Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 475 Editor's Choice: 5
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Amerigo, I misread your post
[Read the article: Dolores Huerta: "Como se llama" Obama?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Vikings wnt to Russia, the British Isles and possibly North America. Not to be outdone, the Irish have claimed that Brendan the Navigator (a saint, naturally) set off from the coast of Co. Kerry and traveled (via Iceland) to the distant shores of North America. Being the way I am, I don't believe it and I'm hard to convert to blind belief ever since I found out that my parents had lied about Santa Claus. I'll read what you've suggested after I've done some other things, including reading about the death of Bobby Fischer, the chess genius from New York who passed away in Iceland. I could have some Viking heredity as those Berserkers were quite fierce and I too am crazy like a fox. Someone has suggested that Thresher and I could be one and the same. I need an Irish coffee after reading that as my feathers are really ruffled now but the elixir of coffee, Irish whiskey and whipped cream will be balm to body and soul. Really, I'm a Minnie Mouse type and while the kettle is boiling, I'll telephone some friends and tell them that there are a few Americans who want me silenced. Has anyone got Hillary's number? No? Oh, woe is me and there I was "shilling" for her. A shilling used to be a coin in old currency but now that we're in the Eurozone currency, we even have cents but these are unrelated to the U.S dollar. As things are with your dollar, that's not a great sacrifice. I have to be careful though because, as a lowly Irishwoman, everything I write will be scrutinised for anti-Americanism, racism, feminism, agism, lookism....maybe even cannibalism. Buenas noches, amigos.
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Great letters!
[Read the article: Clarence Thomas is not a sellout]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Reading these letters on the subject of Clarence Thomas has been interesting and very informative.
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""Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee...."
[Read the article: The knives come out in South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yesterday was a holiday in the U.S but elsewhere the news was dominated by the fact that 240 bn.euro was wiped off European stock markets amid fears of US recession. With all the chatter about former Presidents JFK, Reagan, even Lincoln, you should not forget Calvin Coolidge, "Silent Cal" as he was known, who was your President from the mid-Twenties until l929. Everybody in America should be aware of what happened in l929 and of the subsequent rise of fascism in Germany. Still, reading the coverage of the US primaries, I'm amazed by the pipsqueak issues that are pre-eminent. Of course, Ihaven't seen what Walter Shapiro calls "the Clinton and Obama SPAT" but it's fair to say that all these debates are stage-managed and have more to do with entertainment than with yhe real political problems now facing the world in a truly frightening way.
It's time to get serious.
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Scatalogical language does NOT enhance debate unless you're a gastro-enterologist!
[Read the article: The knives come out in South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why are some people so fixated on faeces? Is there a problem with potty-training in the U.S.? The financial mess might require something more cerebral than inveighing against the body's eliminating processes. "The knives come out in South Carolina"! Oh dear, I hope nobody was disembowelled as that could have led to a lot of "merde" (or "mierda", according to your preference).
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It's Show Time!
[Read the article: The knives come out in South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This year's Presidential election seems to have more to do with "entertainment" than anything else. You have the oomph-effect of Oprah; Obama also has the support of David Geffen, one of the Hollywood glitterati. I can understand Oprah's motives in all of this but a man such as Geffen seems more Machiavellian. I've had to rely on Wikipedia for my information on Geffen. His mother appears to have been the dominant parent, as his father is barely mentioned. Her clothing/underwear company "Chic Corsets by Geffen" appears to have made her the bread-winner. Geffen's dislike of Hillary Clinton, the first female Presidential candidate, has stirred up a hornet's nest in America with people, of various genders, feeling free to use the most rebarbative language about an ambitious woman now past her child-bearing years. It's the ugly, woman-hating language that is so offensive and what strikes me most is that Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Britain's Margaret Thatcher were never subjected to such odium, such personalised attacks, because of gender.
This charade now being played out in America is missing one of the greatest talents of recent decades, Michael Jackson. Isn't he the one who was drawing huge audiences around the world because of his singing and dancing? One of his songs was "It don't matter if you're Black or White". It is now very obvious that it very much does matter, even though this fib has been foisted on the rest of the world. A far truer assessment of the politics of the US in 20008 is a much older song "Stay young and beautiful, if you want to be loved".
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To Anonymous p.3l
[Read the article: The knives come out in South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This "charming" young lady, who posts anonymously, states "...if I accomplish something in this life, I want it to be on my own merits". Her aspirations - and the "if" as well as "I want it" reveal that to be the case - are indeed commendable until you read the entire third paragraph in all its loathsomeness. She boasts that she is young, apparently unaware that youth is fleeting or, as Shakespeare put it so pithily, "Youth's a stuff will not endure" and the prurience of her comments suggests that this female's hypothetical accomplishments would be most fittingly realised in the pornography industry.