Letters to the Editor
malamiyya
Published Letters: 11
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Is Anybody Listening?
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The American comment on Ahmadinejad, even the yes,buttiest of it, reminds me of how you had to curse the name of Saddam three times before you could say even the mildest thing against the once and future war with Iraq. "I know he gassed his people, but..."
I haven't followed Ahmadinejad closely. I read his letter. I read his complete remarks at Columbia and his answers at the National Press Club.
And what is being said, even by Glenn, let alone Chris Matthews and Patrick Buchanan, is yes,butting up the wazz. It doesn't begin to match what Ahmadinejad is saying, let alone meeting it without presumption, without any special weighting toward American narrative 'cause we're us and we're the good guys.
Ahmadinejad has his own reality tunnel and his own narrative, and laughing at one and missing what he is attempting to communicate on the other, is being just as childish and naive as they always said we Americans were.
Dimly, a few commentators have picked up that Ahmadinejad acted politely, respectfully and (within his reality tunnel) more highmindedly than Columbia's president.
But because the first half of what he said at Columbia was couched in a foreign to Americans cultural language, it has been completely ignored and discounted. Ahmadinejad, it seems to me, was appealing to the best side of our common human nature -- and in trying to do it, spoke completely over the heads of those receiving him. I don't know whether he was sincere or not, but none of you heard him.
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Yes, but...
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, but, Scott. Yes, but.
I'm attempting to say that not only did Ahmadinejad act like more of an adult at Columbia, the first half of his speech -- in Islamic idiom -- was attempting to say something that Americans are too preoccupied watching "24 Hours" to get their heads around. It wasn't just Islamic tapelooping. He was trying to say something to us that present-day Americans can't hear.
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Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right
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[Read more letters about this article: Here]Reconsider, Glenn.
Ahmadinejad has no power, so attributing vile deeds to him doesn't go far.
He does seem to be trying to say something. And when he points out that turning a European problem into a 60-year agony for the Palestinians isn't just, I have to grant him the point. Without calling him a Holocaust denier.
I tell you as one whose ear is somewhat attuned to the wavelength that Ahmadinejad was broadcasting on, that he was attempting to say something to us that is not just a Bushian invocation of kneejerk pseudo-Christianity.
Making Ahmadinejad out to be a clown diminishes you as much as Columbia's frontman diminished himself and his institution.
When Jon Stewart's automatic launching pad for comment on the man is to mangle his name once more, Jon becomes one more American jerk. I love the man, and I hate to see him act like a jerk.
Why don't you read over his letter and his remarks at Columbia with an eye toward getting where he's coming from instead of starting from an assumed one-up position, Glenn?
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Hang on, Glenn, hang on
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn, I ordinarily read and admire you for your highminded critique of the ordinary bullshit and the Bullshitting Class.
But I seem to have startled you into losing your cool.
You keep talking about saints and Nobel peace prizes, and I haven't said anything even remotely like either one.
I keep repeating that Ahmadinejad is saying something that isn't being heard. What's more, it wasn't scripted for him with phonetical renderings of difficult names. He was talking on his feet at Columbia.
I don't know whether he's as much a scam artist as you and others here make him out to be. I do know that if you automatically discount what he's saying because he's a monster or defective or other, you place yourself in exactly the sort of position that you criticize rightly on a daily basis.
Did you read the first half of his Columbia remarks with an attempt to try to get what he was saying or did you just take it as so much lipflapping? If it was the second, consider that you might, just might, possibly have something to think about here?
You can't hear what you aren't listening to.