Letters to the Editor
jdittes
Published Letters: 3
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Great Candidate who Deserves the Attention
[Read the article: The Bill Richardson difference]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's frustrating how much of the campaign coverage at this point is focused one "other shoe" issues. What if the other shoe drops? Does she/he have enough money? What will the Swift Boat Veterans say?
Even Shapiro's article was light on Richardson's substance and heavy on his "other shoe" electability--apparently Shapiro thinks Richardson could pull it off.
Richardson's candor is inconvenient, perhaps, but he comes from a Latino culture that values genuineness highly and tends to laugh off gaffs easily. But his accomplishments as a diplomat and administrator should reveal far more about his ability to lead than regretable ruminations on Alberto Gonzales or Salon writers. Don't they? I mean, don't they?
If we're going to talk about ADD in this forum, we need to talk about the Media. George W. Bush ate their lunch in two elections: he stayed on message (despite ample evidence to the contrary), refused to admit mistakes, and made the approbation of a cadre of extremists seem like a national mandate. In 1999 there were three months of questioning about his drug use (far from candor, he refused to answer the questions), then the media basically said, "he passed the test," and went to sleep. His drunk-driving citation wasn't even discovered until a week before the Election.
I think Richardson is a great candidate. He belongs in the Top Tier, other shoe or not.
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Too soon to measure the fallout
[Read the article: We're so over Vanessa Hudgens' naked pictures]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As the father of a ten-year-old Vanessa Hugdens fan, I have to say that it will take time for the fall-out to be accurately measured. Yes, the pundits and celebrity media have largely given the story its cycle and moved on; but these entities largely ignore the age group that makes up Vanessa's fan base--9 to 16-year-old girls--anyway.
Before the controversy, all my daughter and her friends could talk about was "Zanessa," the packaged 'relationship' between Hudgens and her co-star, heartthrob Zac Efron. These pictures don't jive with this wholesome fare. The kids are ready to move on, methinks.
Before I saw the pictues, I watched both HSM movies and saw Hudgens's videos on DisneyChannel. On the movies, her character if squeaky clean: one of the conflicts in HSM2 is whether or not she will kiss her boyfriend--this doesn't happen until the final scene. In her songs and videos, she is an innocent girl trying to find her way in the world of celebrity.
The photos tell a far different story: of a starlet battling with hundreds of other starlets at the bottom of the acting ladder for any kind of notoriety; of a girl (no makeup or hairstyling) trying to promote modest (at best) physical features. I take exception to the idea that any posed photograph is a "private" thing.
Time will only tell, I guess, but this will affect her. Only when her next album or TV movie comes out will we be able to assess the full fallout.
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Genesis IS Science
[Read the article: Can't Darwin and God get along?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wish that more people would accept the book of Genesis for what it is: great science.
Sure it's Bronze Age science, written without access to a telescope or knowledge of fauna outside Mesopotamia, but it's great science nonetheless, and a great window into a time when its writers were trying to establish Israel as a unique nation and separate it from neighboring tribes, whose ancestors had practiced incest or rebelled against God.
Aristotle is great science. So is Copernicus. Yet these men made mistakes that were corrected by later scientists. That doesn't diminish their importance, does it?
Following Genesis, the Bible leads the reader away from science as it sorts out questions about God--does he compete with other gods? Does he act alone? Will he destroy us? Save us? Is there another entity to blame for evil things?
I was disappointed by Giberson, because I think he failed to really make a case for divinity. Christians no longer need God to explain why a polar bear is not a black bear. We prefer to use him in more personal contexts: explaining how we can make positive changes in our own lives or to inspire spreading change in our communities.