Letters to the Editor
Anna68
Published Letters: 158 Editor's Choice: 2
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oh, BAH!
[Read the article: You must remember this]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]2. We slaughtered the Japanese and German people too.
3. We're a bad country and we do bad things.
4. What about the terrible racism of the times?
My goodness! If you just so much as suggest that America is Anything Other than the Perfect Blameless City Upon the Hill suddenly you are a tedious scold!
What I find wonderful and remarkable about this film so far (only seen eps 1&2) is that it does not hold back about the bad OR good. That so many of the veterans can look back and see the complexities of it all so clearly ... the fighter pilot who said that honestly, a lot of young guys enlisted because it was exciting, not because they were patriotic. Or the gunner who lamented that for a long time the bombers were simply not very good at hitting their targets.
That they said that ... that it was true ... doesn't mean that nothing in World War II was worth fighting for. It means that the war was fought by HUMAN BEINGS ... who were full of contradictions and selfishnesses and ambiguity and occasional incompetences just like us. Who made mistakes and did terrible things along with the good things.
As Burns himself put it, the war brought out the best AND the worst in human beings.
You want to talk about tedious? The constant eyerolling and handwringing of those who really prefer the cartoon version of history. BORING!
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pollution of agency
[Read the article: The feminist who made me blush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have not read Katha Pollitt's book, but this review of it makes me think of Joanna Russ' "How to Suppress Women's Writing". Russ details a number of ways that women's writing is not literature ... it's called "confessional" or critics call the subject inappropriate, especially when it is anger or sex.
Writing about breakups means writing about anger AND sex.
The feminists out there who are troubled about the subject of this book should probably go back and read Russ again ... or for the first time! Who knows if anyone ever reads it anymore. Russ is an SF writer, not an academic (as far as I know) and wrote this book in the 70s about the refusal of academics to include women writers in the literary canon on the theory that it is "not literature". It's a really interesting book.
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Oh, but I wonder what this study is measuring ...
[Read the article: The happiness gap]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know how they conducted this study, but I wonder how they came to this conclusion.
Men and women might both be equally "happy" by any external measure, including their general moods. But expressing sadness or dissatisfaction is considered weakness by a lot of people. Men and women are equally likely to be depressed, but women are far more likely to seek treatment for it. Likewise, perhaps men are just a little less willing to admit to their dissatisfactions ... if so it would skew the data.
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Wow ....
[Read the article: Fashion weak]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Brightstar, your letter today is downright Dadaist.
I would ask you what American Indians and p-whupped men have to do with the subject anorexic models but ... I think I would have to take acid to follow your Spooky Moon Logic.
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Wow
[Read the article: The 9/11 backlash against women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This book review seemed to really make some people angry.
I was working in the media around 9/11 and yeah, there was a whole push for Let's Promote Mom and Apple Pie 'cause We're at War all over the place. All of a sudden flawed studies about women going infertile at 35 were plastered all over front pages everywhere while pieces on ...
... ahem ...
the Bush Administrations botching of the former Clinton Administration's attempts to help the former USSR secure its nuclear arsenal ended up behind the couch.
The culture war sells and the culture war gets everybody all hysterical and the culture war is (best of all) cheap and easy to report upon.
Meanwhile ... here we are, back at the ranch and we've all been so busy having freakouts about (wait for it) GAY MARRIAGE to notice that we've just ... um ... gone and invaded a sovereign nation on trumped up evidence, maybe?
Did any of you ever notice the big sudden fit about OBESITY that hit just after gay marriage? Because when people are freaking out about every morsel they eat, they are not paying attention to our mounting trade deficit or that we've been in Iraq for longer than we were in WWII ...
Then we took a break right after Katrina for a while but then it was BREASTFEEDING for a while ... With a side of INFERTILITY again (with the appropriate finger wagging at women who WAITED TOO LONG, right before a sales pitch to get younger women to FREEZE THEIR EGGS). And then we went back to celebrities. Thank you OJ. Thank you Martha. Thank you Britteny.
Obesity, breastfeeding, infertility and gay marriage are all interesting topics to write about. But you really don't think there was an agenda whipping people into culture-warania?
How about the PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN agenda?
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I heart my sanctuary city ...
[Read the article: Congress to New York (and Chicago and L.A.): Drop dead]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... for being the kind of place that allows doctors to treat patients and schools to educate kids and cops to keep the peace without turning them all into immigration officers. Jesus Murphy! I thought conservatives wanted *LESS* government interference in our lives!!!!!
But this thinking is from the brain trust who wants to keep their hunting rifles and therefore will not let us cityfolk get handguns out of the hands of gangbangers. The same morons screams about the illegal immigrants but won't crack down on manufacturers and retailers who dissolve paying jobs with benefits and get their work done with illegal day labor.
The same people who *NOTHING* about the life of their great cities that they did not see on an episode of Will and Grace.
Not for nothing are we city folk all Democrats.
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Heh!
[Read the article: The 9/11 backlash against women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What’s happening in this country—an incompetent boob, having found the chink in Democracy’s armor, is running amok—has nothing to do with sex.
I see we have all forgotten Monica Lewinsky.