Letters to the Editor
bbrock
Published Letters: 43 Editor's Choice: 2
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The answer
[Read the article: "Munich"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The answer to which action to take when a terrorist act is committed is, as was suggested by a chacter in "Munich," to apprehend the suspects and try them. If there is not enough evidence to bring them to trial, then surely there is not enough evidence to assasinate them. I thought this was the main choice that Golda Meir had to make in the movie, but in her article, Ms. Zacharek seems oblivious.
Of course, sometimes there may be national security reasons for not being able to reveal sources, and I for one am not smart enough to know how to handle this.
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Cheney: above the law?
[Read the article: The birdshot and the damage done]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The big story here is not lack of information to the press, although that is important. It is that Cheney avoided talking to the sherrif until 14 hrs. after the shooting. Your average citizen would've been required to talk to the cops immediately after shooting someone. What Cheney did might constitute "flight" which is a reason to create suspicion of wrongdoing. And if he had been say, drinking, there might have been some additional legal issues. But, we'll never know now will we? Above the law?
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SAt scores
[Read the article: The campus crusade for guys]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This article seems to imply that men are less capable academically than women. Why do men still score higher on both verbal (512-504) and math (537-501) on SAT scores (for 2004)? And, aren't these tests used for admitting students to college?
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Revenge
[Read the article: The fine art of revenge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I believe there's a logical flaw here, in the context of the death penalty. If someone kills someone else, then the dead person can't be compensated, since he no longer exists. A relative of the dead person didn't give up his own life so killing the killer would be too much compensation for him. A life is too much to pay for causing someone grief. So, we'd actually be undervaluing life. Unless we're saying that grief is even more valuable than a life, of course.
And, the killer's relatives would also deserve some compensation for having a loved one killed, since they didn't kill the original guy, and therefore did not owe anyone anything.
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This Kind of Crap Put Bush in the White House
[Read the article: Hurricane Al]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I will not echo the other letters that have appeared regarding the sliming of Gore, because they cover it pretty well (although not entirely, that would take much more space). I just wonder why O'Hehir didn't insert any of the other lies made up by our mainstream press corps about Gore, such as that he created the Internet, designed to make Gore look like a pathological liar.
Unlike Mr. O'Hehir I don't think Gore is at all "strange." If he is, we need much more strangeness in politics. He's the smartest, most honest politician around.
I don't know what Mr. O'Hehir was saying or writing about Gore in 1999-2000, or if he considers himself a "liberal," but the kind of crap in his article helped put Bush in the White House.
We should all ask ourselves why the guy who was right about global warming and the Iraq War lost and the guy who was wrong is in the White House.
Bill Brockhouse
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"DOAP" and Dixie Chicks film
[Read the article: Toronto Film Festival]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The author states: "Range's M.O. is to manufacture injustice so he can step in heroically to document it, and a good portion of the audience I saw the movie with seemed to buy in to this ruse: I could sense waves of self-congratulation rippling across the crowd, and a good portion applauded at the end."
This would have been more credible if the author had actually spoken with some of the viewers afterward to confirm her contention, rather than "mind-read." Perhaps they were simply appaluding at seeing the truth depicted on the big screen. What is self-congratulatory about that?
There's nothing wrong with depicting what might happen if Bush were assasinated. What does she want, a film with a surprise ending that shows us that Bush was really a great guy?
The analogy of the Dixie Chicks doc to "DOAP" doesn't make sense sense the former is a documentary, and the latter is fiction.
Also saying the Dixie Chicks are "working moms," similar to all the other working moms out there is extremely tenuous. Their material wealth allows them to arrange their and their families' lives in much more comfortable ways than middle- and lower-class working moms. I know the author mentions they have nannies, I just disagree with her classifying them with middle- and especially lower-class working moms, because their lives are so clearly different.
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fave pop "intellectual"
[Read the article: Salon Interview: Camille Paglia]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Forgets that brilliant Condi lied to the 9/11 Commission, lied about the aluminum tubes, lied about not ever having dreamed that airplanes could be used as missiles. How is that important to feminists? To show that women can lie too?
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sexism
[Read the article: Raising Cain]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Any article that starts out about how the author didn't much like those of the (fill in the blank) gender is sexist, pure and simple. Imagine if a man wrote that he didn't like those of the female gender.
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Who Among Us (Is Not Wrong About the Alleged Kerry Quote?)
[Read the article: Who among us does not love football?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The "Who Among Us Does Not Love Football" quote must be a paraphrasing of Kerry's ALLEGED quote, "Who among us does not love NASCAR," depicting him as a world-class panderer (and thus also Obama). As the Daily Howler points out, however:
Kerry never made the laughable statement! Writing in Slate, NPR’s Mike Pesca finally laid out the basic facts:
PESCA (9/28/04): Dowd wasn't at the event where Kerry supposedly said "Who among us ... " She learned about it in a casual conversation with Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who said Kerry said it on Feb. 17 at a union rally in Milwaukee.
What Kerry actually said at that rally was "There isn't one of us here who doesn't like NASCAR and who isn't a fan." Because of the roundabout way in which the quote got into print, it didn't get the normal vetting, i.e., playing back the tape. Stolberg now says it's possible that she made a mistake and that Kerry never said “who among us.”