Letters to the Editor

• It sounds as though she has more gripes with the writer...

  [Read the article: My family]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  ...than with those who posted letters. Much of her response deals with things she feels were misrepresented or taken out of context.

  But as someone who posted a letter after the original story, I gotta say I still feel the same way, perhaps even more so now that Mrs. Yaskulka has felt compelled to respond at length to a mere handful of letters, and Salon has inexplicably given her a forum to do so. And her entire response is basically just a laundry list of her family's problems, with nary a word about feeling part of a larger community, or being concerned about the prospect of an event such as 9/11 occurring again and tearing apart other people's families.

  Perhaps having been hit with the cold water of a little dissent--and yes, that's what you open yourself up to when you put your story out there--Mrs. Yaskulka now feels she needs to say that of course, she knows that her family's experience of losing a loved one--even losing a loved one on 9/11--was not any worse than anyone else's. But that is certainly how it came across in the article. And considering that the premise of the article was how they have not let 9/11 rule them, it certainly seemed to be the focal point of their lives, seemingly to the point of perverse pride, in some cases.

  I know many 9/11 families, and frankly, they are not this self-obsessed. And we've all seen other 9/11 families, notably the "Jersey Girls," who, despite their personal pain, never wallowed, but turned outward instead of inward, and strove to make the world a safer place for all of us. I'm sure they grieve terribly in private, but I've never heard any of them launch into a litany of their family's woes.

  I feel for anybody who lost a loved one on that day or any day, under any circumstances. But some people do seem to feel that their loss trumps all others, and frankly, that's what the Yaskulkas seemed to be conveying. And as with a lot of self-absorbed people, every attempt to justify themselves just digs them in deeper.

  Also, Salon publishes personal stories all the time, and the writers and the subjects of those stories then face the reaction, be it good, bad, indifferent, or a combination of all those things. I have never known Salon to then give the subject yet another forum to respond to the letters--especially when, frankly, there weren't even that many letters to respond to in this case. There were only 24 letters in all, for God's sake, and many were supportive. How thin-skinned is this family, and why is Salon giving them yet another forum? Why the special treatment here? Will we now have another member of the Yaskulka family responding to this next round of letters?

  Sorry, Yaskulkas: If you don't want to deal with public reaction, then don't trumpet your story publicly. And deal with the fact that once something is in the public domain, you don't get "the last word." Unless Salon continues to give it to you every time someone says something you don't like.

  Permalink Wednesday, September 13, 2006 02:04 PM