Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 109 Editor's Choice: 12
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What did this show accomplish?
[Read the article: Series wrap-up: "Will & Grace"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I stopped watching this show about 3 seasons ago. It was just too painful to watch. I've heard so many gay men gush about the series, but as a card-carrying member, I have to say it left me flat. My biggest complaint? Will was played by a straight man, and Sean Hayes went mum about his sexuality. It was nothing more than the gay-version of blackface.
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Coin-Gate not mentioned
[Read the article: Was the 2004 election stolen? No.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Tom Noe, a well-connected Republican who was married to another well-connected Republican party bigwig, was not mentioned in the article.
Noe is best known now for the CoinGate scandal in which he talked the state through his statehouse cronies into sinking millions of Workmen's Comp money into rare coins. Noe sold and spent millions of the state dollars on himself and his Republican buddies. The governor got free golf trips, etc.
A significant chunk of the state's (OUR) money was donated to the Bush-Cheney campaign. $45,000 was funneled to the campaign via $2000 "gifts" to friends, family, etc, who knowingly broke campaign finance law to support Bush. BC04 gave back the $6000 directly contributed by Noe and his family, but has steadfastly refused to return the rest of the state's money.
Even worse, the rumor is that The Toledo Blade, the newspaper that broke this story in 2005, knew of it before the election and sat on it until after it was over. Since this scandal touches pretty much every Republican in the state, it's no surprise that this decision helped Bush win the state in 2004.
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When administrators became police
[Read the article: MySpace or OurSpace?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The point where administrators became policemen for afterschool speech was about the time when kids started bringing guns to school and shooting people. At that point, the community looked to the school in anger and said "how could you have missed any warning signs that this might have happened?" The school suddenly became responsible for finding out what the students were doing outside of school hours.
In response, the school now is forced to monitor the web where some students might announce their intentions to blow up the school or shoot the school jock. That has evolved into looking for admission of stunts or other cruel behavior.
I think the parents need to step up and shoulder the responsibility for these issues. Unless mom and dad are raising a future KKK member, who would encourage their son to post racist comments about their school staff on a public website? As adults, we recognize that this is public-domain and what could happen if the object of the hate speech sees the photo. If mom and dad read the website that talked about shooting up the school, would they just shrug and say "free speech"?
Should schools look the other way about hate speech? Public schools are expected to mold students into good citizens of the US. As a country, we've said that hate speech is wrong. If it's wrong to say in person, it's wrong to put on a public webpage. Too many people think that the Internet is like the inside of their car. It's ok to dig away up the nose, because no one is looking -- wrong! We can all see it.
Parents should monitor their children's activities on-line. There's enough software to do that, and it would take only a minute a week to review your child's Myspace profile. Problem resolved and you might learn something about your kid as well.
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Fair use vs plagiarism
[Read the article: Ann Coulter and plagiarism by the numbers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's a huge difference between fair use and plagiarism. Fair use is using small amounts of other people's texts without obtaining permission (read: paying $$ for) from the author. The author still must provide quotes and attribution either in the text or by footnote. Authors have to be careful about using too much or ending up having to pay for every quote. Also there are authors and estates who are very fussy about having material used at all. Fair use is a way to use author's works in small doses.
Plagiarism is the same thing, except the author conveniently forgets the quotes and attribution. It is presented as original text from the author.
Any first-year journalism student knows the difference.
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Bigger Issue
[Read the article: Happy 14th Amendment Day!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can't believe that people are arguing about the 14th amendment in regard to immigration. Who says we have equal rights for all? There are inequalities in race in terms of prisons and state mandated executions. A terrible divide that is opening up between the haves and have-nots of the country. You only have to look at the current administration to see how the haves all managed to avoid military service to their country. And gays are no where near equal in terms of basic civil rights, such as not getting beat up for being gay.
This country is broke on a much larger scale than immigration. If we really want to look at this country as a place for equal rights, there is a LOT of work to do.
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Getting beat up for being gay
[Read the article: Happy 14th Amendment Day!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is a defense strategy called "Gay Panic" which says that unreasonable force including death can be used as a defense when the victim is reported to have propositioned the assailant. If women were allowed to shoot men for unwanted advances, we'd be a very small country indeed.
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Bio-Christian?
[Read the article: The Fix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can't believe that the actor best known for simulating a tongue kiss with Paulie Shore now thinks he can bring people to Christ. Kind of like going to Bill and Ted's Excellent Tent Revival.
What is up with those Baldwins that they feel a need to behave like this?
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I haven't watched that many episodes of "The Closer"
[Read the article: "The Closer" -- nail it shut]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This sentence alone told me that this man should not be considered a reviewer of the show. From the sound of his comments, he might have watched 1-2 episodes, which can hardly be considered sufficient for a review.
Salon should do a better job in vetting reviwers to people who have actually *watched* the show enough to make an intelligent opinion.