Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 964 Editor's Choice: 127
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On "Facts" for Tona Aspsuga
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the interest of semantic correctness I will retract use of the word "fact" in this context, as even the venerated DSM IV doesn't consider a person a "pedophile" until he has acted upon his fantasies. Instead, I will simply say that it is an article of faith (and taught as fact) among child sexual abuse workers, healthcare workers and law enforcement officers, based on vast but admittedly scattered experience (that is, unsupported by any officially sacntioned studies - the bane of the madical profession) that those who find fascination with prepubescent children (to the extent of procuring media which might appeal to prurient interest) do progress to actual acts or sexual contact. You are correct in that this cannot be classified, by official study, as "fact."
This whole tangent is somewhat off-topic, I suppose, in that the parents involved in the case are certainly not suspect (by me, anyway) of even remotely being pedophiles. The issue was raised, as you obviously know, by someone who has served a customer he cited as having a probable interest in prepubescent children and we got off (pardon the expression) on the current tangent from there. In fact I have heard there are some studies supporting this "article of faith" but have not seen them nor am I especially interested in seeing them unless they are very large-scale ones, as I have found that, at least in medical circles, studies primarily serve to jerk the professional around on a weekly basis as to what is "fact" and what is merely "anecdotal evidence."
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Yes, it IS the Fucking South
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So brave you have to use an asterisk in the heading of your really sad and nearly inarticulate hate letter? Hey, bub, North ain't nothin' but a direction. If anyone here needs to "get over yourself" it's No Name Given - and I sure as hell don't blame o'l No Name for keeping that stream of verbal sewage anonymous. That's pretty ballsy - for a Yankee - and an ignorant, badly bred, self-hating one at that.
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Somebody Wet-sheet Coulter
[Read the article: The Fix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just til the cops can take her into protective custody. I really have no desire to see something that ugly implode publicly. (Ignore her? When she's just incriminated herself?? Nooooo! Not now!)
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Targeted or Not, Isreal Knows Who It Is Killing
[Read the article: Killing a nation, one airstrike at a time]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The back-and-forth as to whether or not Israel is deliberately targeting civilians in its pogrom against Lebanon (and that's what I see it to be - and I didn't reach that conclusion in a vacuum) appalls me. The fact that they are knowingly incurring "collateral damage" and "necessary losses" is, if anything, precisely as immoral and evil as if they were deliberately and carefully targeting civilians. There is no escaping the knowlege that lobbing explosives into areas occupied by innocent civilians is going to result in death and injury to many of those civilians. Oh yeah, I forgot: they drop leaflets first, warning the innocents to leave their homes or be blown up with them, all in the pursuit of "justice." Yes, the planet's arbiters of morality, the earth's singular experts on suffering and persecution, God's Chosen People, are very considerate when they decide to extract an eye, an arm, a head, a neighborhood, for an eye, etc.
Savagery is savagery. Whether it is supported by the Torah, the Christian Right or idiot politics, it is all the same; no, it is worse. Hezbolla is a known, self-declared loose cannon; Israel on the other hand is our Monster on a Leash. None of this is necessary. All of it is wrong. Simply hollering "But he started it!" like some kids on a school playground does not justify anything, yet we will, as we always have, because of our precious Judeo-Christian heritage, continue to support any barbarism Israel commits, with or without just cause, at least up until the End of Days, which, according to certain elements headquartered in the Commonwealth of Virginia, have begun. When Jesus gets here with the Avenging Angel and all that crap, Israel will be flattened too - according to that super-intelligent brain trust which so powerfully influences our administration of the moment - and has influenced all previous ones since, oddly enough, that of Jimmy Carter.
Quit debating whether or not the deaths of innocents is deliberate or simply incidental! It is a predictable and inevitable known quantity no matter how you frame it. Israel is out of control and it is our dog running loose in someone else's neighborhood yet again. We're marching to Zion, that beautiful city of God. May God have mercy on us.
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It's the Economy, Stupid!
[Read the article: I grew up poor but my boyfriend has money]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"You sound like you are compatible as people. It's the money that stands between you."
To paraphrase a blasphemy of the NRA's, "Money doesn't ruin relationships, PEOPLE ruin relationships." It's pretty clear to me: Old Money has no basis for understanding the planet "poor people" come from. The reverse, sadly, is not necessarily true. And while New Money often can interact well with Little Money, Old Money is generally blind as a bat. Witness the comments of another respondent here regarding the Bush family and their utter disconnect with working class and, yes, even New Money people. Planet Bush is no different, in theory, from just plain Old Money, even if it isn't the kind people like the Bushes take as a natural condition.
These two are not compatable as people. Someone has been watching "You Can't Take it With You" too many times and yet not getting the point. Working Class LW is a lot closer to my comfort zone (me having grown up poor and then been dragged, kicking and screaming, into New Money created with smoke and mirrors) than is Old Money Boyfriend, who will remain clueless even when the Wrecking Ball hits the mansion. Run girlie! This ain't gonna work, and you have made that case, then written to Cary in hopes that he'll tell you you're wrong. You're not.