Letters to the Editor
untucky
Published Letters: 4 Editor's Choice: 1
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Pious politicians = pious preachers, at least to the lay fundamentalist
[Read the article: Let us prey]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Perhaps it is worth expressing a small hope that the good religious people of this country will rise up in outrage against the abuse of their faith by all these pious hypocrites."
I fear Mr. Conanson's hope may be misplaced. My father was a conservative evangelical preacher, who traveled around the country doing week-long "revivals" at evangelical churches. The whole time I was growing up, I would travel with my father (when possible), so I have a lot of experience with the folks that are "guided" by the likes of Falwell, Reed, and Robertson. In my estimation, the "faithful" will never question the abuse of their faith by pious politicians, because for decades they have not ever questioned the abuse of their faith by pious preachers. In the mind of the typical evangelical believer/church-goer, Tom DeLay is as righteous as their local funamentalist shepherd, and for whatever reason, this means he is not to be questioned, even at the expense of the abuse of the very faith the believer professes to follow.
I don't know for sure how this "ends justifies the means" impulse got into the Christian church; that certainly is not a sentiment the Bible posits as ideal, or even permissible. But the basic idea is that if, in the long run, these slick politicians who have allied themselves with the fundamentalists can make some headway against abortion, gay marriage, and all the other perceived ills that the fundies believe befall modern-day America, the manner in which that headway is made is less than important, and can be ignored completely.
"God works in mysterious ways," indeed.
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Tough to take?
[Read the article: Are you ready for "United 93"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, I don't think it was tough to take. It would have been four years ago, but not now. I think the movie should be shown, although I can imagine the maudlin cries of agony at every theater across America, as well as the redneck street brawls that will probably erupt as mouthbreathers leaving the theater spy passersby who are brown. "You tried to kill MURKA!"
So for that reason, maybe we're not ready. I'd be fine with it emotionally, but I'm not sure I can take Bill O'Reilly's viewers/listeners' reactions.
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Runaway Freight Cheney
[Read the article: The deception Bush can't spin]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Defendant's participation... occurred only after the Vice President advised defendant that the President had specifically authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the NIE ... Defendant testified that the vice president later advised him that the president had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE."
If Libby is telling the whole truth (a very big "if"), couldn't this be more evidence of a "runaway Cheney"? I'm not particularly keen on defending Bush, not by any stretch - but from the text highlighted above, I only get that Cheney told Libby that Bush had authorized leaking portions of the NIE. Does that necessarily mean that it's true? Maybe Bush never authorized it, and Cheney was lying to advance his own agenda. It's long been said that Cheney is the de facto President, and this would bolster that argument.
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Hmmm.
[Read the article: "United 93"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know if it's enough to say "that film disturbs me, so what is the value in its art?"
Just because it disturbs you MUCH more than, say, "American Psycho", doesn't mean that it is valueless as art. Art is not obligated to give you a specific feeling. In fact, if you're driven to question whether something is art or is valuable as art, then it is and it is, in my estimation.
All silly art posturing aside, the film needs to be shown, and it needs to be seen. Why? Because we need to see what Flight 93 did, both for themselves and for us. We need to remember them. We need to know why we go on. We need to know what we're fighting for, if anything, in this psychotic "War on Terror". Most people probably won't want to see this film, and that's their right. (I walked out of "American Psycho", for example.) But unlike that dumb chainsaw-wielding romp through the greed culture of 1980's Wall Street, this movie is about something that is real, and that touched all our lives.
All this hand-wringing strikes me as much more useless than the film itself.