Letters to the Editor
Suzy Shedd
Published Letters: 21 Editor's Choice: 4
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A "significant" campaign song is an oxymoron...
[Read the article: What, was "Mandy" already taken?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Please, War Room -- get a grip! The purpose of a campaign song is to inspire an optimistic, can-do, feel-good attitude about the candidate. You don't want intense lyrics that are hard to listen to -- you want something that will be a great background for an ad. (In which case, an advertising song makes great sense -- particularly since all candidates in this country are bought and paid for until we get public financing of campaigns.) To my horror, I even like this one with Celine Dion singing it. This is the Hillary version of Morning in America. (From a strategic point of view that's not a criticism.)
In any case, do you suggest the Clinton campaign ask voters to choose the campaign song and then diss their choice? They liked this one enough to vote for it -- and it would hardly hurt the campaign to capture the "Celine" vote.
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VERY poor reasoning...
[Read the article: Battered and fired]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I seldom comment on Broadsheet posts because the opinions are (usually) thoughtfully stated and allow for the range of confusion and ambivalence that might be felt on a number of difficult issues. This post bothers me simply because it shows remarkably poor reasoning.
It is possible that a daycare directed by someone currently victimized in a battering relationship is putting children at risk -- of less focused care, if nothing else. The problem, though, is that this director's "fault" is that she allowed her victim status to be KNOWN. Surely this poster is not so naive as to think that women are not getting beaten up unless they say they are! Indeed, it is possible that a daycare run by a KNOWN victim might take security precautions -- and provide support -- that would make that daycare BETTER than one staffed & directed by a woman or women whose abuse was kept secret. This might be especially true if these hypothetical women were desperate to KEEP that secret in order to KEEP the job.
The point is that crimes of violence endanger us ALL: ANY of us could be in the vicinity of a violent attack, whether domestic or otherwise. While I understand a parent's legitimate concern about known potential dangers, I don't see any way that this remarkably poor thinking will help make children -- or adults -- safer.
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Oh, PLEASE...
[Read the article: Three faces of Karl]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It thrills the tourists to "think" that the PRESIDENT...needs advice...from...DANA PERINO????? (Spell Check just wanted me to change her name to Merino, which seems fair enough.) Gee, now we get to wonder whether the tourists are that idiotic or Dana is that deluded or both.
Do you suppose the ice cream given out on Fridays is the excellent Ben & Jerry's flavor, "Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream?"
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Is there a spell to vanish book critics?
[Read the article: Dumbledore? Gay. J.K. Rowling? Chatty.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]*sigh* I have NEVER understood why it is that people who critique books think they have the right to get sniffy about how other readers -- and the books' authors -- choose to handle the practice of authorship. If Traister doesn't like to know about characters outside of books, fine. That's a personal preference, right up there with preferring tangerines to oranges or not being able to tolerate eggs for breakfast. I hope she wouldn't go around saying that a good cook would never serve eggs and orange juice.
My perspective is that Jo Rowling -- a far more talented author than many have given her credit for being -- has the artist's sense of what a particular book needs to contain, and what will serve the story best by being left out. I applaud her skill. But why on earth should that stop me from wanting to chat about characters who have become real to me because of that skill? If Rowling set up characters whose appeal depended entirely on lack of information, perhaps new revelations would disappoint. As it is, I feel I know these people very well indeed, and new information enriches my understanding. (I found out at a funeral last weekend that a distant elderly relative was a devotee of dominoes, and it was a fascinating piece of information.)
I somehow doubt that Traister would get all prissy about this if Rowling were a biographer. After all, everyone knows that no biographer, no matter how thorough or devoted knows EVERYTHING about anyone. There is always room for each of us to construct our own understanding -- as long, of course, as Traister doesn't insist that we use only her pre-approved building materials.