Letters to the Editor
bakum
Published Letters: 15 Editor's Choice: 1
-
restraint vs. feeling
[Read the article: I like a certain gentleman at work, but is he gay?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What struck me about this letter was the incredibly restrained emotion and feeling-- I suspect that this woman is not used to giving license to her feelings and allowing herself to indulge in this sort of thing.
That's why I say don't worry about the outcome here. It seems more vital for the LW to just let herself experience this crush in all its confusing, exhilerating glory. This letter is like a Merchant-Ivory film-- a good one. Remains of the Day. Where scarcely a sideways glance is detected, and never an improper word spoken, and yet the sexual tension is so thick and vibrant you could cut it wih a knife.
She strikes me as someone who doesn't allow herself much risk in her inner life. And a crush like this, requited or not, can be exquisitely painful and exciting, and make you feel exquisitely alive. That, in itself, might be part of the attraction for her. She doesn't know what this gentleman wants or what she herself should want or what may or may not come of all of this, but she certainly knows she's alive right now, and full of un-namable longings and urges and tingly feelings, and for that, I say: it's worth every moment.
I hope the LW will take from this experience the lesson she stated herself: to look for someone who inspires similar feelings in her, now that the bar has been raised by this man. That's a wonderful outcome, whether anything happens with him or not.
But I also hope she'll take another, more abstract lesson from this-- one that might be even more important in the long run: that she is capable of such passion, and has access to this kind of connection with life and longing and risk. It might not be about what happens next. What's happening now seems like just what she needs.
Some of us keeping a closer watch on our emotions than we should, and it takes something crazy and unexpected-- and maybe even a little inappropriate-- to break us out of hibernation and hurl us into the land of the living.
Welcome, LW. And congratulations. I hope you enjoy every heart-wrenching, soul-feeding minute of it.
-
re: presumption of Vick's guilt
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd like to point out that everything you (you sitting there reading this article) know about this case comes filtered through a news media which has been shown time and time again, over and over, to present facts in a certain light that is not exactly conducive to making fully formed judgments of a developing situation. Let the justice system play out it's hand before you decide what's going on, let the witnesses stand up and testify away from the distortions of "Headline News." Grow a brain and learn, damnit, after so many bad experiences, that you're not getting the whole story from the Main Stream Media (TM). It is understandable that implications of dogfighting arouse passions and a call for swift punishment however niether is it hard to see why charges of racism are still made. If allegations of dogfighting turn you off sufficiently DON'T WATCH FOOTBALL, otherwise let the wheels of justice turn without the interference of your uninformed opinion and allow a famous black man to get the benefit of the doubt of the presumption of innocence to which all humans are supposedly entitled in America.
-
MS culture now allows for release of buggy crap
[Read the article: Fake Springsteen praises Windows in heroically awful corporate video]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I made a lot of money over the years as an Windows and NT administrator, from about 1996 to 2002. Every Windows technician worth a dollar an hour knew not to install Microsoft products until at least the first SP came out, if not the second. This dovetails with the line in that horrible video about early-adopters not needing to be skittish since SP1 came out. How sad is it that the release of buggy, crappy products is now so entrenched in MS culture that the sales team's internal motivation now accounts for it? Just pathetic.
-
Clinton is half right
[Read the article: Obama and Clinton fizzle in Philly]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think HRC is half right: Obama would face non-stop sleeze in a general. Maybe not from McCain directly, but the entire Freak Show, from Malkin to Limbaugh to Savage to Hewitt to the WSJ editorial page, will be out in force for months and months.
Where I disagree is how to fight them. If eight years of Rove politics and Bush facism haven't knocked sense into enough voters to form a majority over the fact that questions about Obama's lapel pin should be laughed out of the building, then the country will get exactly what it deserves. People that stupid should not be in control of so much wealth and military power.
-
It's not the 70's anymore
[Read the article: Waiting for the first Madam President]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There isn't going to be some watershed moment when all past wounds will be healed and all prejudices against women will be eliminated. Slowly, incrementally, society changes. This does not mean people will not be sexist, nor does it mean people will not be racist. Bigotry and prejudice are human qualities not cultural artifacts. There is always going to be sexism, but holding your head and crying unfair boo hoo hoo isn't going to get you anywhere. You have to succeed in spite of sexism. There is no other way around it.
The generation coming of age now understands this. They grew up in a world where women largely could do anything they want even as some people in our society are quite bigoted. Female senators, female judges, female CEO's, female army officers...it's not the 70's anymore. The bigotry and prejudices of that era have little meaning for young adults.
The irony is Clinton holding her head and whipping her supporters into such a frenzy of victimhood and self-pity over bigotry in American is as much the cause of her electoral failures as Obama's lack of such behavior is the cause of his success. That very thing is the clean break with Roveism that those of us energized by the Obama campaign want. Whether it comes in a black man, a white woman, or a cocker spaniel is immaterial.