Reagan's people could be about government obligation to fish Orange County's free-marketeers out of the water after their investments tanked.)