Letters to the Editor

• AnaHadWolves, I really enjoyed your letter. It's time to deal with really serious matters

  [Read the article: Who won Super Tuesday?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  As Bill is the outsider, I'd like to consider him first. I think that, at 60, his roving days are over. I'd turn the old saying around in this case: "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak". Because of his cardiac by-pass, he's probably on statins and one of the side-effects of this medication can be muscular weakness. Didn't he recently fall asleep in a Church during a eulogy to Martin Luther King? I conjure up a Bill Clinton wearing comfy slippers, maybe even an ol-fashioned nightcap such as was worn in Victorian times. He will also need quick access to a bathroom because, as men get older, the need to pee can become urgent. Bill will have a warm milky drink laced with bourbon in the evening and soon his snoring will rock the White House but that contented snile on his rubicund face will be a sure sign that he's having lovely dreams about those far-off days (and nights, of course) when he was a babe-magnet.

  Michelle Obama comes across as a very stroppy woman who has told the American public that she will not be available again if they don't pick her husband for President this time. In the White House she'll spend a lot of time in the gym cos, dare I say it, she's lookin a little heavy on the hips - but that might be caused by the TV cameras. She will also have frequent appointments with couturiers as that pink/fuchsia suit she was wearing recently looked very old-fashioned. She will by then have forgotten the time when she tried to look like Condoleeza Rice with the flicked-ot hair and the string of pearls as she'll have stylists at her beck and call. Relaxing on an ivory-and-gold chaise-longue (Louis Quatorze), Michelle will listen appreciatively to Hot Chocolate singing "It Started With a Kiss" while telephoning all her cousins back in South Carolina to tell them how well her girls are doing in school.

  Cindy McCain's severe hairstyle will be long gone. She will "let her hair down", literally and metaphorically. She will raid the White House kitchen so often that "Vanity Fair" will call her "voluptuous" and that Limbaugh fellow will coldly call her "fat". She will drink a few Margaritas, take classes in Advanced Spanish and the gossip-hounds will be on her trail, suggesting that she's meeting a younger man who looks a lot like Madonna's personal trainer and the father of her daughter, Lourdes. Matt Drudge will report yhe gossip immediately and there may even be a picture of Cindy with a tear in her eye. No matter that it was caused by desert dust on a visit to Arizona, all is grist to the gossip-mill.

  Permalink Friday, February 8, 2008 07:39 AM

• You can analyse something to death.

  [Read the article: Hillary Clinton, the first Latina in chief?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Ah sweet mystery of life! The "melting pot" theory about American sociey was held in Europe as a model of integration for decades. This election has, as never before, shown that it is meretricious. Just last evening I saw a news item about the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is trying to solve the dissatisfaction of those living in the "bainlieus" (or ghettos) because of the riots throughout France in 2006. There is uproar in Britain because Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury(Anglican Church/Episcopalian in the USA) has suggested that a certain amount of Sharia law should be allowed to co-exist with the British legal system. TThis has led to a sizeable number of Anglican clergy calling for his resignation and for the British government to give the Archbishop's suggestion short shrift. In addition, the Anglican Bishop of Jos, Nigeria, who is an African, is extremely annoyed with Dr. Rowan Williams as Christians and Muslims have a fractious relationship in Nigeria. To talk the issue to death without any cognisance of global corollaries is not only shallow but self-defeating. Americans had 9/ll, the British had 7/7 but I'm afraid that some Americans know or care little about anything outside narrow parameters. I said "some" Americans. It's better to make that clear before I get a ton of verbals flung at me.

  Incidentally, Ms. Walsh, you said, or implied, that Barack Obama's mother was Christian but anything I've read heretofore defines her as an atheist. Such opaque statements can only lead to further muddle.

  Permalink Saturday, February 9, 2008 07:40 AM

• Christina Fernandez de Kirchner was elected President of Argentina in October 2007

  [Read the article: Hillary Clinton, the first Latina in chief?]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Is Christina Fernandez de Kirchner a "Latina"? Please would somebody who know about thes "pedigrees" or whatever is the accepted word in the USA answer this question. In the English-speaking world there is South America?Latin America (as Spanish is a Latinate language) and, therefore, Argentina is part of that hemisphere. I mistakenly referred to Joan Walsh in an earlier post when it should have been Richard Rodriguez. Anyway, this labelling of people seems atrocious and there's no sign that it's going to stop any time soon so my guess is that some well-heeled people are making money out of it. This is not a dog-show where various breeds are on display from the large canine, the Great Dane, to the tiny Chihuahua. I would love each, regardless of their origins, but those Americans caught up in all this crazy kerfuffle seem ben on committing natioan suicide while countries like China and India leave you on the economic sidelines. I'm sorry.

  Permalink Saturday, February 9, 2008 08:35 AM