Letters to the Editor
Asinistra
Published Letters: 33 Editor's Choice: 1
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Ruff-ruff Roiphe?
[Read the article: Katie Roiphe's morning after]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In an otherwise interesting and nicely-written article, I was struck by this odd phrasing:
"snuffling so dilligently through the detritus"
Did Traister purposely try to portray Roiphe as a hungry pug rummaging around the paper plates after a barbecue?
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I'll be damned
[Read the article: Dodd is my copilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Every time I hear or read Dodd, I come away impressed...not just on a policy level, but the level way he states his policies and makes the case for himself. I'd say this is one guy who hasn't been ruined by his Senate experience. And I'd seriously take issue with Alan Bennet's take on Dodd's handling of the Leiberman thing. Are we to hold it against Dodd that he honored a 30-year relationsship with Joe to support him in the primary and then honored his relationship with the state's voters to campaign against Joe in the general? Are we looking for petty, back-stabbing, bomb throwing narcissists or are we looking for mature people with some sense of statesmanship?
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Forgetting something, Joan?
[Read the article: The man who sold the war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The dead might not be so if Rove had returned to his family and taken Cheney with him. The witches' brew that is our national politics is all from Rove's nasty little cookbook. But all the blood is on Cheney's hands.
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Worth the effort
[Read the article: Edward Klein's next three books]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are probably just a handful of us who know Edward Klein by name as a nonpareil sleaze artist who makes Kitty Kelly seem like a Boswell, but on behalf of all six or seven of us, I'd like to thank you for this brilliant takedown, even if down for Klein measures about two-and-a-half inches above the gutter.
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Give my regards to Hillary
[Read the article: Goodbye, Mr. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And, yes, if she actually reads your stuff rather than just uses your stuff (and you), she'll do two things as she goes forward. First, she'll drop the Clintons' damned Dick Morris fetish for play-the-rubes policies like school uniforms and flag bunring amendments. Two, she'll again raise that Right to Privacy Amendment she ran up the flagpole a few months ago but immediately pulled down when not enough of the big donor class saluted it.
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Costas cuts self down to size
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]According to Bob Costas last night, except for one play against the Pats and Vinitieri's missed kick against the Bolts, the Colts would now be playing with homefield advantage in the playoffs and the Pats would be sucking on their fumes.
Yeah, and if Hitler hadn't decided to march to Russia, Costas would be hosting a show called Football Nacht Amerika.
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In Related News
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Microsoft has announced it will be pulling back on marketing and distribution next year to cut profits so as not to appear to be running up the score on the compettion.
Good God, are we going to have to put up with this whining right through the Super Bowl?
Go watch golf, babies!
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On the other hand
[Read the article: What's worse than watching your teams lose? Watching them win]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's this from the estimable Charlie Pierce who's been living and writing Boston sports for--oh, I don't know--all his life:
"Back in 2004, when winning the World Series was neither this easy nor this commonplace, one of the popular fictions in Boston was that the act of doing so would turn out to be so unpleasant and anticlimactic that, deprived of their ability to marinate in their own misery, the great majority of Red Sox fans would find the whole business distasteful and long for the days when karma played first base on busted ankles and slow rollers got past it and rolled into history. I am not kidding about this. Sad people without lives pondered quite seriously the notion of whether or not they would miss the 86 years they spent as the pre-eminent drama queens of American sport. My reply was always that we should let the team win one and then see how we all feel. Now that the Triple A-plus Colorado Rockies and all their personal lords and saviors have been dismissed, I have to admit that it feels awfully good to be stinkin' rich."
http://www.slate.com/id/2176853/nav/navoa/
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Who let the ankle-biters out?
[Read the article: "I'm Not There"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Every decade they have something else to yip about, don't they? "He can't sing." "He's irrevelant." "He did all of his best stuff in the 60s." "He's soooo boomer." "He's propped up by the critics." ("I don't get it, bwahhhh!")
100 years from now they will still have their spiky little teeth locked onto his pant leg. It is their fate. And not a bad fate as fates go, because Dylan will be timeless.
"The Cuckoo is a pretty bird, she warbles as she flies
I'm preachin' the Word of God
I'm puttin' out your eyes
I asked Fat Nancy for something to eat, she said, 'Take it off the shelf -
As great as you are a man,
You'll never be greater than yourself.'
I told her I didn't really care
High water everywhere"
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Do it, Joan
[Read the article: Your cheating stars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Joan, there are hints in this thread that we might soon get a feature article from you or one of your writers about the similarity between sports and political coverage. Anyone who regularly reads both sports and political news can see the same media behaviors in action. If the political press decides there is nothing to the Valerie Plame story, its coverage reflects and reinforces that presumption. If the sport press decides that Roger Clemens's rather supernatural career reflects a diligent work ethic, their coverage reflects and reinforces that. They don't ask probing or even obvious questions that might challenge their initial take. I don't think this is out of bias, but out of sheer laziness. No doubt one could find the same traits exhibited elsewhere in the media, be it coverage of business, entertainment or what have you. But it's probably most strking in the area of sports and politics. I think comparing the two would be a far more worthwhile investigative effort than sending a bunch of sports writers to cover ploitics. You'd only end up with--horror of horrors--a gang of Greg Easterbrooks running amok.