Letters to the Editor
stackey-dackey
Published Letters: 324 Editor's Choice: 8
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Robot-3
[Read the article: Fashion! Espionage! Midsize sedans!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm sure there is something offensive having to do with black people embedded in your comment, but I just don't get it. You would think someone who is so invested in pointing out anti-semitism on this website would at least be understanding about other minorities in this country...but oh well.
Le Chat - It's a commercial for a new HBO Documentary about Roman Polanski and the case. Which is, when you think about it, an interesting topic for Broadsheet to explore since it can really show how sex crimes were prosecuted back in the day. Heck, even the girl (now grown up) went to the premeir of the movie, and I figure if she can stomach looking at him then who are we to say he sould be hidden from view from all eternity.
I'm going to watch it, definitely. It's hard not feel both sympathy for him (because of his wife and child, I mean how horrific) and disgust at the same time for what he did to that little girl.
Oh well. Like most people, he is/was a complex man.
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Alice Walker. Worst. Mother. Ever.
[Read the article: The mother-daughter wars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Look, Alice Walker may have been a bad parent, but really, so what. I'm not making excuses for her, but if I stopped reading or enjoying the work of writers or artists whose personal lives were questionable then I wouldn't read or listen to anything that is considered great art. Oftentimes, people who do good in the world can be real schmucks; just look at Martin Luther King (serial cheater.)
As for Rebecca's article, I don't know, I think it's better to look at memoirs as pieces of fiction rather than true accounts. There is the character, Rebecca, whose world famous writer mom neglected her. This character goes on to blame her mother's feminism for her abandonement. But if this was a piece of literature, such a facile arguement would be silly. Ideology isn't the end-all, be-all explanation of her mothers behavior. Maybe it had to do something with her upbringing, with Alice's own relationship with her overburdened (8 children!) mother. Maybe she had a horror of constantly being at the beck and call of her daughter and so detached herself.
Again, I'm not making excuses. However, you would think someone who considers herself a writer would look beneath the surface and try to understand the motiviations of the people around her. I think that is why this article looks like a hit piece.
It's as if she wants to wound her mother publicly and then turn around and blame her mom's behavior on feminism so the article would have some political relevance.
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For the Love of God
[Read the article: Can I get this abstinence message in a medium?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Would you rather teenage girls wear a shirt that says, I'm a ho fo' sho', or Bitch?
There is a segment of the population, of the teenage population, who beleive in abstinence. Good for them. If they want to wear pairs of pants with the words True love waits on their asses, I think they should go right ahead. Just like those girls (and boys) who wear shirts and pants with sexually expicity or demeaning or insulting slogans. Or heck, like my favorite T shirt in High School, Trips are for Kids (God I loved that shirt!) with the rabbit on it looking like he'd just dropped a shit load of acid. I wonder if they still sell those shirts on Telegraph...
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I'll give you Balzac, Wanaka
[Read the article: The mother-daughter wars]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]He's awesome.
However, I think it's really interesting how everyone posting on this board feels the need to be either in Rebecca's camp or in Alice's camp. Those in Alice's camp are heartless child abuse enablers. Those in Rebecca's camp are deluded by the ravings of adult child whose whole career is only possible because of her famous mother.
Even the writer of this article feels the need to take sides. She never calls Rebecca a liar, but she seems to be a member of the school of thought that questions whether or not its a good idea to air such dirty laundry about such a great woman.
Which to me leads to the next question: What exactly did Rebecca hope to accomplish by writing an article like this? Is it catharsis? Is it revenge? Is her article just a collection of personal anecodotes which attempt (badly in my opinion) to make some sort of sweeping generalization about second wave feminism and how "evil" it is?
To be honest, and in my humble opinion, if the reason for the article is any of those listed above, then she failed miserably. I think someone said earlier the article felt detached; I would agree. There isn't any heat to make it a stirring polemic against the ills of second wave feminism or an act of revenge by a child against her uncaring parent. It feels numb and lifeless.
Chesler then takes the feud between Walkers and spins a long story about the history of tension between famous mothers and their not-so-famous daughters. She uses an article, rife with anecdotal evidence to show how second wave and third wave feminists are in a generational battle. I know the personal is supposed to be political, but why can't Rebecca's story JUST be about how her mother was an uncaring parent, and NOT about some sweeping fracture between all women throughout history.