Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 203 Editor's Choice: 13
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Add to the reviewer's own, "oddly occluded" concerns:
[Read the article: The passion of Jim McGreevey]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]the raw sexism flagrantly exercised by some powerful gay men, closeted or not. Could it be that it's not "sex panic," a term that implies misplaced hysteria, but horror at the lengths to which politically active gay men are permitted to go in demeaning women, that insults the Oprah crowd? Some of the same people who denounced Bob Barr and Newt Gingrich for doing despicable things to hospitalized, soon-to-be ex-wives (like serving them divorce papers in-hospital) are embracing McGreevey despite his admitted sexual contempt for women (Screwing young campaign workers? Hitting the strip clubs? Rutting a man in your marriage bed as your wife bleeds in a hospital bed?). I agree that all gay activists and journalists shouldn't be accused of marching to the same drummer here.
As for the annals of creepy political confessions, add McGreevey's frog-killing misogyny to George Stephanopolous' scepter-massaging vision of power in 'the world where women aren't allowed' (see the first chapter of HIS autobiography).
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Being Too Cavalier About Prejudice With or Against the Frozen Yokels?
[Read the article: Is the homeland where America's heart is?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If you're going to complain that a writer is too cavalier about the harmfulness of stereotype, maybe, in the process, you should refrain from calling people "monosyllabic hog farmers" and "frozen yokels," right? Especially if the subject at hand is the alienation of rural Americans from the ostensible big tent of left-wing multiculturalism and standards of political correctness?
O'Hehir is obviously intelligent. Is his contempt so ingrained that he fails to even see such an embarassing deviation from a positive value he advances a few paragraphs later?
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Fallacy
[Read the article: Open the closets on Capitol Hill]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Jim Coughenour must have had a singularly unsuccessful experience as an adult if he feels that "virtually every adult male" desires adolescents. And, "liberals are hysterical" because Foley was unsuccessful at "pre-dating" teens? This is what passes for intelligent commentary? What is this, stupidcreepyville?
A more honest assessment is that gays must surrender their sense of privileged super-privacy for the good of those who support their basic rights. Just like everybody else in boring old bourgeois equalityville.
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And let's not forget bludgeoning seals for school luncheons
[Read the article: The real menace to American kids]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What the hell is this "either or crap"? Can't we simultaneously hold in our minds that child predators, adderal and excessive french fries aren't good for children? They aren't pawns: they're vessels. And whether it's creepy adult spoo, metaphysical or otherwise; or triglycerides; or depleted uranium dust drifting around in the places that mine cheap oil so you can fly to appearances at awards shows, isn't it all clogging the same virgin ground, as it were?
At least wait until they're voting age before you try to draft them into one exclusive, metaphysically histrionic calcification or another, OK? Not that I disagree with you.
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More Gump Than Garp
[Read the article: "The Uses of Enchantment"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In _The World According To Garp_, females struggling with the fact of living in a world where their victimization is, if not inevitable, a real possibility, are treated with a type of fatalistic irony that, despite being shocking, never descends into cruelty or easy satire. Nor is the luck of economic status used to bludgeon (females, alone, apparently). How far we've fallen in twenty years. Thanks for a thoughtful review of what sounds like a horribly conceived novel.
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Establishing Child Welfare Agencies Takes More Time Than Doing Your Hiar
[Read the article: Hillary is us]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So it seems insane to me that so many feminists seem to contradict their own principles when they apply them to other women, and specifically, Clinton. Also, some on the author's short list of interviewees leave much to be desired -- remember that when Hillary Clinton was toiling with Marian Wright Edelman to establish child protection services, Susan Sarandon was busy defending a serial killer she helped set loose, then naming her unborn child after him AFTER he killed again. That alone ought to banish her from ever being asked her opinion about anything.
And Clinton's savvy partnering with Newt Gingrich is precisely what the country needs to move forward on healthcare reform -- smart people agreeing that there's got to be some middle ground for the rest of us to crawl up on before we drown at the edges. So why don't these feminists froth at the mouth when Bill Clinton and George Bush Senior get together to drink scotch or help Katrina refugees? Feminist sexism, I guess. A Senator's job is to compromise and move positions forward through horse-trading. They don't get to wear capes and prance around doing good deeds. Get over it -- as you seem willing to do when the Senator in question isn't Hillary Clinton.
What sickens me is that both my left-wing and right-wing friends seem to despise Hillary Clinton for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with her actual record of stellar political accomplishment. It seems that what those at both extremes are really uncomfortable with is a woman being a politician, and a brilliant one at that.
Traister does a good job of pointing out the inconsistencies of those who claim to be feminist liberals while trashing one of the most effective feminist liberals of all time, but I wish she'd hold the mirror to their faces a little longer (say, until they see Ann Coulter staring back). It says a hell of a lot that conservative demagogues in the Senate have asked forgiveness for hating Hillary while so many self-proclaimed feminists can't seem to do the same.