Letters to the Editor
Details, Details
Published Letters: 61 Editor's Choice: 2
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Oh, Who Cares What They're Called
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As long as their 737 rudders don't suddenly lock, and their pilots aren't drunk, and their flight attendants aren't nipple/thigh/whatever-exposure police.
In short, Patrick, would you mind addressing serious concerns, and, permanently, ditch your fixation on corporate names, logos, cabin interiors, as well all things African? Your readers, most of the sentient ones, anyway, will be grateful.
Thank you.
P.S. You might want to leave the comedy writing to, say, Bob Newhart, whose telephone routines 40 years ago are still funnier than any linguistically prescriptivist twaddle you manage to type.
P.P.S. Seriously.
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Yeah, Sex Sells, But
[Read the article: Sex and the presidency]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The piece was about gender, not sex.
Salon's copy editors: once again AWOL to serve their readers better!
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Nary an Adult, eh. Really.
[Read the article: Kids gone wild]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Steadicams, the mic booms, the standard ENG cameras that weight a good 10+ lbs--all this equipment is being operated by 12-year-olds?
Come on, Linda Perlstein. Get it right.
Of COURSE there are adults present. And constantly so.
And no, I don't give a damn either way whether the show is good, bad, boring or riveting. Who. F-ing. Cares.
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Aside from the US-only Bias...
[Read the article: You must remember this]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...the pacing and editing in Episode 1 were appallingly erratic. What's with the fades every 5 minutes? And the multiple false endings. The heart-tugging symphonic score. Good god.
Amateur hour--or two and half hours.
Burns presents nothing new. And if this indeed ends up in classrooms (as the frequent fades suggest), pity the generation that grows up believing that the war didn't start until the US joined it.
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A Pulitzer for Sid
[Read the article: Dan Rather stands by his story]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This piece again confirms that Sidney Blumenthal is one of the world's greatest journalists, and Salon's only seriously irreplaceable asset.
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WTF?
[Read the article: How can I ditch my bitchy friend now that she has cancer?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cary sickeningly includes the LW's prefatory brown-nosing, which should have been lopped wa-a-ay off, and then proceeds to offer nonsense rambling as "advice."
Hello? Naked columnist anyone?
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Tim...
[Read the article: Goodbye, "Decider." Hello, "Mr. Interrupter"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...the phrase, "Not so much" is sounding increasingly last-century, particularly since you resort to it so often. Perhaps it's time to employ something else in the same, would be-with-it clever vein?
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Watch "The Kid Stays in the Picture"
[Read the article: "Youth Without Youth"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And listen to Robert Evans explain how FFC's "genius" became largely the stuff of legend, i.e., not part of the reality-based universe.
Great movies are not made by directors. They come from great writing. That Coppola both wrote and directed his current failure tells you most of what you need to know.
For the many born yesterday, memorize this: A great script can be badly directed and still make a decent film. A crap script can be brilliantly directed and still always result in a crap film.
The "auteur theory" was DOA in the '60s and yet somehow (gullible movie critics, anyone?) it persists.
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Whoever Mike Madden is,
[Read the article: How Barack Obama swept to victory in Iowa]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]would someone kindly teach him the basics of English grammar?
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Cary misses the obvious
[Read the article: I'm a brilliant scientist and I fear for the world's fate]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Apocalyptic scenarios are always wishful thinking.
The LW is, for reasons surely unrelated to his asserted concerns, depressed. Rather than look within, he looks around, finds the chaos he expects, and is comforted.
Cause suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes,
And I can take or leave it if I please
(C.f., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Is_Painless ; lyrics written by the 14-y.o. son of Robert Altman.)
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Bigger Boob Lovers = Bigger Boobs
[Read the article: Should I get my breasts enlarged?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In my lengthy experience on this planet as a male of the species, I have observed--apropos of the current topic--that other men who express their appreciation for women primarily on the basis of physical attributes of any kind, and PARTICULARLY those for whom no breast is too big, are not the sort of men that I seek as friends; aren't the sort of men that I can imagine any self-respecting female wanting near them, let alone inside them; and aren't the sort of men whose tastes or opinions will ever materially evolve from those of the 13-year-old boys they were, and, emotionally, shall always remain.
If that's your target market, have at him.
Personally, natural always beats artificial. How can anyone honestly love a lie?
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Voting with Their Feet
[Read the article: I'm acting like a monster so my friends are deserting me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The subhead asks, "Needy, whiny...is that reason enough to shun me?"
Of course it is.
Who in hell wants to be subjected to the plaintive mewling of yet another mildly talented, slacker narcissist? It's not like there's a shortage of the type.
I'm surprised (and alarmingly, not gratifyingly so) that the usual "oh great, the problems of yet another navel-gazing twit" responses haven't dominated the letters. What--readers over 40 are suddenly all on vacation?
Letter Writer--you of the annoying cloying--get over and beyond yourself, whether in Cary's fuck-you corner (not recommended), or in the company of some folks who really have it bad. Try a Habitat for Humanity stint. Head to New Orleans and offer your services to a deserving NGO. Smoke crack for while and end up penniless on the street.
Anything to slap you out of your infantile need to be front and center, permanently on stage in that life-is-a-talk-show-and-I'm-the-headliner-guest routine that you surely despise encountering in others.
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How about laying it out in text, too?
[Read the article: Should Hillary Clinton drop out?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I doubt that I'm the only reader who finds watching Salon writers and editors on video creepy and awkward. It's not about you, Joan, but what you've written.
How about providing text--even a transcription, if you must--for those of us who Don't Like to Watch.
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Aviation Lite
[Read the article: Ask the pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Where and how this column was written adds nothing of interest, and merely serves once again to showcase P.S.'s tendency toward self-aggrandizement.
Editors? Please?
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Unbelievable
[Read the article: I'm living in filth!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Or, apparently in the case of long-time Cary Tennis readers, completely in character.
This person is 25 and doesn't know how to replace a carpet? Do dial phones confuse her, too?
My god.
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I worked with Mara Liasson...
[Read the article: Beltway myth: "The left-wing base" vs. "the American people" on Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...in the 1980s at California Public Radio. It was a live daily 15 minute news and features program inserted into "All Things Considered."
She was sloppy with facts then and hasn't improved since. As one of her contemporary colleagues put it to me recently, "Mara likes nothing more than the sound of her own voice."
As for me, I can't stand it. Her voice comes on, my radio goes off.
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Pass the bucket
[Read the article: Unsent letters, unvoiced questions]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What utterly precious crap.
This is what you'd expect from a precocious 15-year-old.