Letters to the Editor
kevred
Published Letters: 96 Editor's Choice: 8
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These are universal issues
[Read the article: Another pretty face of a generation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are always unique angles and nuances to the ways different issues affect and are manifested within different groups. Different by age, gender, race, economic status, sexual orientation, religion, the list goes on and on.
While I can't deny the value of examining this issue from any one angle--in this case, that of privileged, white, big-city, media-in-club women--I worry that as a culture, we're somehow getting to the point of wasting our time parsing these issues as a myriad of separate, small, divided groups, instead of looking at these issues as a collective whole.
I realize that's a flawed perspective, because there are many groups whose stories are still evolving and whose voices haven't had nearly the hearing that that traditional white male voice has (though even that notion, of one voice for all white men, is flawed, oversimplified, and unrepresentative).
But as I see self-analysis turning into isolated navel-gazing across the social-media-informed spectrum, and I see the same old youthful journeys remade a thousand times as something new, I wonder if we're becoming so fascinated with our uniqueness and imagined newness that we're losing track of our shared condition. This "spotlight syndrome" affects all of us in some way or another. Divided, there's little we can do about it other than talk it into the ground.
If the ultimate goal of femisism, woman-centered reporting, and every other type of specialized focus (including those regarding men) isn't to one day make itself irrelevant and unnecessary, then I wonder about our destination.
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What a steep decline for the Bears
[Read the article: The Cedric Benson Index]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From one of the most dynamic running tandems in all of football, to breaking up the duo and stumbling, to starting from scratch, all in a couple years. And they still have the same quarterback situation they did at the start. Wow. I don't know enough to know exactly where it all went wrong, but did it ever. They'd have a hard time keeping up with the likely Giants-Cowboys-Eagles-Packers show this next season anyway, but sad to see them tumble.
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No, we should absolutely not be doing this.
[Read the article: Old McDonald had a pharm]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]From a humane perspective, it's atrocious, primitive, and sends our relationship with the natural world back into the dark ages.
But it's also a sham. There's very little that we actually need this for. What it really is is a way for more money to be funneled into corporate coffers. Anything for a new revenue source, anything to boost the quarterly reports and stock prices. Corporations have created most of the world's health problems to begin with, from pollution, imbalanced distribution and exploitation of resources, pushing processed foods and sedentary lifestyles, etc.
Thanks to big corporations, our waterways are undrinkable, most of the fish in the world are dangerous to eat, our drinking water is laced with pharmaceuticals, and due to unsustainable scale of production and distribution, processed food-like substances are cheaper at the market than pure produce and raw goods (an entirely artificial state). And heaven help you if you live anywhere near a coal power plant or industrial agriculture operation.
No, this drug research isn't a solution to anything, it's just an attempt to make us believe that the solution to our artificial problems is to create a new scientific marvel. That the solution to living an unhealthy life is to take a drug.
Meanwhile, all the root causes of our national and international health crises go untreated, unspoken. We're piling up a cabinet full of band-aids, but we don't stop cutting ourselves. That will not make us healthier.
I hate to think so, but it seems to come down to the cumulative effect of lack of individual responsibility. We know what we're doing is bad for us and for the natural world, but we keep taking the easy way, keep denying the effects, and then sit back and expect science to make it okay. We keep buying the same goods from the same mega-corporate interests who are turning us into cattle the same way they turn actual cattle into bizarre genetic laboratories.
It's wrong. We know it's wrong. We just need to stop it. I need to stop it (and I've been making huge strides over the last few years). You, the reader--you need to stop it, right now!
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Rich bastards!
[Read the article: Sonics to Seattle: Screw us? Screw you!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That pretty well sums it up.
(I realize the danger of trying to isolate certain groups of rich bastards in large corporate enterprises where many may be present, on and off the field, but it seems pretty easy here. When they say things like, "the public's 'interests are legally irrelevant'"--this being the same public that routinely coughs up gargantuan tax subsidies to these fat-cat owners--any sympathy goes out the window.)
Nice comment above on the Storm. I wouldn't doubt that moves like this will provide fuel for the rise of such other (more worthy?) ventures.