Letters to the Editor
Margalis
Published Letters: 614 Editor's Choice: 16
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To make it 100% clear to robotempire
[Read the article: My questions for President Ahmadinejad]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Bush is our President and essentially refuses to speak in front of audiences that have not been pre-screened. I would certainly welcome "tough questions" for him but I don't think even I would support them in the way Bollinger presented them.
It's silly to ask questions in such a way that they have no chance of being answered, in a forum that is not an interview or a Q&A. President Bush has a responsibility to answer to the American people. (A responsibility he shirks) Ahmadinejad has no such responsibility. When people pose questions it should be in good faith to get answers, not to serve as thinly-veiled attacks. (Or at least dual-purposed)
Some of what Bollinger said was simply uneducated and his diatribe came off as tough-guy posturing. It was rude and ugly but more important it was plain stupid and a waste of time, accomplishing nothing other than feeding red meat to the "Ahmadinejad is Hitler" crowd. Pointlessly confrontational, it was not informative and was merely for show.
Personally I do not ever appreciate it when interviewers or questioners make themeselves the primary topic and are merely interested in garnering attention for themselves. Bollinger did little more than whore for his 15 minutes.
This is now twice that Americans have had the opportunity to press Ahmadinejad with serious questions and have instead behaved like petulant brats and government schills.
We should consider retiring the tough guy act in favor of the smart guy act, if just for a little while.
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If you don't want to be seen as a dumbass brainwashed moron then don't act like one. Half your letters are all right and the other half are auto-pilot copy/paste shit about Salonistas and commies. If you are too lazy to come up with an original thought then just close your browser window until you can come up with something more inspired. Bloviating about imagined hypocrisies from the Salon "echo chamber" is a waste of everyone's time and from some of you other letters you appear capable of better. Save the yuk yuk you guys are commies and love Iran routine for the true morons, of which there are plenty.
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Isn't talking much more enjoyable
[Read the article: Ahmadinejad, big man on campus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]when you get past knee-jerk comments about commies? That was the point of my pot and granola line. Most of your post was just reactionary nonsense, a cobbling together of tired cliches.
Most of the commenters are, in fact, completely out of step with mainstream liberalism (and American culture at large).
I have no doubt that the majority of Americans thought "yeah, you tell him!" Then again, the majority of Americans thought that Saddam was behind 9/11 and that the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqis. And few of those mainstream people (liberal or otherwise) could tell you much about Iran's government or Ahmadinejad. Being completely out of step with mainstream anything is nothing to be ashamed of unless your goal is to be mediocre and strictly ordinary.
Probably 80% of your letter was pure substanceless drivel. Yes, I hate freedom, I hate America, I love Iran and "root" for Ahmadinejad, I torture kittens, blah blah blah.
I hate America so much I lobby for the right to a fair trial by jury and the right to writ of Habeas Corpus. That's how much I hate our darned American ideals. Why American was founded in opposition to those awful things!
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Wrong again
[Read the article: My questions for President Ahmadinejad]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Circumstantial evidence points directly here to the fact that if Bush got the EXACT same treatment as Ahmadinejad, Salonistas would be decrying it as "letting him off easy."
Again that's purely your conjecture and you haven't presented even a single quote or example to back it. It's fine if you believe that but if you aren't willing to defend it in any way you might as well not say it.
it's that a man whose values run diametrically opposed to those of the U.S. didn't get sexual favors on stage.
And again, if that were the test then I'd be going down on Bush because few in this country are more diametrically opposed to US values than him. Last time I checked Ahmadinejad was not the one ingnoring large swaths of the Constitution and US law along with principles that have been with us since the Magna Carta.
Also, guess what -- most people want "nutshell" summaries of events. That's been one of the basic missions of journalism for recorded journalistic history. Provide a record, not a transcription. Citing a proclivity for reading news as some kind of moral weakness is idiotic.
A transcript is better than a summary, I don't see how that is even arguable. Salon provided a full transcript of one set of comments, so they should have provided a full transcript of the other set. Or presented summaries of both.
Of course people rely of summaries but given how awful the media is many would rather not, and they should be commended for that. If you are looking to see what someone said then what they actually said is just strictly better than what some reporter thinks they said.
In this case it is a question of both accuracy and fairness. Present the two in their own words and let the readers decide. Rather than being told that Ahmadinejad was being evasive let me decide for myself.
We keep hearing how Ahmadinejad is some loony freakshow - if so hang him by his own petard. Sadly the fact is that Ahmadinejad in his own words comes off as no less rational than many of his most rabid detractors. (Which is not saying much I suppose) He is certainly no more evasive than Tony Snow or previous White House spokespeople.