Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 540 Editor's Choice: 79
-
Inauthentic? Maybe We Can Cut Him Some Slack.
[Read the article: The passion of Jim McGreevey]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I watched the ex-governor on The Daily Show and he seemed awkward, spouting some clichés
about coming out and shame and links between being in the closet and being a politico. But it's hard to say whether that's because he's phony or because he's not used to doing interviews and not at all used to talking about his personal life.
Being out is a challenge, a real turnaround of your entire life to date, and most of us aren't very relaxed at first. I noticed that he kept his eyes and face down quite a bit, which certainly showed he's still dealing with shame and feelings of exposure.
As for his book, I doubt he wrote any of it, most political books are ghost-written, so judging the man by this book is not a sound idea. He likely did interviews that the ghost fashioned into a narrative. I don't think less of him for trying to cash in on his story; after all, his political career is dead in the water, so why shouldn't he try to earn some money through the likeliest channel? His story is what he has to sell, at least now, and it could make for a good TV movie (with Johnny Depp!)
-
Dull, dull, dull
[Read the article: Darkness becomes them]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There are many things wrong with BSG and the premiere highlights them: muddy visuals straining for art, wretched acting and writing. But worst of all is an utter lack of believability within the universe the show has created. They have been fleeing and loathing the Cylons for all this time and yet there are dozens of humans willing to join the quisling police? And nobody knows who they are? Impossible in such a small community, and the motivation is simply nonexistent as the show has been written.
On top of that, as someone who's studied the Holocaust extensively and read many memoirs from the period, the whole WW II ghetto police overlay is cheap and stupid, written by people who have no sense of history and no grasp of psychology. The show has done nothing to establish the apparatus of terror and fear that could twist people's minds and make them desperate enough to police their own people for a fascist power and collaborate in their execution. Perhaps someone writing the show once saw ten minutes of a History Channel documentary. I can see the script meeting: "Hey, weren't there Jewish police in, like, those ghettos?" "Dude!"
Yes, there are also visual references to Iraq, but so what? Do the writers get credit for grab bag references to current events? I don't commend them for reading the newspapers, I score them for not writing a dramatic and convincing show. As a writer, I don't find the show ambiguous or even ambitious, it's increasingly amateurish and badly thought out.
-
Wie bitte?
[Read the article: Terms of endearment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]More shallow sterotyping (or just plain typing vs. writing) about the south's charming warmth and the north's coldness. I suspect GK has interns churning out this tired reportage. Because only one of them could have written something so silly:
"When I was in college, I read Kafka and Camus and tried to write like them, in flat, non-American English"
Hello? You mean writing like their translators. They didn't write in English. Talk about insularity and sloppiness. If the translations seemed flat and non-American, then they were lousy translations.
-
Pandering?
[Read the article: 2006 political ads: I'm a cheater -- not a choker!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Pandering to whom?
Voters who are against choking one's mistress?
Voters who think moralistic Republican hypocrites should be unmasked and thrown out of Congress?
Are you for real?
-
Well, duh
[Read the article: The buck stops ... well, not here, anyway]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even if he didn't have the authority, he could intercede with whoever did. But Mehlman won't do anything to take down the ad or see that it's taken down. He's going to stay the course.
-
Don't panic!
[Read the article: New Jersey Supreme Court: State must allow same-sex unions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why are people hand-wringing and assuming all is lost?
After the scores of articles everywhere (even salon!) about red states turning blue, evangelicals deserting the GOP, and other signs of impending chaos for the Republicans as startling as "dogs and cats living together," can anyone really believe that the polls that keep saying the war the war the war is at the top of everyone's list are wrong? There's no way the NJ decision will change people's minds about how they vote and if they vote.
-
?
[Read the article: Laura Bush says it's easy to manipulate -- then shows how it's done]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's one question. Does Mrs. Bush actually believe what she said is true? In that case, she's uninformed, and you have to ask why she would speak out on an issue without doing the research necessary to know the facts. Does she think facts don't count? Or is she working so hard being First Lady that she doesn't have a spare moment to ask one of her staffers to use "the Google"?
Here's another question or two. If she knows the truth, why is she lying? Why does she believe that no one will check up on what she says? Is her contempt for the people so great that she doesn't care?
Questions, questions, questions.
-
Not Honest Enough
[Read the article: Kerry: I won't let them Swift-boat me again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Kerry is still an overly cautious speaker, and Username has it right.
Kerry should name what everyone is afraid to. He should say he made a joke about President Bush because of Bush's disgraceful attempt to cover up his lack of military service by touting himself over and over as commander-in-chief. "Sir, wearing a military flight jacket and speaking with troops in the background does not make you a hero."
What does he have to lose?
He needs to use "the Google" and read some of Keith Olbermann's stirring and well-argued dissections of the White House's lies and see how a master does it.
Or perhaps study FDR and JFK and see the ways in which they took complex ideas and communicated them without condescension, but simply, and poetically.
Right now, he's still an amateur, and that's very sad. Even worse, he's still a Senator, locked in the gummy syntax and dismal rhetoric that passes for debate in that house.