Letters to the Editor
tomreedtoon
Published Letters: 799 Editor's Choice: 80
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I wasn't there physically, only by TV, and I'm still sickened.
[Read the article: Tragedy as broccoli]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wasn't there. I was in Florida, just getting off my overnight TV job, listening to a little Howard Stern as I started to go to sleep. When I heard about the first plane hitting the WTC, I thought it might have been one of his bad-taste jokes. Then he mentioned a second plane, and said, "No doubt about it. It's terrorists."
For the next several days, even overnight on the news, there was nothing but 9/11 24/7. The only real connection I had was that someone I worked with was vacationing in the hotel in the Towers. He got out when the first tower fell, and was having an early breakfast when the second fell, destroying his car and all his belongings.
But I saw the immensity and the horror of the event. And along with it, the immensity and the horror of the politicians, nearly all of them Republicans, making capital on the event. Bush was not the only person to stand on the rubble to claim glory and involvement for himself. He, Giuliani and the others aren't fit to polish the boots of the real heroes of that day.
And there was the immensity and horror of the merchandising. Immediately, people started wearing "NYPD" fire and police T-shirts and caps. A shop opened up at Orlando's Fashion Square Mall selling New York stuff, especially merchandise that suggested the wearer was a rescue worker or a cop at the disaster. The shop is now closed, thank God, before the "World Trade Center coins, made from real metal from the World Trade Center" started selling.
And then, there is the immensity and horror of the people who want to memorialize the event. Is it possible that the "memorial" will be a Disney theme park or something? That wouldn't be bad taste, considering the stupid and wasteful memorial they want to plant on the site.
Finally, Oliver Stone, a director famous for conspiracy theory movies, found no conspiracies whatsoever in his movie. It could have been a Ron Howard movie, a sequel to "Backdraft," with no suggestion of the national and international politics behind the event. Either Stone has voluntarily decided to abandon whatever beliefs he had, or he woke up one morning to find a horse's head in his bed.
Only when people come out of a September 11 movie angry, impassioned and ready to picket and impeach a whole lot of people, will I believe the movie is worth seeing.
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Chicken...er, poop...again.
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So, maybe I'm not the only one who's been clucking about the "humorous" tone into which Ms. Havrilesky occasionaly devolves. It couldn't be me only; I don't have that much pull-et. I'm just a Wal-Mart skinless, boneless, genderless filet, pecking away in my non-Starbucks, non-Gucci fenced-in enclosure. So there must be an entire flock out there that feel as I do...perhaps some of the cocks of the walk in the Salon coop are thinking about flicking a certain chicken. (No, you goyim, that's not a dirty reference.)
At any rate, the desperation of ABC is probably a lot greater than she estimates. They're already promoting "Men in Trees," which to all appearances is a rehash of "Northern Exposure" with a female central character and a lot less interesting eccentric townsfolk. They don't have it on the schedule as of yet. It was supposed to be a mid-season replacement. But they want the name out there and familiar when the first fall-premiere show dies a gory death.
My chicken-scratch sheet predicts the first scratch will be "Ugly Betty." The promos are all using scenes from the pilot show, and it looks as garish and vaudevillian as the game shows on Hispanic television. This is an environment you want to relax with every week? Were the Munsters unavailable? And the main character looks like a whole lot Less Than Perfect. She might actually have some charm and heart, but you can't tell from the ads, which means people won't even give it a chance. Could be that the ABC brass don't want it to succeed, and want to send Ugly Betty to the chopping block as soon as possible.
We now return you to Ms. Havrilesky's featherbedding.
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Ah, dear courageous Anonymous!
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In case you haven't guessed, I can't leave Havrilesky alone. I want someone better than her.
I want a TV critic who has some knowledge of the history of TV, who actually knows something about the medium in all its aspects, from Monday-morning talk shows to Sunday night spot carriers. (And someone who knows what a spot carrier is.) And someone who knows this stuff because he or she believes in the potential and promise of the medium - who can praise it when it lives up to the promise, and damn it when it doesn't.
TV is the last popular medium, the last place where all Americans can come to a consensus, and maybe learn to appreciate each other. Everything else, from the Goebbels clones of talk radio to the pap of modern movies (Havrielsky was right about that) have polarized us and driven us to attack each other.
Maybe it's that plurality and classlessness that fills her columns with contempt, that makes us ordinary TV viewers ignorant "chickens" and "motherfuckers" in Havrilesky's eyes. Apparently, if you don't live in Manhattan, drink overpriced and overprocessed coffee or pretend to have intelligent conversations about Proust, you're worthless to her. Only masochists could believe that if you're spit upon and get a Prada high heel ground into your instep, it's just like being next to Dorothy Parker at the Algonquin.