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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
dkmoorhead
Published Letters: 160 Editor's Choice: 6
Maybe I've been in marketing too long, but the "pleasant yet unsubstantial" instrumental that opens The Office almost always transports me into the Scranton-area mid-market office supply world.
And strangley enough, I'm being serious. It really gives me a feel for the tone of the show, and puts me in a perfect frame of mind. I usually Tivo the show and watch later, and yet I still watch the opening theme.
Also, please don't forget The Sopranos.
...because I clearly remember laughing just as hard (if not harder) at the "Boom Goes The Dynamite" kid, and that one weather guy who lost his s*** on air when he saw a cockroach.
There's a cheap, somewhat guilt-inducing, but mostly sympathetic laugh to be had whenever someone live on the air goes into complete and total meltdown like Miss Teen South Carolina. That she's pretty and blond and young really doesn't matter so much as the complete and total train wreck that was her answer.
At least that's one male-type person's view.
A woman in my department at work hung up the phone the other day and yelled with excitement. We all prarie dogged up to see what the fuss was and she just said "it's done...finally."
I don't know her very well, so I thought she was talking about a big project she was working on. But when several other people gathered around her desk and someone brought champagne, I thought "wow, that must've been a really big project." Trying to stay out of the way (some of us have work to do when we're not reading Salon!), I asked my neighbor what the fuss was, and she replied "her divorce is final...isn't that great?"
And I looked at her, sipping a completely inappropriate-for-the-workplace glass of champagne and thinking "wow. So that's what we do now?"
I mean, I echo the previous poster's sentiment that it's great that it's easier for people to get out of abusive marriages, and I'm glad the shame of divorce has subsided, but...champagne? It made me think that maybe I'd be in favor of having just a little bit of shame attached to divorce, at least temporarily. Otherwise, it just seems like you're celebrating your life's most significant failure. Not just her failure, mind you, it takes two people to screw up a relationship. But regardless, a divorce is an acknowledgement of some kind of failure, and I think it's kind of gross to celebrate it for it's own sake. Of course, exceptions would be totally understandable if there were abuse issues involved, or outrageously poor treatment of one person by the other, but the sense I get here is that none of these things apply either in my example or those profiled in the article.
Now, if you were to ask about letting some time pass, and celebrating "being back on the market" or "your new-found freedom" or something like that, I could see it, but hanging up the phone with your lawyer and drinking champagne with your co-workers? Ick.
And by the way, my discomfort applies equally regardless of gender. A man in the same situation would be just as gross craking open a bottle.
Just one slightly old-fashioned opinion, I guess.
Violet, I specifically said that where abuse is involved, the sentiment that "it takes two to screw it up" does NOT apply. Obviously, in your situation, it does not represent your own personal failure. My apologies if that was not clear.
To Anonymous whose letter was titled "Not ld (sic) fashioned at all"
You know that's a disingenous strawman argument. There's a difference between "expressing a little relief" and popping a bottle of champagne and exclaiming your joy to all within the sound of your voice.
It's the celebratory aspect I'm uncomfortable with, not the expression of relief.
But you've stopped reading already, because somewhow the fact that I work in an office makes me inferior to you.
A little bit up the thread there was talk about the Swift-boating that will occur once the general election swings into motion. It already has. We're now hearing all about Vince Foster again, in case it's Clinton, and the madrassa-Osama-sleeper Muslim-all-black church stuff is just starting to simmer enough to make a Swift Boat Stew 'round about August.
The problem with all this nonsense? I know people (good ol' reglar Amuricans)who believe this stuff to be literally true. Not as an attack, or as a "theoretical concern" about a candidate, but I know people who honestly believe that Obama is secretly a Muslim and probably an Al Qaeda operative. Don't discount this kind of attack, there are plenty of people who will believe ANYTHING.
My other point (ok, so it should be "one brief point and one longwinded one, sorry): i'm clipping and saving this article, and will refer back to it in September when McCain has an 11 point lead on Clinton and those of us lighting victory cigars right now are too depressed to even read War Room.
I completely disagree with your take. The Clintons are not "wrong" or "going too far."
They are intentionally distorting the facts, twisting Sen. Obama's words, and taking his quotes out of context.
When you do that, another word for it is "lying." It's all the more shameful that they're doing this, because this is exactly the same thing that's been done to them for more than 15 years.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
