Letters to the Editor
Amity
Published Letters: 1153 Editor's Choice: 107
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Test of Obama's reach
[Read the article: Obama: "I am still fired up and ready to go"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The New Hampshire primary was a test of Barack Obama's political reach. It was easy for him to deploy en masse in Iowa, close to home and undistracted — what about further away? This time around, he came up short.
Meanwhile for Clinton and Edwards it was a test of their ability to quickly retool after Iowa and adapt to the Year of Obama. So far Clinton has shown that she can, and Edwards that he cannot.
But it would be as foolish to suggest that Clinton's victory is now assured, or that Edwards is entirely out of the race, as it was to assume that Obama would automatically win in New Hampshire the way he had in Iowa. The campaign is still very fluid, and everything hinges on how well each candidate makes use of every hour between the last state and the next.
So dry your tears, hope-mongers. If your guy's walk is as good as his talk, he could still end up scoring big over the next two weeks. And if Edwards really is the kind of fighter he purports to be, he's still got a lot to say, too.
In the meantime Clinton is going to keep on trucking, and (to paraphrase Wellington) we'll see who trucks the longest.
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Closing a deal isn't about weird subterranean demographic glitches
[Read the article: Clinton rocks the vote in the Granite State]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Closing a deal in politics is like closing a deal in business — no matter how mysterious it might seem, it almost always boils down to who did more ground work.
Obama worked hard to take and hold the lead in the Democratic campaign. Clinton, it seems, has been working harder. Anyone else could jump in at any time (ahem, Edwards) with a better plan and even more elbow grease and they would throw the race into yet another twist.
Put another way, the people who turned out for Clinton turned out for her because she worked hard to get them to. If she has any fundamental advantage over her rivals it's simply that she doesn't underestimate how much effort is required to sustain a successful primary campaign.
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The ability to speak
[Read the article: My molester financed my college education]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When confronted by an emergency, we're taught, the first thing to do is to announce the emergency and cry for help. We're taught this because it's not always the natural thing to do — so often when faced with overwhelming danger or crisis we don't know what to say, and stand there agape.
People have written about this phenomenon, about how important it is in crisis management of any sort to define right away what's gone wrong, loudly and clearly so that everyone is certain of what we suspected — that something bad is transpiring right in front of us, but which for some horrible reason we weren't sure we had the right, somehow, to say anything about.
Three O'clock has found her way to being able to speak, to send up the alarm, to break out of the paralyzing state of inaction and write a letter to the world about what she's facing. Anyone who can do that on their own has real strength — well enough to make it to sunrise.
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Oh for pity's sake
[Read the article: It's my abortion, too!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Does that mean that husbands and boyfriends are going to go around saying, "Oh, our period started today?" Or... I don't know. Would there be a female equivalent? "We're balding?"
No, it's not cute or empowering or anything else except weird and disturbing for couples to say "we're pregnant" unless they're both women and both pregnant (and more power to them!).
She is the one who is pregnant, full stop. He presumably had something to do with her becoming so but life being the way it is it's probably the better part of valor not to go even there. As it is, there are plenty of valid, valuable, essential things for expecting fathers to do during a pregnancy without having to occupy some precarious and contrived semiotic space in which they, too, are pregnant.
So let's cool it with them being pregnant. Let's not call them babysitters either. Let's let men be what they are, for pity's sake, in the fullness of their responsibility as men. That's plenty enough for anyone.
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Why not, indeed?
[Read the article: Is abortion a civil rights issue?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]These leaders must have charisma -- so why not use it to motivate communities to stand up for things like better access to contraceptives for poor women, better sex education, and more job training?
Makes sense, doesn't it? Except... each of the things that Catherine Price lists are fundamental to autonomy and personal freedom, neither of which make for good feeling within certain religious and cultural traditions.
Abortion is upsetting for the same reason as are contraception and sex ed (but — significantly — not adoption). They all encourage and enable a woman to have sex without fulfilling her natural role obligation of motherhood — more or less immediately, and hopefully much-prolonged.
The question at the back of these guys heads (and in the backs of the heads of the doubtless numerous women who support them wholeheartedly) is: how can we think of women as women if they aren't fulfilling some kind of role related to motherhood?
It's a pretty shallow intellectual problem, which explains why the people who are the most in a twist over abortion tend to be such lightweights.