Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 945 Editor's Choice: 126
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Some Things Never Change
[Read the article: MoveOn moves in with Pelosi]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Left just wouldn't be the Left if it had any real common sense, god love 'em. This is why so little has been accomplished with "symbolic gestures" and misplaced ideals. One may want the stars but if one's reach only encompasses, say, the moon, take the damn thing!
MoveOn (yes I am a member and yes I voted in favor of the bill after making sure my decision was informed) continues to move while the rest of the Left continues to place the ideal of the perfect ahead of the achievable good. This is not unlike religious martyrs, who wind up with nothing but a dirt bath for their trouble.
Maybe it's because I was so profoundly influenced by Huie Long from a very young age, but I believe we must grab what traction we can get in order to get more. We don't just sit in the rain with smoldering, soggy wicks and christen ourselves saints. This is real and it is movement. I'm with Malcom (as he addressed the intransigent idealism of the NAACP): "Ya'll sing too much." Doing something trumps symbolic gestures every time. We are now this much ahead, and the Bushites are this much farther into the hole.
Constitutional crisis? Bring it on!
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Weird but Wonderful
[Read the article: Gone with the wind]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The first time I encountered a wind farm was in California a few years ago. My first impression was Salvador Dali had slipped something in my coffee on the way inland. I was positively freaked out by the otherwordly fanscape.
But I'm better now, thank you. I got over it even as the car passed through the I began to sense the possibilities. Yes, even the possibility that some large birds could get nailed by the quiet, slow-moving blades. Probably not nearly as many as are taken out by avian COPD our outright poisoned by our vast, ongoing industrial fart, but a few. Very few. OK, I'm a monster. Still, somehow the notion of these passive, quiet, eminently simple machines supporting a portion of our energy needs began to appeal to me more and more, dead birds and blighted views (gimme a freakin' break!) notwithstanding.
The thing works. When one considers the incredibly vast amount of undeveloped land in the nation and the relative unobtrusiveness of the wind turbine (as opposed, say, to oil derricks or coal mines or timber taking operations) they become quite lovely to me. As a part of a comprehensive package of alternative energy sources, they could make an enormous contribution and even add a welcome touch surrealism to the landscape which, if left to the Nova Mob, will be under water or turned to desert anyway by the time our grandchildren are big enough to don their breathing apparatus to go outside.
As for Cape Cod, it figures.
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I Pity the Fool
[Read the article: Men who hate women on the Web]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]who exposes himself this way where my eyes can see it. Men - and they are mostly men, although there is a certain type of woman - rare but extant - who practice this sort of execrable behavior, I will find you and I will make your life hell. With words.
I felt a terrible emotional pain when I first heard that Kathy Sierra had holed up at home because of the bile that had been spewed at her. It is a betrayal of all of us by a few swine who have run into the national trench of mindless rage. If there was any doubt before this that a part of our nation is gangrenous with rage and free-floating hostility, that there is a new and yet-to-be-classified mental illness spreading throughout the land, let this serve as the watermark.
Interesting, isn't it, how such expressions of rage bring out the righteous rage in this responder. I'd just as soon slap any one of these morons upside the cranium with a two-by-four as read their droppings. And yet as I started reading the responses here to Ms. Walsh's article, I noticed far too many "but"s and lame excuses for this kind of behavior.
When we are attacked we are justified in clawing back. At least in writing. But there is a line. Even I can see it.
Turning the other cheek, looking away, these do not stop the tide of sewage and they do not help the purveyors of verbal hate.
I guess I'm no pacifist.
Before anyone jumps on it, yes, I have made comments about Ann Coulter's physical appearance. She is one of those rare women who can ably comepete with the worst of men in the hate spewing contest. And her ugliness comes from the inside.
Ironic that this sort of thing will lead to the very measure we all dread: shutting up some of the people some of the time. It is an awesome duty. I hope Salon's staff is up to the task, because I can't see any other way to seal off the plethora of hideosities spilling into our view. And shut me up, too, please, next time I cross that line. I'd appreciate it.