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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Cog
Published Letters: 10
I dunno... the whole partly-ironic pink/sassy/'aren't we fabulous?" look and feel of the new section strikes me as weirdly self-patronizing and a bit sad. She may not see it yet...but whoever puts this stuff together seems doomed to someday marry a sexist poet and stick her head in an oven.
Well I for one say "Golly, Thanks Salon!". You've made it "cool" again to see women as some weird amusing slightly pathetic separate species again! I for one was finding it a bit tiring to think of "the fairer sex" as an equal one. But if it's OK for Salon to go all "Cosmo" on us, pretty soon I'll be able to make hormone jokes again whenever my "squeeze" is "ragging" on me. I just LOVE 1962!
If I can permit myself to answer for centerbeth:
Your confusion at her complaint is the same sort disingenuous, market driven drivel that has led us to "Broadsheet". You know as well as we do that your choice of the Rockettes as a subject comes not from their plight - which is shared by so many American women - but from a particular combination of sexiness and oddity - tinged perhaps with a little ironic shadenfreude. The end result is a trivilalisation of womens issues and a growing conviction in your audience that at SALON content is merely a pawn - it's the window dressing that's King. Apparently someone in marketing thinks that's what reader's and particularly women - want.
And don't you dare right me off as prudish, too serious or politically correct - My favorite read on Salon these days is Heather Havrilevsky - I just think this entire misguided adventure into Women's bloging is hopelessly old hat, retrograde and misplaced in a publication that hoped to set itself apart from the usual rubbish. You're already trying to be TV Guide and Cosmo - what's next, Tiger Beat?
Since we're being sexist...
Kudos to you Farhad for actually having the balls to show up and respond here to the overwhelmingingly ignored outcry against Broadsheet -- which is more than we can say for your boss.
As a Canadian who spends much of the year in France-and too much of my time in cafes - I see daily that it is possible to get children to behave AND have fun in cafes. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen a child be truly annoying in a Parisian cafe - and some of those few were American (perhaps Canadian?) tots.
Somehow the French have managed to find a decent middle ground. Admittedly I've often seen kids playing on the periphery of a "terrasse" something not possible in your usual starbucks coffee-as-toy-and-personal statement emporium. But more often than not these kids are stuck in a chair like the rest of us, talking in normal voices to each other, to their parents, even to waiters (who nowadays are much friendlier -even to children- than they ever get credit for- just remember "Bonjour" and "Merci" are not optional) The rule in place isn't "don't scream" or "don't run around" it's more like "Don't bother anyone" , "be polite" or "listen to your parents" and even small children seem to "get" at least one of these. And parents seem to interact more - and in a more mature way - with their kids: showing them stuff in the paper, asking them questions, and occasionally especting them to listen while someone else is speaking. Overall these kids are quite happy to be "playing grown-up" in public. They are learning to live in society - a concept that seems quaintly old fashioned in America. And they are NOT shackled into a stroller/straightjacket and allowed to wail for freedom.
I suspect that the current generation of North American parents is so terrified of curtailing their little consumers' individuality and self-expression that they think it would be repressive - not to say impossible - to expect their children to behave in public. Well they're wrong - most of the rest of the world - and I suspect their own grandparents - know better.
And if they can't control their kids they should leave at the first sign that they are bothering people or accept to be barred from places where adults should be able to get what they paid for - a few moments peace with some warm mud and a friend or a good book.
BTW, those kids won't be setting fire to cars when they're thirteen, either- that's another issue altogether. One where France - and the French government - has quite literally blown it.
Heather's column is bang on as usual. But it's part of the problem: she's forcing me to waste my life watching TV just so I can catch ALL her references. No one else could have made me sit through an entire episode of America's Top Model.
Gave me the first deep, uncontrollable belly laugh I've had in months. Foggy Hand Award! HAH. Promote that writer/editor!
Just noticed the initials on that post. I should have known. Come to think of it, I don't want to see you promoted Heather,: You'd probably have less time to write and I'd have less reason to drop by Salon. Keep up the excellent work.
This is precisely the sort of thing Salon should be doing more often: balances the Broadsheet fluff. I especially would like to see entries that address:
1) The relationship between globalism and rapid technological change.
2) How culture and cultral industries "work" or don't in this new context.
3) How Western culture is being changed by contact with the rest of the world.
Best of luck to you.
Looking forward to it.
Cog
Why are these guys parodying advertising from before they were born? Their voices and jingles amount to a parody of a parody of a parody and the humor fizzles out along the way. Predictable and dull, dull, dull.
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"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
