Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 172 Editor's Choice: 13
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Cowboys or Mullahs?
[Read the article: The 9/11 backlash against women]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think Rebecca Traister and several letter writers get Faludi completely right here: Faludi plays with the trees without discerning (or acknowledging) the forest.
Furthermore, although it's not Traister's topic, around the world, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism has specifically threatened the safety, equality, and human rights of all women, though most immediately non-Western women. However, Western women should not be lulled: one woman's veiling is unavoidably a direct denouncement of another woman's bare-headedness, like it or not. Respect it or not. Practice it or not. Defend it or not. Defend the war, or not. So why does Faludi look at the post 9-11 world and see only American repressiveness towards women? How could all that cultural interpretativeness fail to discern the real threat to women's transnational, transcultural rights? Willfully, I suppose.
And that's too bad. Because what could have been a moment of employing feminism to rigorously and honestly contemplate the dangerously evolving status of women has turned out to be just one more poorly reasoned and divisive exploitation of feminism to defend a position on something else. It's just perverse to look at the world today and choose to selectively bemoan the status of women in America -- and not because you don't care about non-American women but because dumb political correctness dictates that the only bad guys you can finger are rich, white, American men (like Karen Hughes and Condoleeza Rice). Way to tank the movement, ladies.
Feminism deserves better, and if it demanded it, then maybe it would get some respect.
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Solipsism Only Works As A Model For Social Change
[Read the article: Stop your sobbing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When the goal is to manufacture more solipsism. "1985" indeed.
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Another Failed Insight About Activism
[Read the article: Stop your sobbing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the history of social activism in America, the most effective movements actually have been evangelical in their scope and message. So why exactly shouldn't this type of rhetoric work in this country regarding environmental activism? One of the most hopeful signs for American environmentalism has been the awakening of earth-protection movements among evangelicals and now, very recently and thanks to Papal dictate, Catholics. These movements explicitly encourage reverence for earth's purity and employ "Adam and Eve" imagery to motivate action. And the represent the very best hope we have for growing the environmental movement in America, most essentially across party lines.
So is there anything these folks got right?
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Whose Tolerance?
[Read the article: The ADL purports to respond again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As someone who was personally branded an "enemy of the ADL" ten years ago because I had the temerity to criticize in print the organization's efforts in the states to exclude women from being counted as potential hate crime victims (too many potential female victims = too "distracting" to other types of hate), I am relieved to see this public discussion of the ADL's tactics.
Back then, as Democrat and activist, I was troubled that the organization would choose to personally threaten me while entirely giving a pass to all the Republicans who similarly opposed and voted against the bill the ADL was trying to pass. It seemed like a selective and cynical display of power (it also seemed tragically fitting, in retrospect, because what I was criticizing was a selective and thus largely cynical use of crime-fighting and educational resources "in the name of equal justice").
After that shocking experience, I understandably viewed the ADL as an organization that exclusively lashed out at those on the left who failed to tow the line with their left-wing agenda. So now I suppose I must additionally view it as an organization that exclusively lashes out at those on the left who fail to tow the line with their right-wing agenda. In any case, they seem to have shown an odd deference toward conservatives all along. Not to mention a disturbing affinity for defamation.
But then again, so do some on the left, who just as cheerfully wield "tolerance" as a brickbat against those with whom they disagree. Would this conversation be taking place at all if said tactics had remained internecene?
All of which doesn't reflect particularly well on the efficacy of those "teaching tolerance" programs Abe Foxman oddly highlighted in his response to Greenwald, an effort, I think, to remind progressives of the ideological and political common ground they've long shared with the ADL. Now that the League is (understandably, for the interests they represent) aligned even moreso with the right, what exactly is "tolerance" to mean next, in practice? And who will end up on the wrong side of it?
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Ah, Yes,
[Read the article: Good times for liberals]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Andrew Leonard surveys the vast expanse of the economic, social and political expanse of the 20th Century and lands upon . . . Willie Horton. The liberals' favorite, favored torturer.
THAT may be all you need to know about why we've lost elections in the past, and may still lose them in the future. How very succinct.
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Florida Calling
[Read the article: How Hillary could tank]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hmm, and I thought the reason we aren't allowed to participate in the primary is because we would vote for Hillary, to the dismay of certain insiders trying to play the vote another way, an ugly little game.
Looks like those "insiders" might be pundits instead. Or maybe it's both. Either way, at least we can now blame both Republicans and Democrats for rejecting our ballots equally. The level playing field being the American dream, after all...