Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 1231 Editor's Choice: 5
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Monster's Ball, The printed word can be devastating too.
[Read the article: Does "Obama Girl" help Obama?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The suggestion in this article that the Internet is capable of creating something which approximates to a community does not take into account that the Internet is mainly focused on the transient and the latest fad. It has its uses, no doubt, but all forms of expression feed on each other. The Drudge Report, dreadful though it is, has led me to reading an article in "The Scotsman" in which Dublin-born Samantha Power, described as Barack Obama's key foreign policy aide, told the Scots journalist interviewing her that Hillary Clinton is a "monster", a word more suited to a serial killer or a tyrant responsible for genocide. A monster is somebody brutish and not fully human, cruel and wicked. Such a careless and insensitive use of language is indicative of a general coarsening of language which has been abetted by the Internet. It encourages lazy thinking when Wikipedia becomes the Holy Grail of Knowledge, it saps originality and it promotes crude cliche. The printing press in Guthenburg had a profound stimulus on intellectualising Europe, leading to the Reformation, but the Internet may have a de-intellectualising effect on the world in its reductive, comic-book level of information. The Internet, on the other hand, may be the starting-point in any quest but it is not the "fait accompli". Radio, television, newspapers, books and the Internet can be conducive to analysis but the Internet in isolation makes for mental starvelings.
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IIf it's Obama, I certainly hope that his foreign policy aide, Samantha Power, isn't at his elbow
[Read the article: It's 3 a.m. Who do you want answering the phone?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I saw Ms. Power (Irish=born btw) being interviewed by the consummate Jeremy Paxman on BBC2 "Newsnight". She is in this neck-of-the-woods promoting her book and I was not surprised that Paxman concentrated on her involvement with the Obama campaign rather than her book on an assassinated U.N. official. What did surprise me, however, was how hyper Samantha Power seemed. Paxman has the reputation of taking no prisoners but he was perfectly polite to her, almost laconic in his demeanour. Her hands never stopped moving as she gesticulated throughout the interview and this was terribly distracting. Between the hand movements, tossing back her long hair and her rapid ten-to-the-dozen way of speaking, I couldn't get any depth at all in what she said.
Now Samantha Power has been shooting-off her mouth to a journalist working for "The Scotsman" confiding to the Scot that Hillary Clinton is "a monster". Yet another rescue operation has to be put in place with Samantha saying she didn't mean it, Mr. Burton tut-tutting like mad and Mr. Obama telling everyone that he's above all that type of malign comment to a foreign press on the monstrosity of a rival candidate. Answering the phone? Some of the advisers, Power and Goolsbee, shouldn't be left near a box of matches.
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Happy Friend, at least get the woman's name right before you start your paean of praise.
[Read the article: Obama advisor Power resigns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This foreign policy adviser is called Power, not Powers (a name which comes from De Paor). She bungled badly by "dissing" the New York Senator to a foreign audience, apparently unaware that discretion is needed in foreign policy and that, in the worldwide village, she was not out of earshot as she evidently thought she was. Between Goolsbee, Obama's economics adviser, causing a tizzy with the Canadians and Power putting her foot in it in Scotland, you'd have to wonder about the level of competence in Obama's other advisers. If these two can create such a cock-up with English speaking people (the Canadians weren't speaking French, I gather) there is going to be a huge demand for re-interpreters of interpreters if and when Barack Obama ever gets to chat with Ahmadinejad and Medvedev. Reading some of the posts, I gather that the naivete of Obama's advisers is all Hillary Clinton's fault. That makes great sense, of course.
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In honour of Robbie Burns, Scotland's national poet
[Read the article: Obama advisor Power resigns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley" which, in standard English, means that no matter how cleverly we try to plan we are never in complete control of our destiny. Just a short time ago Samantha Power merited an article in Salon as Barack Obama's supremo on foreign policy. She can now retire to "the groves of Academe" but the question is "Who is going to replace her and how qualified is that person in the combustible area of foreign policy?" I notice that some Americans seem to be in awe of Ph.Ds and the like but innate ability and common sense are for more important in day-to-day living.
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TRenee., I couldn't respond to a post I didn't see.
[Read the article: Obama advisor Power resigns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is now 7:30 pm in this part of the world and I was eating my evening meal. However, it seems that Winston Churchill was right when he said that Britain (we were once regarded as British) and the U.S. are divided by a common language. I was not belittling education but it does not entitle anyone to a sense of superiority. I'm not without academic accolade myself but, in my culture, boasting is downright unpopular and leaves a braggart open to mockery. Free secondary (high school) education was not open to all in the Republic of Ireland until l967 and I'm acutely aware that a whole generation of people, many with plenty of ability, were deprived of the chance to fulfil their potential. Parents had to pay for their children's secondary education and university was beyond the means of many families as fees had to be paid. The very, very brightest might get a scholarship but the emphasis was on the boys in the family even if the girls were brighter. America has been a rich country for a long time but I'm writing from a different perspective. I detect some superciliousness in the repetitive "the better-educated voter favours Obama". SOME of the Obama supporters who've rounded on me for having a different viewpoint from theirs could have fooled me if they're part of that "better-educated" phalanx. I don't include you in that. I'm up for an argument as much as anyone else and we all like to win.