Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 1240 Editor's Choice: 5
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An endorsement that might matter
[Read the article: An endorsement that might matter]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Tim Grieve, I find the American obsession with race and gender stupefying. In one corner, apparently, you have the "black" Democrat candidate born of a white woman and brought up by another white woman; in the other is the quintessential "feminist" who has been excoriated for not divorcing her lascivious husband. America seems to have regressed into some mammoth burlesque with all this nonsense, while your economy totters and most informed Europeans are aware that China is well on the way to becoming the mega-economy of the future. I've read and seen more about the American primaries than I've ever done in my life, thanks to the Internet, and it seems to me that the American media is running the show. Barack Obama is closer in age to many columnists and is their chosen candidate. The Civil Rights struggle has no reference to him although it is now being imposed on the narrative. Even I, living thousands of miles away, know that Senator Obama is the son of an African born in freedom on his own continent. I fully appreciate the sufferings of women like the heroic Rosa Parks but I have to wonder if Ann Dunham, born in Kansas in l940, ever marched for civil rights or did anything brave to rectify the injustice inherent in segregated America. As you undoubtedly know, she was Barack Obama's mother. As the world watches, the American electorate is not being asked about issues that affect not only Americans but every person on earth. Meanwhile,you all squabble about who is the reincarnation of JFK or MLK, who was actually the descendant of slaves. This is pathetic stuff and, although I'm not the reincarnation of Emile Zola, I accuse the American media of being a crowd of dunces who haven;t the wit or wisdom to deal with what really matters. Mitt Romney's jawline, John Edwards haircut, Huckabee's "holy roller" type of faith.......Grrr.
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A racial conundrum in America with a question for Joan Walsh
[Read the article: The tracks of her tears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm puzzled by all of this "he said" and "she said" type of hysteria. If it was perfectly fine for Maureen Dowd to gush about "the handsome young Prince from Chicago" in her NYT column, why is it seen as so wrong for Bill Clinton to describe Barack Obama's emergence as a popular idol, with swooning crowds, as a "fairy tale"? Every fairy tale needs a Prince Charming and,if possible, the obligatory witch to make the narrative exciting. In Hillary Clinton, a partisan media found its witch. Since America is the land of p.c. run riot where commentators speak of the Clintons denigrating Obama without considering the meaning of the word's root, I can only assume that you have all gone mad. I don't suppose there is any room for a Snow White in your fable so that with all this censorship and extirpation of words, you people are in danger of re-creating the Salem community which Arthur Miller wrote about in "The Crucible". With all the talented women writers you have in the United States - such as yourself, Ms. Walsh - and all the talk about gender politics, isn't it strange that none of you has shown the slightest interest in the woman who gave birth to Prince Obama and died just over a decade ago and neither do you seem to wonder about the commitment of his grandmother from Kansas, still living in Hawaii, who raised this wonderful child. Hillary Clinton has written "It Takes a Village" but, from my own experience, it takes a very strong and loving woman to bring up a child in difficult times. With all the equivocation and false standards that now seem to prevail in America, why do you persist in calling Senator Obama black while "dissing" (am I allowed to use that word?) his Dunham mother and grandmother? It certainly is odd.
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Thrasher's Invective
[Read the article: The tracks of her tears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]We are all capable of a wide range of emotions and I imagine most people must be tired of the endless analysis of Hillary Clinton showing a very small moment of human frailty. I saw the segment on the Internet and noted that, apart from speaking of her own feelings, she also spoke of her love of country and her strong disapproval of the way America has evolved. I am a mere onlooker but I am shocked by the level of hatred that Americans have for fellow Americans, Thrasher being a prime example of unbridled hatred against white Americans. "A house divided against itself cannot stand" and your economy is in difficulties. This is a Presidential election in the USA and not a medieval form of bear-baiting and I would have expected better from many correspondents on this site than crude name-calling. Incidentally, nobody has attempted to explain why Barack Obama's mother has been written out of the script, a strange omission when gender and race are now being stirred up in an apparent effort to cloud the issues.