Letters to the Editor
USERNAME
Published Letters: 344 Editor's Choice: 70
-
Oh, And By The Way
[Read the article: My son, the stranger]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Stop crying out to God and pay for some driving lessons. Ask for a male instructor. Kids don't listen to their mothers, but they will listen to another adult authority figure - particularly when that person is sitting next to them watching them drive. They MUSt do the legal thing; they MUST take corners slowly. Tell him he can't use the car unless he's taking one lesson a week. Find the money for it - it's worth it, both to you and to your son. And yes, I said to ask for a male. You heard me. My best friend is a male therapist and he turns people away from his practice because he is so busy. This is because so many of the kids he sees are the children of divorce or never-married women and there's no male authority figure around. Kids listen to men better than they listen to their mothers. We may wish this weren't so, but it is. So forget what you wish were so and do what is practical instead.
It's his safety, after all. That's the most important thing right now, when he's at that male teenage stage. They are daredevils, they feel invincible and a male authority figure sitting next to them scrutinizing their behavior behind the wheel will take all of the excess, overflow god-I-can't-take-my-mother emotion out of driving.
Forget all the rest and do what is safest for your son right now. You will be relieving yourself of a burden, believe it or not.
-
It's About Global Warming, Not About An Election
[Read the article: Hurricane Al]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Of course Al Gore's documentary on global warming doesn't answer the question "Will he run?" It's about global warming. Not about an election. He really, really wanted to be involved in a documentary about the clear and present danger to our planet. Is that really so hard to believe? Why would you expect him to inject election prospects into it? If he did, you'd scoff at him "That Al Gore... he's such a user! Look how he pretends to care about the environment when he's really just shilling for the presidential nomination."
And no, it's not going to bring in the Fox News crowd. But it might bring in some young people who have been told by the media that Al Gore is stiff and dull and dumb and a strawman to poke pitchforks at. And they may see the irony in the fact that the media presents Al Gore as this twin being - dull, stiff, wonky one minute; the next minute he's a wildman, a bearded, crazed lunatic frothing at the mouth, making hysterical claims about imagined dangers to the earth. The media does the same thing with Hillary Clinton. One minute she's a cold-hearted, trigger-happy adulteress offing her lover Vince Foster, disposing of his body in a park all by herself; the next minute she's a happy lesbian surrounded by her sapphic sisters, married to a merkin she manipulates for her own aims.
Sure, most young people will swallow the media's latest 15 second sound bite on Gore because it's the easy thing to do. But a significant number of young people are more deeply attuned to the hypocrisy of an older generation of self-satisfied professional spokespersons. They may go to see the movie specifically because the media makes a fuss over it and tells them, in a blatantly condescending way, not to bother, move along, nothing to see here, kids.
The demonization of Al Gore by the old-folks media may be the best thing that can happen to him right about now.
-
As Long AS We're Talking Family...What About The Bush Twins?
[Read the article: For the Times, another gutter awaits]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They seem to have a distinct lack of relationship with their parents. I suppose they'll show up after they've finished graduate school. It seems to be a Bush family tradition to ignore your children, send them away until they're in their mid-to-late 20s, and then give them jobs managing Republican political campaigns. Then they'll be able to have a relationship with other members of the Bush family, because they'll have something of interest to talk about.
Yes...the same interest the Bushes discuss every night, Pinky... how to take over the world!
-
Ha Ha To The Capt Queeg Reference
[Read the article: Cheney and the penknife]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In my mind, as I read this article, I was picturing Cheney scrawling "Strawberries..... is he the one who took my strawberries? I can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic... that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist" in the margin's of Wilson's op-ed.
-
He's Better Than Our Televangelists
[Read the article: Laughing yogi]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At least he's not calling hurricanes down on the east coast or blaming gays for 9/11. So ok, he looks like he's watched the ending of the Alistair Sim version of "A Christmas Carol" a few too many times.
-
I Don't Mind Satire
[Read the article: Anderson Cooper in jail?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When it's funny. But that wasn't funny. It sounded like something a middle-aged dad would write for his high school kid's newspaper, trying to be "cool" and "hip" and "with it." You know, like the "hep cats" when they "get down" and "rap" with the "peeps". Was it "groovy" or "def"? You be the judge, "daddy-o".
OK, I'm gonna "make like a lettuce and leaf" after "givin a shout out to my bros".