Letters to the Editor
sherrlock
Published Letters: 18 Editor's Choice: 3
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Chuck Colson and Christian forgiveness
[Read the article: Let us prey]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My great-uncle Argus was, by turns, a Pentecostal preacher and an alcoholic wife-beating racist. While the wife-beating and the racism was no impediment to being a lay preacher, a little hooch was thoroughly taboo. But Argus had a cycle all his own. He'd fall off the wagon, then volubly repent with tears, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, although rejoicing in the grace of Jesus. Within a few months, he'd be drinking again, which only gave him further opportunities to experience divine forgiveness.
Thing is, he was credited with utter sincerity. At no point, did the faithful cut Argus off. That remarkable dualism ("Satan led me astray, but Jesus brought me home") will doubtless provide DeLay access to the same mechanisms of sin, repentance, and forgiveness as often as he cares to avail himself of them. The suckers never learn.
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Funny bones
[Read the article: Making Colbert go away]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Funny? As if that were the issue. Colbert's performance was a stunner - I watched it, indeed, everyone I know watched it with a shocked, awed expression on our faces.
He was crossing lines of humiliation and utter embarrassment - not his own, but the man's on his left - in a way I've never seen before, certainly not in recent memory. Who gives a damn whether he was funny? He was shocking, bracing, in a way that I guess somnolents like Noam Sheiber can't understand. He laughed twice, he said. I gasped a few dozen times at the audacity.
Get this: Colbert brung it directly to the source. For twenty minutes he cracked the whip over the head of one of the most isolated/buffered presidents in our history.
That alone is worth more than a thousand laughs.
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'Yes, Jesus loves me....'
[Read the article: Why are so many Americans still hoodwinked?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm mystified by Greenwald's mystification.
In a country devoted to a belief in the "evidence of things unseen," it's more surprising that the numbers of "Saddam pimped 911" faithful have fallen as low as 31%.
When a sound majority in the U.S. insist on replacing rationality with sing song Sunday school theology ("...the bible tells me so..."), it's a miracle we haven't arranged an apocalypse yet.
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Frank Rich's true colors
[Read the article: Why we are really in Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't trust Rich farther than I could throw him. Sure, he types up his indictments, making a solid case for malfeasances any thinking person understood years ago.
But why is that impressive? Solely because he works for the Gray Lady?
To obtain a sense of his true colors, here's Rich from his column of March 11, 2000:
"Eight months to go—but hey, who's counting?—and we're stranded with two establishment, tightly scripted, often robotic candidates who are about as different from one another as J. Crew and Banana Republic. Both are wealthy, Ivy-League-educated boomers who took safe paths through the Vietnam War, whose career advancement was greased by their dads, who advertise their intimacy with Jesus, who reek of smarmy soft money and who will do anything to win, whether it be Mr. Gore's lying about his own Congressional voting record in a debate or Mr. Bush's heartless exploitation of women's fears of breast cancer in a scurrilous attack ad."
After penning shit like that in dozens of similar columns which downplayed any significant difference between Bush and Gore, Rich has some gall to state the obvious and call it wisdom.
He's garnered acclaim trading barbs with a ultraconservative administration. Who would he be attacking if Gore were president?
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I vote it's real
[Read the article: Odds-on office talent show winner]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Faux-Bono sings about Michelle Shepherd in the Northeast. Just googled her and came up with this press release from last summer from Bank of America.
"In her most previous role, Shepherd served as Group Management
executive in the bank's Card Services division, responsible for affinity and financial institution relationships. Shepherd has broad experience in a number of operating areas, including customer satisfaction, collections, credit and strategic planning. From 1994 to 1996, she was responsible for MBNA Europe's affinity business.
"Michelle brings great leadership and innovation skills to the banking center channel," McGee said. "Her key role in MBNA's groundbreaking work with affinity groups gives us a creative leader in the field with product and multi-channel experience."
I have actor/writer friends who put on shows for corporations all the time. Trust me, many are considerably more mawkish and silly than this one.
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Re: from a student who was there
[Read the article: Shocking incident]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Regarding the re-post of the comment from "a student who was there".
Here's one of his follow-ups:
"By the way, UCLA is filled with hippie/hipster Che Guevara t-shirt wearing down with capitalism spewing faggots, so because of this there is a protest organized in the middle of our busiest walk-through on campus at 12 pm tomorrow."
I suppose what's most disturbing about this "witness" and his compatriots who have posted here, is their sincere admiration of thuggishness. I guess it's a helluva lot less complicated to side with the brutes. Safer too if you don't want to get tased.
But given a choice between thugs and jerks, I find myself rooting for the jerks every time.
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More twaddle from Salon
[Read the article: Playing doctor in inappropriate clothes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm sick to death of marginalia masquerading as meat here. Perhaps I just haven't been paying attention, but has Salon always been this gossipy and shallow?
When this is all it takes to inspire Broadsheet's tepid feminist outrage, surely it signals that Borat's mockery is not misplaced. It reminds me of an American I met once in Ethiopia furious that his hotel bathwater was lukewarm. The weary clerk at the front desk just shrugged. "This is how it is," he said sadly.
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The end of empire
[Read the article: Where's the outrage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The vast majority (76%) of Americans supported this war in 2003. Less than a quarter thought it a bad idea. Iraq will be the monkey on our back for decades to come, sucking away at whatever remains of this pathetic superpower.
And that's truly the fate we deserve, having squandered so much and directly caused such misery and ruin. Because most of us (76%) cheered the war, most of us swallowed the lies without compunction, most of us waved the flag and passed the ammunition.
To mix a few metaphors: we've blithely sown the seeds of our own destruction; the horse has left the barn; the milk is spilt; the egg is hatched. "Where's the outrage?" The real question is, where's the shame?