Letters to the Editor
Nita Martin
Published Letters: 271 Editor's Choice: 62
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Maybe she didn't get the e-mail on her RNC account
[Read the article: Want change in Iraq? You've already got it]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Where was Dana Perino when we had the last two "surges" that were supposed to permanently get hold of the situation in Baghdad? Remember....the ones where we threw the party and the Iraqi's barely showed up? This is NOT something new. It's been done before and it failed. How many times must we try this innovative "new" strategy before Bush will admit defeat. You can't put lipstick on the SAME pig over and over again and keep claiming it's a NEW pig.
Judging by the extended 15,000 troops who are going to be fighting for their lives for at least 4 more months in Baghad after their one year tour is up...and the callup of even more National Guard troops... I think I heard 30,000....this is a bottomless pit.
The answer is so simple. When you're in a whole, you stop digging.
And you stop looking America straight in the eye and lying like you really believe you're telling the truth.
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No shame in being more sham than shaman
[Read the article: The dark legacy of Carlos Castaneda]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Carlos Casteneda deserves credit for being a superb storyteller. And one can't blame him for exploiting this gift in the environment in which his books took root.
I first got to know his books when I was in college, in the early 1970's. My then-husband, a modern Walter Mitty who was one of those people who was strongly suggestible and prefered fiction to reality, introduced me. That's one indicator of Castaneda's appeal.
Another is the time and its inhabitants. Publishers looking for a score. College professors preaching to the turned-on generation. My first experience with pot had been a gift of my history professor, who was fond of getting high with the most pretentiously intellectual of his students. I wasn't "pretentiously" intellectual. But, as he pointed out, I was certainly smart....and I had great legs.
In those days, the intellectual "establishment" was looking for ways to be "with it" in an exclusive way that set them apart from, and above the merely cognisant. Castaneda fit the bill. He could be popularized, and still be intellectualized.
By way of further exposition...it was the same group that pronounced Jerzy Kosinski's work "literature".
In other words, it's great because we say so...and you just don't "get it."
As much as I believe (and to my credit, believed at the time) that Carlos Castaneda was most definitely fiction, I nontheless enjoyed his imaginative explorations, his suggestions of inner reality, and his writing.
The fact that people were debating then, and are still investigating acceptance of his books as nonfiction is just absurd. It's a good read, and a thoughtful journey to be taken with a glass of wine and wandering mind. Then again, when I cleaned my library out and decided what books were worth keeping, his went to the local library sale, their relevance expired, and their places taken by works exposing the run-up to Iraq...again...fiction advertised as reality.