Letters to the Editor
Christopher1988
Published Letters: 569 Editor's Choice: 40
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Dull Satire
[Read the article: Attention, all you memoir fabulists!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Those of us who don't laugh will probably be considered to be lacking a sense of humor, but the trouble isn't that memoirs aren't 100% verifiably factual. The problem is the gross deceptons contemporary "memoirists" are engaging in. It's one thing to get a date wrong, or even to merge characteristics of a few people into one composite. It's another when you are a heatlthy woman trying to make a killing as an author posing as a trassexual ravaged with AIDS. Surely you see the difference?
I always thought the outrage at James Frey was a little overdone, considering even the first editions of the book contained a disclaimer. That furor had as much to do with Oprah's ego being out of whack, and perhaps her audience's intellectual shortcomings, as it did Frey's sensationalizing his experiences. But clearly lines are being crossed by people who claim to be writing non-fiction. To point that out is hardly to engage in the sort of nitpicking this article attempts to satirize.
As someone pointed out above, the real target should be the people out to make buck no matter what lies they must concoct to do so—and the publishing industry (or media complex, as Larry McMurtry prefers to call it) which is so eager to oblige.
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Can't imagine a conservative housewife in the 50's wearing garters to give hubby a sexual thrill.
[Read the article: The sexual politics of household chores]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Once again, we get the old myth: women were forced into the role of domestic slave, there to enact his every whim. And "his every whim" more determined by today's fetishes than those of the time.
Pantyhose were invented in 1959. Up until then, all women wore garters or garterbelts. They hadn't become a fetish object yet. Does anyone with an agenda about the past ever do a survey or something of the men and women who actually lived in that time? Or is one screed by Betty Freidan (who no one in the feminist camp even listens to anymore) as far as research goes?
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I have the exact same memory of watching the re-runs as Reiter.
[Read the article: Sex, '70s style]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Except only in the summers did they run it in the daytime where I lived. During the school year, it was on at 10 o'clock at night. On Fridays, I think.
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Oh, the media loves it's sex stories!
[Read the article: New York Gov. Spitzer resigns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll admit it, I knew nothing about Spitzer's money-laundering tactics. But then, where did I read about it? Not here at Salon. I certainly didn't see it on the evening news. Maybe it was considered too local a story for national coverage? But I knew about Spitzer caught in a prostitution scandal I guess from the minute it broke because it's on all the networks and gets a big headliner spread here.
At any rate, thank you fellow letter-writers for doing the job news organizations are supposed to be doing. Once again, the internet proves its worth in terms of public reportage. I was sypathetic to Spitzer up to this point. Not now. No thanks to Salon. Or CNN. Or CBS. Or...aw, forget it.
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Ben Sen...huh?
[Read the article: Hillary's race against time]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Clinton campaign is built on the resilience she and her husband demonstrated when they were pawns in an enemy camp--pursued by a hate and fear mongering party who only trusted their own.
Are you telling me they were in an "enemy camp" in the White House? With a staff they chose on their own? Supported in Congress by a majority Democratic Senate and a majority Democratic House?