Letters to the Editor
smartalec
Published Letters: 48 Editor's Choice: 4
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Is there really no other way...
[Read the article: Preordering week for "A Tragic Legacy"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...to make it harder for the MSM, the punditocracy, and the other powers that be to play their usual game of ignoring or stifling voices anywhere to the left of Attila the Hun, than to get a high Amazon ranking?
It's very disappointing to me -- who have had to watch both my favorite local bookstore and one of the best NY landmarks both succumb and my half-dozen next-most-favorite independent bookstores all struggling under the two-prong attack of Amazon and [what Alison Bechdel refers to as] Buns and Noodles & their ilk -- to see so many people in the Salon and progressive communities unquestionably assuming that the only way to make a ripple that will command notice is via Amazon's rankings.
Of course I'll be buying this book, both to see what GG's fullest analysis will say, and as an expression of support for his crucial voice -- but I'll be buying it locally, in my local brick-and-mortar store that employs people locally and thus both feeds our local economy and distributes, rather than concentrating, that tiny bit of wealth, and will have to cross my fingers and hope that's good enough to help amplify GG's, and all of our, voices nationally.
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TT: Too smart to be a convincing wingnut
[Read the article: This Modern World]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have almost as much sympathy for Tom Tomorrow as I do respect for his brilliance. Where do you go for satire when the realities are more psychotic than the most outrageous of parodies? Usually, TT does a note-perfect rendition of the reichwing mentality. But this time, it seems that he couldn't keep his 3-digit IQ sufficiently under wraps & broke character. Specifically, there's not a 'puke alive who would ever refer to "Democratic" proposals; they'd always be "Democrat proposals" (the standard-issue wingnut being unable to fathom four syllables).
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Way harsh, Salon-dudes
[Read the article: McCain flees north toward home]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]McCain strikes me as -- literally and technically -- a tragic figure: a potentially good person brought to ruin by a single fatal character flaw. Even more tragic, that flaw is simultaneously, one of his better attributes -- and something he's abrogated in some ways, while embracing it in others, both to his detriment.
As of 2000 or even 2004, I think he could have been a very good President or Vice President. But in order to do so, he would have had to jump the party fence. Had he broken with the Republicans and signed on with the Kerry campaign (or, earlier on, switched parties as a serving Senator in the first year of Bush II), I think they could easily have been elected (look how close it was even with the wretched "campaign" that Kerry's Keystone Krew pulled off), and I think (though of course this kind of "what-if" is as un-testable as it is useless) could very well have started taking our country back from the worst depradations of the Cheney-Bush-corporatist-military cabal.
Of course that didn't happen -- and I think at least part of that is attributable to McCain's (obviously highly flexible and circumstantial) self-conception as a consistent and loyal pol.
Once he made that decision, the rest was inevitable. He could never have convinced a majority of Republicans to nominate him, and all the MSM fools who thought otherwise were once again drinking the kool-ade. Any brief visit to Free Republic or any other such site (if you can stomach it) at any time over the last 7 years would have made that abundantly clear, had anyone bothered to look.
But the obviously vain attempts that McCain has been making for the last 3+ years to try to re-establish his conservative bona-fides could, at their best, only have succeeded in further alienating the centrist, moderate, and left-leaning voters who were sold on the "straight-talk" and "maverick" story lines of the 2000 campaign. To me, and many others from what I see and hear out there, McCain's single greatest betrayal was not his stance on the war or even his embrace of the Bushists, but his knuckling under to the Falwells and the Dobsons, whom he correctly reviled as "agents of intolereance" in the 2000 primaries.
If anyone cares, let me share the two specific reasons that I thought back in '00, and still think now, that had McC been willing to jump parties, we all could have wound up in a better place. Both were things I saw at McCain events in nearby NH.
First, at one rally in the middle of the season, when McC was clearly doing very well in NH, there were some enviro-protesters at the event dressed up as trees. When a couple of them got to the mike and posed their questions and challenges about global warming to the candidate, he not only gave them a respective listen, he asked them what specific policies they recommended. When they were unable to give a coherent response, he still answered something along the lines of, "I'm not convinced -- but I'm open to hearing your evidence and your proposals, if you have any. Here's the go-to person for that on my staff." And, of course, McCain has actually been better on global warming than many of "our" Congress-critters. Now, how many Dem's can you envision even giving a respectful listen to, say, some NRA protesters dressed up as Uzis, let alone getting on board with any reasonable suggestions they might present (if that's not a total oxymoron, of course)?
The second was at another event at which, un-prompted by any specific challenges from attendees, McCain expressed dismay at the widening income and wealth gaps that were so apparent at that time (and have gotten so much worse since then). Again, how many of "our" pol's would be willing to touch that issue -- what I consider the 2nd-most important of our generation -- at all? They'd be running to hide behind the tree-garbed protesters, lest they be accused of (*gasp*) "class warfare." And you know that's true.
Somebody should write a play or an opera on this guy; this is high art.