Letters to the Editor
smartalec
Published Letters: 51 Editor's Choice: 4
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Not to worry
[Read the article: Zimbabwe passes warrantless eavesdropping law, cites U.S.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The FISA bill; all the other infringements on civil liberties; the loss of habeas corpus; the politicization of everything from the DoJ to NASA; the ability of the administration to hide everything it says and does from the citizenry; and the unfettered command of the military without Congressional oversight -- in short, every single abrogation of the Constitution by the Bush cabal -- all of it will be reversed, and the return of an agressive, adversarial press, and the right of Congressional oversight affirmed (even by the party in the minority at the time)...
...the moment Hillary takes the oath of office as President.
Remember, you heard it here first.
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The Selling of the Artist
[Read the article: I'm an interesting, talented artist but I can't take the rejection!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Into each life some selling must fall, it seems.
Anyone who free-lances, anyone who consults -- pretty much anyone who doesn't want to work any kind of regular, conventional job -- inevitably has to do some selling. Selling of self, selling of work product, selling of ideas or proposals to granting agencies, potential clients, and so forth. But to most of us, "selling" is no different from "selling out" -- most people who have never had to sell things for a living consider it a few steps down from ditch-digging, which is at least an "honest" job. And that's where the problems come from. I suspect the difficulties of dealing with the inevitable rejections are just part of LW's discontent -- the most salient, immediately apparent part perhaps, but part nonetheless. I suspect that, like most people who sell their mental energies and/or creativity, instead of physical labor, LW just thinks s/he (why am I tempted to assume "he," with no specific references that I noticed?) should be above all that. The world should magically recognize their talents, and throw commission after commission their way. I'm not going to be anywhere near as harsh as chris1988 (I hope that's your birth year, chris, cause that's a really rude attitude for anyone over 19 to be carrying around) or Mr Versen -- I don't mean to be harsh at all. But for someone who does have to sell themselves, or their work product, artistic or otherwise, such an attitude is an unaffordable luxury.
So I do have two concrete suggestions for LW, both of which entail recognizing the reality that selling is a core function of the life of most artists -- all but the very luckiest (who may or may not also be the most talented).
First, is to take a sales-training course somewhere, or even apply for a job as a salesperson for some hard-core outside-sales force. (I'd recommend this to anyone and everyone who expects to spend any part of their lives working for themselves.) Selling has a skill set all its own, and part of the necessary tool kit -- and part of what is taught in any good sales-training program -- is the successful management of inevitable rejections. But that's only one tiny part of the tool kit. A good sales-training program will increase anyone's ability to pitch themselves and their work more effectively and more efficiently, as well as more comfortably and happily. I honestly believe that some kind of sales training should be part of a high-school education, along with intros to economics; art, music, and literature; and world history. (I also think everyone should be given a Swiss army knife at birth, but that's a whole nother rant.)
And second (and one of the things that I learned in a sales-training class when I was but a tater-tot, career-wise), LW might try considering the following simple but surprisingly effective mental trick:
Start with the recognition that even the best salespeople in most fields will generally have close rates of less than 10%, in all but the cushiest of sales jobs. Since this is usually the case, the hit:miss ratio will be less than 1-to-9. So, for every closed sale, there are, on average, at least 9 misses. So at every miss, hit the mental tote board -- that's 1/9th closer to my next sale. This is, of course, just a 2-cent affirmation, easily dismissed as one more bit of self-help silliness and sophistry -- but as I said, it can be surprisingly effective. Worked for me, when I had to do a lot of selling in my life, something at which I'm not at all naturally talented, and as constitutionally opposed to as most snobs lucky enough to come from backgrounds of privilege.
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Who's a "slut"
[Read the article: Chaste women + promiscuous men = impossible]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is the point where Amanda Marcotte, at Pandagon, would be pointing out that, to many (esp Republican-type, anti-choice) women, the number at which one becomes "slutty" is generally one more than the person stating the definition.
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@rtf100 (8/26, 7:40pm)
[Read the article: My girlfriend tried cocaine at a party! She was drunk! Oh my God!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"What about all the dead bodies between here and Colombia piling up in places like Tijuana, all the bribes and corruption along the way that are invisible to the users? Don't think for a second that illegal drug use is a victimless crime."
As someone with such an advanced and highly attuned moral sense as that possessed by your august self must surely be aware, the Coca Cola company has been accused of supporting the repression of the labor movement in Latin America to the point of murder. And let's not even begin to think of the costs that our society's oil consumption imposes on the world, of which the hundreds of thousands of dead and millions of displaced Iraqis, and the encroachment of the rising seas on low-lying and island nations, are just the most recent and obvious manifestations.
It's not just the illegal economy that creates "victims." In short, unless you're living as far off the grid as Helen and Scott Nearing, I don't think you have a lot to say to anyone else about their "conscience" or "the bigger picture." There's always going to be an even larger perspective from which you are just another "small-thinker" yourself.