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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Downeast
Published Letters: 86 Editor's Choice: 2
For most thinking Americans, the last seven and three-quarters years have been a waking nightmare. Trust me, we know what you're saying. We're embarrassed. We're scared. Today, if you're Muslim in this country you're probably on six watch lists and are having your phone tapped, and if you're really unlucky, you're rotting away without due process in Git-mo. Tomorrow, if the McCain faction wins...if you're not a card-carrying Christian of the "correct" denomination...can detention camps be far behind? Your comparison to Nazi Germany is horrifying...and accurate.
So here's a request. Four years ago this November I spent three days trying to figure out how to emigrate to Canada. Unfortunately, if memory serves, I couldn't afford it, because it costs something like $65k per person.
How about setting up some kind of low-cost refugee program for disaffected Americans? We're a good group, generally speaking. Educated, thoughtful...and fucking terrified.
It all boils down to this: being a female and being an asshole are not mutually exclusive.
Sarah Palin is an asshole. She's wielding her uterus as a political tool to parry the perfectly valid level of hard scrutiny anyone who pursues this position deserves. Can you imagine if an unknown man had been added to this ticket? Same level of micro-examination, and with damned good reason.
Instead, Ms. Palin is using her gender and her family as both resume filler and as a shield against any criticism--after all, if you question her logic and/or experience, you're "sexist."
Godamighty I can only hope her fifteen minutes are over soon.
Honey, guess what. You will not be the sweet young dynamic agent of change forever. Time happens. It will creep up on you. So just for a moment, imagine that you actually own some empathy and pretend what it must be like for those "white hairs" to deal with your snotty little self.
There were a dozen ways to deal with your office mate (who has always been nice to you, apparently) that could have been a win/win. You chose otherwise. And most of your statements about the people you now work with indicate a whopping degree of youthful snobbery and disrespect for others.
Time to take a long look at yourself. You won't survive, let alone prosper, if you can't figure out a way to get along with people.
Cary, you blew it on this one.
I saw an interesting distinction the other day, when someone was ranting (as I am wont to do on a regular basis) about the right-wing fascists on talk radio (I'm talking to you Rush, and those other bozos whose names I can't even stand to type).
These hectoring pinheads are constantly railing against the "liberal media" yet they don't consider themselves media...and the distinction that was being made is that they are COMMENTATORS, not journalists.
Ergo, if you're just commenting, you don't have to worry about anything as trivial as journalistic ethics, reality or the truth.
I truly believe that this is a major cause of the end of public integrity that you so eloquently addressed. These radio personalities can trot out the most blatant fabricated crap, yet there are no consequences. In fact, there's apparently a huge non-thinking segment of the public out there who swallow this garbage down like it's Pabst Blue Ribbon and think they're being told "the truth." Remember, "Rush is right."
They're being brainwashed, pure and simple, yet they don't have a clue. And they're the ones that voted in Bush the second time...
It's so far past frightening that there are no words.
It does. Unfortunately, the president it makes him resemble is George W. Duck, prevaricate, deny, when in doubt, invoke God as the answer to all things, ignore facts, lie, lie, lie...
Yes it's Bush Lite, coming to an Executive office near you.
What astounds me is that the McCainites don't see these machinations for the kick in the teeth insult to their intelligence that it is. The message is this: "We know you're not bright enough to understand issues or want to hear about them. Therefore, we will give you grampa and a pretty lady to vote for, and as long as we can keep ducking any unscripted media moments when you might actually be forced to see through this strategy, we just might make through the election."
Call it the Scheherazade Strategy. They've only got another forty days and nights to get through, do they have enough stories?
Your column has degenerated steadily in the past weeks...and now this?
You're either too busy to pay any attention or you're just mailing it in.
And you're wrong...it IS tragic...because it's NOT funny.
Refusing to acknowlege that lack of experience as being a problem is a very very big red flag.
If you can't admit your ignorance, you can never seek the knowledge that would make you less so, for fear of revealing it.
She is worse than ignorant. She is unteachable.
listen to your gut. It's SCREAMING at you. Not only is it trying to tell you that something really, really stinks about the fact that he's willing to risk hurting his "live-in girlfriend" just to check things out with someone he only knows in cyberspace, but it's even telling you that you shouldn't have moved in with anyone who can't even choke out "I love you," no matter how half-hearted.
There is a price that you will pay if you stay with someone who isn't really that into you. And the price is that you will slowly, almost invisibly but inevitably, become convinced that you aren't worthy of being truly loved.
Trust me. I've done it. I dumped him after four years, but it took another dozen before I was able to address the underlying chaos it caused in my view of myself.
Run. Don't look back. Better to spend the rest of your life with hope and alone, than hopeless and with him in whatever lame and compromised form that might involve.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
