Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 1231 Editor's Choice: 5
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Snobbery in the US of A. "Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad"
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I saw a few episodes of "Ugly Betty" before I gave up on it. The struggling Betty lived in Queens which, apparently, has a high ratio of working-class people. Sneering at Queens seems to be par for the course among Americans who think that a university degree is the true test of a person's worth although in many cases these graduates don't have enough know-how to be entrusted with "walking greyhounds", dogs which need a lot of exercise and have to be "walked" on a regular basis so that they can race. I think that many of the firefighters who went into the inferno on 9/ll to save the lives of others may also have had such an unfashionable address as Queens. Earning your bread by the sweat of your brow is admirable and people who are imbued with snobbery should always be challenged when they patronise working-class people. More often than not, the ambulance-driver contributes more to society than the "ambulance-chaser". Anyone who's ever read anything by Charles Dickens, and his novels have themes of justice and social reform, knows that his opinion of lawyers was ver low indeed.
I gather that Geraldine Ferraro comes from Queens and that means that she cannot be "top-drawer". Of all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the slighting of working-class people, the rebarbative language used of older women, this snobbery and spite is the most unforgettable. To all those of Irish (and other) ancestry still living in Queens, I wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day even if it means drinking awful green beer and wearing ridiculous hats. The Kennedys of Hyannisport are only "plastic Paddys" now and old Joe Kennedy made enough money during the l920s to make sure that the family didn't have to live in Queens. "Sic transit Gloria Swanson" and good old Joe who didn't allow Prohibition to cramp his style. Eireann go deo!
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Sue NJ97, thanks and I'd guessed as much. Why isn't rabble-rousing Wright being asked to apologise to the firefighters, medical personnel and all those who gave humanitarian assistance on 9/ll?
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't believe Senator Obama's prevarication about "old uncle" Wright. In "Jane Eyre", Rochester kept his demented wife hidden away in the attic until she finally emerged to wreak havoc. The Rev. Wright was not hidden away but shouting his hatred from the top of his lungs. I can only assume that he's not living in the Chicago equivalent of Queens as you invariably find that the hellfire-and-brimstone preachers, from whichever country, are rather partial to the creature comforts of life. Asceticism is not their thing.
There is now a French website "Les Guillotines" which offers the most complete online list yet established of the French Revolution's victims. Up to 5 million French people are descended from those decapitated during the Revolution. Most of us believe that those who were beheaded were aristocrats but now it's being discovered that farmers, peasants and the urban poor also incurred the vengeance of the revolutionaries, between l792 and l795. It's so easy to accept a simplistic and often distorted version of history from those with ignoble motives. In my opinion, the Rev. Wright should be talking about the atrocities in Darfur if he genuinely wants to dabble in politics instead of raking over the coals of America's past, without ever mentioning that Europeans, Arabs and even sub-Saharan Africans were all engaged in profit-making from the slave trade.
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Yes, Paul in Ky, but the problem is that religion and revolution became intertwined just as they seem to be in 2lst century America.
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for the undoubtedly genuine compliment about my being a "continental" sophisticate or somehting approaching the sniffiness of your Ivy League types. God help us, but I don't even live on a continent, just a tiny off-shoot. The same applies to Senator Obama, doesn't it, although he enjoyed a lot more sunshine in Hawaii than I do but we have to take a positive approach as rainfall produces great grass and a verdant countryside. I'm not so "green" in the earlier meaning of the word. I'm able to recognise demogoguery when I see it and hear it (Uncle Jeremiah's video). As I like the actress Bette Midler who was born in Hawaii and worked in a pineapple factory for some time. Guess what! There was no reason for Barack Obama to get so overwrought about his racial identity in Hawaii, where the population is 20% white, 20% Japanese, 20% Hawaiian/Polynesian, l5% Filipino; there is also a Chinese and other-Asian community living on that island. It's so cosmopolitan that a sophisticate such as myself would feel perfectly at home there but we learn that all he was doing was moping about his "racial identity". Well, my dear correspondent from Kentucky, I understand you have some fine horses in "blue grass country" but I don't know anything about the people. Was it Tim Berners-Lee who invented the Internet? I'm not sure if he came from Kentucky but that fried chicken is a heart-attack on a plate and don't try to punch above your weight.
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Uncle Jeremiah has resigned from Obama's campaign and now he'll have plenty time on his hands to do something really useful
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He can go to Zimbabwe as a volunteer and get involved in another campaign, that of Simba Makoni,the voice of opposition to Robert Mugabe's corrupt rule which has brought so much suffering on Zimbabwe's rural poor.
"Uncle Jeremiah" is someone that the Obama supporters want to skedaddle away from as quickly as possible because his wild expostulations are the other side of the coin from the infamous ranter who led Europe to disaster with his theories of Aryan supremacy. When I mentioned Obama's prevarications about his "spiritual mentor", the Reverend Wright, and also included a reference to a French website in the same post, Paul of Ky. came back to sneer at me for what he perceived as my ignorance of French history and with the avuncular advice to buzz off. He ignored my comments on Uncle Jeremiah for reasons which aren't hard to gauge and all the Obama supporters are now studiously avoiding it, despite their earlier glee when Joe Conason reprimanded Ms. Ferraro for giving what was really a milk-and-water opinion.