Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 28 Editor's Choice: 4
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Why are we accepting the premise?
[Read the article: David Shuster, scapegoat?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why must criticisms of Hillary Clinton necessarily be sexist? Why can't people make the factual observation that she came to the attention of most Americans as someone's wife, and that her policymaking role between 1992 and 2000 was because she was first lady, not because she was a smart lawyer from Arkansas?
All along, the Clintons have been trying to have it both ways. Chelsea's role in this campaign is another example. She is a grown woman and a public figure who is using her position as the child of important people to reach other important people. You can bet that a lower-ranking member of the Clinton campaign would be talking to bookers or assistants on these talk shows, not to the hosts -- but Chelsea Clinton can pick up the phone and call Whoopi Goldberg directly, and Whoopi Goldberg takes that call not because she wants to talk to a bright 27-year-old but because Chelsea Clinton is Hillary and Bill Clinton's daughter.
At the same time, Chelsea hasn't made herself available to the mainstream press and won't do interviews. That's her right -- no one's required to talk to the press -- but the fact that she is offering herself to certain media figures while remaining inaccessible to others is the kind of behavior that draws criticism and uncomfortable questions.
A high percentage of Hillary Clinton's 35 years of policy experience were, at a minimum, colored by the fact that her major policy role was "wife of." It's not sexist to point this out, and it's absurd to pretend that her role would have been the same regardless of who she'd been married to.
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The real question...
[Read the article: The tragic fall of Eliot Spitzer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...is, where does a guy making $179,000 a year get $5,000 to blow on a hooker and her expenses?
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Berthold Brecht said it better than I could...
[Read the article: An Olympic disgrace]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First sort out your basic food position; then start your preaching.
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The game is the game
[Read the article: Why Hillary Clinton should be winning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If the rules of the game were different, Senator Clinton would be winning. But that would be a different game.
Everyone understood and agreed upon the rules of this game when it began -- including the Democratic leadership of Michigan and Florida, who ought to be drummed out of the party.
This article is like saying "Clinton would be winning at snooker," when it's eight-ball they're playing. Possibly true, but so what?
Senator Clinton's campaign strategy was based on the idea that she'd have the nomination sewn up on Super Tuesday. That strategy didn't worry much about whether voters in the rest of the country would have the opportunity to make their voices heard.
And in Maine, at least, the caucuses were on a Sunday afternoon, and turnout set records. How is that undemocratic or discriminatory?
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So the two candidates have this in common...
[Read the article: Obama and the white working class]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Barack Obama does have an affluent, educated, Ivy League sense of self-righteousness and entitlement..."
Uh, and Hillary Clinton doesn't? At least Senator Obama seems aware and a little embarrassed by it. Senator Clinton doesn't.
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Awful, because
[Read the article: Whiz-bang commercial: Awesome or awful?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]it leaves two questions unanswered: 1) does she carry that thing around with her? and 2) what does she do with it when she's finished?
If the answer to #2 is "rinse it off and put it back in her purse," then ugh.
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The Catch-22 of the scholarship student
[Read the article: The rubes and the elites]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We have, in Barack Obama, the true obstacle to upward mobility in the United States: the fact that no one really _wants_ to see anyone else rise above the circumstances of his birth.
Hillary Clinton gets to pretend to be a woman of the people despite her Park Ridge-Wellesley-Yale background; Barack Obama, the scholarship kid, appears to have learned to blend in a little too well.
Elitist? Compared to what? The Obamas still do their own grocery shopping. When was the last time the Clintons did?
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Work is what justifies the rewards
[Read the article: Desperately unhappy in the top Ivy League school]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The benefits that accrue to alumni of the LW's school are not some random branding process (well, okay, they are a little), but the fact that all of the alumni survived the trials the LW is suffering now.
Multiple deadlines? Lots of writing? This is life in publishing. If the LW wants a job in publishing, or a job making a living as a writer, this is what life is going to be like. Too much reading? People start out in publishing as readers and publicists, and if you can't get through three or four manuscripts in a week, you won't go very far.
And you learn to write by writing. Writing a lot, writing to deadline, writing on subjects you don't give a rap about.
The big cultural difference between Southern California and New England is that Southern Californians seem to think it's supposed to come easy. To be fair, New Englanders seem a little too committed to making sure it doesn't, but the truth is still somewhere in the middle. The letter writer's getting a chance to learn this lesson early.