Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 590 Editor's Choice: 5
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No more baubles?
[Read the article: "Name some of Barack Obama's legislative accomplishments ... if you can" ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Matthews maxillofacial muscles must have grown tired of sucking up or he's realised what a thoroughgoing dope he's made of himself with his twitching nostrils ("scent of a -man") and the tremors running up and down his leg (one or both?) while listening to Obama speechifying. These hormonal blizzards must be very wearing and now he's settling down and asking obvious questions which, in the final analysis, is what he's paid to do. When the history of this campaign is eventually written, Chris Matthews does not want to come across as a bawd but as someone with the integrity and courage of the late Ed Morrow. It's a bit late for that now but there's probably a gleam in his eye as he tacks to the right, trimming his sails to the prevailing winds, shouting out greetings to the good ship McCain and "The Ancient Mariner" on board who will not find Cindy an albatross round his neck. May you live in unteresting times, as the Chinese proverb advises.
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The Resurrection Men" were body-snathers who broke open the coffins of the newl-buried
[Read the article: John F. Kennedy, plagiarist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]to supply the demands of the surgical and medical schools. As I recall reading about this, it was done because the Puritanical Church of Sotland forbade human dissection but the medical men found their own way around this. There were a lot of winos willing to oblige for a small remuneration but two in particular, Burke and Hare, began bumping vagrants off, were caught, and came to a sticky end. Today's Resurrection Men gladly pillage the words of Presidents such as Jefferso, Lincoln and Kennedy, to confer an aura of gravitas on themselves without admitting that they are primping (notice the "r" pleae) their own leaden speeches. It's awsome, of course, in the way that a treacle-tart is "aweaome" put if it's passed around too often in a short space of time (Deval Patrick in 2006 and Barack Obama in 2008) it could indice what the Australians call " a technicoloured Yawn", an unpleasant result of regurgitation. What Jerome Doolittle seems to be saying is that copycatting is just fine so that any old gobbledegook will do for the hoi-polloi anyway as they wouldn't recognise recycled statements in a month of Sundays. It's important not "to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel" making a fuss about minor misdeeds while committing offences of real magnitude but small signs of shiftiness may provide clues to the real person behind the plausible facade.
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Hooman Majd, which Muslims do you mean?
[Read the article: A new face for American diplomacy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Simplistic and meretricious is what I think of this article. Do you think that Barack Hussein Obama will have appeal for the Wahabi, the Sunni or the Shia? Anyone with even the slightest awareness of the internal turmoil in Iraq knows that the Sunni and Shia detest each other and that both sides regard the other as heretics. As for the Wahabi, their extremism is fuelled by the desire to restore the Caliphate even as far as Southern Spain (Andalucia) with its capital in Grenada. I was waiting for you to disclose which branch of the Muslim faith Obama was raised in but nebulous nonsense tends to avoid hard facts. I was also under the impression that adverting to the Senator's second name (Hussein) was regarded as a surreptitious assault on his American credentials. The Muslim world is varied and is divided as much by language, interpretation of the Koran, and class as anywhere else (substituting the Bible for the Koran). In the UK the vast majority of Muslims are Pakistani and are the descendants of village people who came to Britain in the Fifties to work in textiles and other occupations. The attitude to women is very problematic as recent murder trials have shown that "honour killings" still exist in a modern secular society such as Britain. Neither the Pakistanis nor the Iranians are Arabs and Pakistan has a very fraught relationship with mainly-Hindu India, which is an ally of the United States. Your celebratory piece lacks essential facts.
For instance, what is the attitude of the most zealous Muslims to Obama's apostacy, since his membership of a Church led (founded?) by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been well-publicised? The US has shown complete hypocrisy in its castigating of China for its human rights record while turning a blind eye to the complete absence of human rights in Saudi Arabia with its public floggings, amputation of hands and executions of those who not only commit criminal acts but also flout Sharia law. As for Iran, you must know that public hangings are still taking place there for breaches of their morality laws. You must be living in cloud-cuckooland if you think that because Senator Obama has a Muslim second name and that his skin is mocha-hued there would be an automatic "Open, Sesame!" to the Aladdin's Cave of the East. The Muslim world is not amenable to any cheery, simple-minded interpretations. I suppose the only American President who told the plain, unvarnished truth was the extremely dull un-flashy Calvin Coolidge when he stated that "The business of America is business" and whatever way you cut it that's still true today.
Barack Obama is American, raised by his Dunham grandparents in "the American way" and all the rest is persiflage.