Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 163 Editor's Choice: 13
-
What I Find Creepy
[Read the article: Dear Readers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is implying that Hillary Clinton lacks positive female attributes. She has birthed and raised a beautiful daughter. She has paid dearly for being a woman of a particular generation and within a particular power structure (if you doubt the cost, look to George Stephanopoulos' own misogynistic-yet-insider rantings). She has taken the fall for her husband's sexism, yet if she'd left him, she would be the one to suffer profesionally. And, oh yeah, she couldn't run for this office when she was Obama's age because she is a woman. And, oh yeah, there's that 30 years of woman-and-child-centered advocacy.
All that, the good efforts and the bad breaks, and you are basing your commentary on shallow mannerisms.
And then you don't even address Clinton and gender in your follow-up.
Creepy. And not a little sexist, all the nattering about "gender versus biology" aside.
And that's what's wrong with the article.
-
Blaming the Boob
[Read the article: Art movies: R.I.P.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If I'm getting it right, Camille Paglia seems to be blaming the following people -- or rather, the following people's body parts -- for our failure to pay appropriate attention to the war in Iraq: Mrs. Rudy Giuliani a vampy, trampy film-noir gold digger . . . Mrs. John Edwards, playing phone tag, put[ting] her foot in her mouth . . . Clinton campaign advisor Ann Lewis . . . addled and strangely superheated by the Washington Post's whimsical meditation on the saggy Hillary cleavage.
And so on.
I clearly haven't cracked my Aeschylus as much as Paglia of late, and maybe that's why I'm having trouble making the connection between these serious women's unfortunate residences in mammary-endowed bodies and our compunction to refuse to nurture the troops by, like, bringing them home alive (approbation of Ann Coulter notwithstanding, though if you follow Paglia's logic, perhaps Coulter's lack of breasts is supposed to excuse her mindless support for the war).
Or maybe this is just more idiotic crap from an embarassment whose idea of good taste once included posing for a magazine spread that disturbingly anticipated the worst Abu Ghraib torture snapshots. With a great, big, look-at-me-now smile on her face.
Judgment matters.
-
Oh, And By The Way
[Read the article: Art movies: R.I.P.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's the astonishing filmmaker Guy Madden, who, I hope, wouldn't let creepy humanities instructors wiggle around in bed with their cans.
That's the beauty of film: it's essentially democratic, accessible in ways that singular works of art, or the physical prints of films themselves, never could be. So imagining that sleeping with the "actual" Persona is very much missing the point. Archetypically missing the point, one might say, especially if the complaint is that youngsters today are too hopelessly bourgeoise to "get" the art-house experience.
The art-house experience is just a dumb, dated social scene, and nostalgia for it is just (thankfully) aging elitism. Now people whose parents couldn't buy them a loft in Greenwich Village and a set of bongo drums and unlimited blask turtlenecks can get them some art, too. Why is that so threatening?
Great film is bourgeoise.
-
Thanks, Tanmack
[Read the article: After 9/11, Rudy wasn't a rescue worker -- he was a Yankee]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]for raising the subject of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. They present an excellent contrast. Here are two young people who really did show courage and sacrifice, not only in their military service, but in the way they (Lynch, by herself; Tillman, in memory, through the tenacity of his family) stood up to those who misrepresented and twisted the facts of their honorable service to advance their own political interests.
That doesn't sound like anybody running for political office, least of all Giuliani.
-
Object Lesson in Subjectivity
[Read the article: The ballad of Ramos and Compean]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When you write a story as subjective as this one, it ought to be about something other than criticizing the subjectivity of others.
In other words, what on earth is the difference between what the Dobbsians (with whom I can often agree, in complaint if not strategy) are doing with this story and what Koppleman does here? Both inflate insignificant details, go poking around for conspiracies and play to a base well-tuned to respond to verbal slams against the opposition (the bright line between "hero" and "right-wing hero"?)
One shoot-em-up across the border begets another, and so on.
If Koppleman had chosen to practice what he preaches here, the case he's making would have been stronger. Instead some of the points he makes are dismissable nonsense -- who cares when the man was nominated for an award? Others lack explaining and context -- I'm interested in Feinstein's hearings, but if all I'm going to get from them here is a comment the author didn't like, well, don't pretend you're reporting on them. Name-calling and reductionist labelling throughout the article discourages trust when it comes to describing contested, important facts, like testimony about the reasonableness of concerns the officers had for their own safety. And it's just kind of laughable to watch Koppleman act incensed that right-wingers are daring to use the left-winger's favorite redoubt -- clinging to the defense counsel's version of things. When THAT becomes a problem, no matter the source, there are more serious journalistic transgressions to chase.
-
What We Do To Candidates
[Read the article: Killing her softly with his song]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I hate watching elections -- what we do to entirely normal people in the process of electing them has become thoroughly dehumanizing and may explain the quotient of freakish people who end up in positions of power.
Watching the metasticizing news coverage is even worse. Every word, and even the non-verbal, gets instantaneously dissected. We're in danger of becoming a culture of media theorists and literary critics, rather than putting any energy into the issues, where it belongs.
So I don't really blame any candidate from either party for constantly strategizing.
That said, two things ring untrue about Obama's current comments about the war and electability: first, I think the main reason he was able to oppose the war, while Edwards and Clinton were not, was simply the fact of his voter base. Would he have done the same elsewhere at the expense of an election? I doubt it. Second, Clinton has proven herself time and time again as a seasoned politician remarkable capable of working across party lines in the Senate.