Letters to the Editor
aveutter
Published Letters: 198 Editor's Choice: 32
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America needs a culture
[Read the article: Angry, hateful liberal bloggers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The blood lust that catapulted Bush from wimp to war President, hasn't much abated. If we were a religious nation, our leaders might quote Shakespeare, but the fault really is in the stars, and Billy Graham is the original 'sky pilot'. There are any number of factors which conspire to create the acceptance of violence, at a comfortable distance from the sofa, but that is the nature of the media experience of war. The first Gulf War set new standards for war as reality television.
The iconic nature of television was supposed to cool down the audience, according to McLuhan, but he never anticipated the proliferation of HD television. Not only is HD TV a hot medium, it tends to be the primary media experience in red states, while most Democrats log on to the internet, Republicans watch cable. The fact is there are more Liberal bloggers period, although I don't have the facts to back that up. Conservatives own television and radio, pretty much.
Sneaky Muslims, aren't much different than sneaky Japs. While watching the movie 1941, I always wonder, what took you so long, and why not again? What is Spielberg waiting for, 2001 the remake shouldn't have to wait fifty years to explore the comedy and insanity of war hysteria.
Perhaps the most disappointing moment in the entire Iraq War was watching Susan Sontag dissemble for three hours on CSPAN's book channel. The intellectuals were "out to Disneyland", as McLuhan said about an earlier example of the failure of artists to counter the animal spirits.
If America imagines itself to be a empire, it needs a culture. If everyone in a red state was made to log onto to the internet and chat for a hour a day, things might change, and if HD TV was banned, or the content altered, we might start to see things clearly at least. Meanwhile the world of the imagination will work overtime to fill in the empty spaces. That's a very sad commentary about the state of the arts.
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Rebutal films
[Read the article: "The Heartbreak Kid"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The original Heartbreak Kid was a rebutal to The Graduate, which ended on an ambigous note. Writers at the time used to speculate how Ben and Elaine turned out. Then the film Easy Rider was rebutted with Electroglide in Blue. Every important film generates an antithesis. Was Mandingo the antithesis of Gone With the Wind? Probably not. Should remakes of Rebutal films be allowed? Only if they are trashy and cheap, like the knockoff Spaghetti Westerns that followed Sergio Leone. Sorry this film might actually be too good to mention, Stephanie.
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Super Rats
[Read the article: The paranoid withdrawal fantasy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Super rationals are people who must have empirical evidence for everything, including their breakfast cereal. Super-Rats come from all walks of life, all political parties. George Bush is a Super-Rat, he had all the evidence to go to war in Iraq, it never occured to him that it was a lousy idea. Right now the Wall Street Super-Rats are taking the market to new highs, (and assuming what they don't know can't hurt them, the whereabouts of all those leveraged securities and their market value.)
Super-Rats often fail to regard the consequences, because the empirical data is staked in their favor. Other Super Rats fail to act, because they can't put the data together, even while the consequences are staring them in the face. The Super-Rats are frozen by data overload, leaving the field wide open to the risk takers, who want to play dice with the universe. The risk takers alternately promote their ideas, based on selective information, and attempt to block actions when there is not enough data to support the view. If the information on Global Warming was in the hands of the current Pentagon lackeys, we would be cutting CO2 emissions tomorrow.
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One Vote, One Person, Ta Te Da!
[Read the article: Let's abolish the Electoral College]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The difficulty with the 2000 election, and the way the electoral college is formulated, is not that it gave certain citizens more than one vote, but that it gave the least well informed portion of the American public a greater say in the outcome. It may seem radical to say so, but more informed voters deserve more votes. A simple ballot test could help determine your voter eligibility. I also think caregivers and those who do volunteer work deserve extra votes. Economic status is not sufficent, but instead of giving cadillacs to welfare queens, why not give them an extra vote?
I recall with some poignancy a young woman sitting in a cafe the evening of the 2000 election. She was going to vote for Al Gore, but she didn't think she needed to, she thought his election was a foregone conclusion. The more often you vote, the more vote credits you earn, like frequent flyer miles.
So lets give informed voters more votes, and it may pain me to say so, but the ignorant, the uninformed, and the stupid, in so far as they haven't learned anything about the candidates, will all receive fewer votes, to borrow a notion from Carlos Mencia. Ta Te Da!