Letters to the Editor
Buckethead Wendy
Published Letters: 43 Editor's Choice: 14
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Honestly.
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I really do like your column, and read it regularly during the NBA season. However. I just thought I'd take this opportunity to thank you for shitting on the Hornets, at every possible opportunity, with no reprieve, both before and after their fans had their entire city wash away in an apocalyptic catastrophe. Awesome.
Last season was the first below 500 season in years, but everybody acts like they've been stinking up the whole league since time began. Before the storm they were 2nd in the league in new season ticket sales, so I thought maybe people would stop giving them shit about low attendance, in a small city they'd been in for 2 years. A really poor city. Sports columnists, I think, tend to forget that regular people have to actually pay for their tickets in order to attend.
I know you're not one for the "oh it'll be so inspirational to the poor people blah blah blah" and neither am I. The Saints have 40 years of suckitude behind them, so they've earned their scorn. But maybe, for example, mentioning the names of some of the Hornets, like you did with every single other team, instead of one snarky sentence about them being homeless, might make us feel less shat on. And feeling less shat on would in fact be inspiring.
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Perfect.
[Read the article: The real war on Christmas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Very nice job. Right there with you on the brilliant, funny, fantastic former hippie/current Bushie parents, only I have four of them.
This was lovely and spot-on and Wil Wheaton should have a regular column on every website I obsessively waste time on at work.
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Manipulation of women when they need it the very least
[Read the article: Conservative "abortion services"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I worked as a counselor at an abortion clinic in a small city in Louisiana, and the local "Crisis Pregnancy Center" actually changed their phone number so that it was one digit off of ours. Because that's what Jesus would want, is to trick women into having children they don't want and/or can't afford.
This is the same "those silly women, they don't know what they want, they'll just run off and have an abortion on the way home from the grocery store if we don't hold their hands, the poor flighty things" logic that's bubbling just below the surface of these movements, underneath the gnashing of teeth about the poor, poor babies. Which by the way are on their own once the cord is cut, especially if they're brown and especially if they're in another country. Watch out for that land mine there, Ahmed, and tough shit, you should have caught us when you were attached to a placenta.
Women deserve all the information available about abortion and alternatives, not patronizing rhetoric. Factual information, without manipulation or shame. I can't speak for all clinics, but I know that the major focus of my job was to make sure these women were informed, top to bottom, and that every woman was in our clinic of her own free will and left with some form of birth control. We even had a patient confide that her boyfriend was bullying her into terminating her pregnancy, so we kept her in the clinic long enough to avoid suspicion from him, refunded her check, and sent her home to her mom in a cab. I guess we forgot to twirl our evil babykilling moustaches that day.
I will take these people seriously as members of a Culture of Life™ when they adopt 2 minority orphans each and use their grant money to say, feed actual living children, or take real, proven measures to prevent unwanted pregnancies, before they start tricking and/or scaring women into childbirth, which as we all know has no medical or psychological risks whatsoever.
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Help! Help! We're Being Oppressed!
[Read the article: Sinners in the hands of an angry GOP]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey, can somebody declare a War On People Who Aren't Totally Fucking Bonkers? Cause if having control over all three branches of government, not to mention over what I can watch on the cable I pay for, my sex life and reproductive practices, and my choice of recreational substances - if that consitutes having a war waged against you, then hot damn. Bring on the War On Reason.
Jesus seems like a really nice guy, and would likely be completely horrified to see these people completely ignore pretty much everything he ever said, yet still manage to namedrop him in their spittle-flecked tirades against anything they find kind of icky and/or inconvenient. Heaven forfend they actually act kindly first and foremost, take care of those less fortunate, and conduct themselves humbly and privately. That stuff's for hippie commie liberals! Oh, and it's also pretty much exactly what Jesus said to do, over and over.
I've read the gospels and they have a word for people like these folks: Pharisees. Jesus kind of thought they were tools.
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Somehow, not scarred for life by Kool Aid
[Read the article: Feeding frenzy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yeah, you know, I guess my mom forgot to tell our nanny to shop at the organic mart while she was at yoga class.
Oh no wait, I mean, I guess my mom sometimes made us Hamburger Helper because she had just gotten home from 8 hours of social work for the state of Louisiana, which I'm sure had excellent pay and benefits in the late 70s, to two toddlers 15 months apart she was raising alone. Alone with no child support, neither of which was exactly her idea.
I would guess that there are lazy moms out there who just don't care how gross and fat their kids are, because people tend to be asshats, and asshats tend to breed. But there are at least as many who just buy what they can afford. Probably more. And we were never fat.
I still like Hamburger Helper, and I would sooner eat a gigantic glass-and-tofu organic salad than give my mom any shit for what she fed us. The fact that she managed to feed us at all, and spend more time actually talking to us and playing with us than carefully scrutinizing nutrition labels, which didn't exist then actually, is miraculous. I thank her for it as much as I can.