Letters to the Editor
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Published Letters: 384 Editor's Choice: 71
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MSM Still Won't Give Dean His Props
[Read the article: Howard Dean, vindicated]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The MSM is grudginly giving Rahm and Chuck some credit for the election. It is also citing Republican alienation and historical 6 year presidency-fatigue as reasons for the Democratic win. They are not, however, giving Howard Dean his props. In fact, if you tune in to MSNBC, CNN or, God forbid, Fox, you will see the same old tired (but magnificently surgically altered) pundits claiming that the Democratic Party has rejected the "crazy-left Howard Dean wildeyed liberal netblog monster." It's quite funny that nobody will point out that that "loony leftwing wildeyed liberal" Dean is as majorly responsible as Rahm and Chuck are for delivering more than "the base."
And even here in Salon's Letters, where I would expect to see more intelligent thinking, I am seeing a surprisingly large number of people identifying Howard Dean as "liberal" and a "leftist." Howard Dean is not a liberal leftist. Take it from me.. I am a liberal leftist; he most definitely isn't. Howard Dean a moderate, middle-of-the-road, fiscally responsible, gun-toting, NRA Democrat. Dean didn't force gay marriage on the Vermont populace. The people of Vermont voted gay marriage into place THEMSELVES. Dean was governor of a Yankee state for years, and by "Yankee" I mean hardscrabble New Englanders who prefer to do for themselves and don't like government getting involved in what's going on either in their own or someone else's bedroom because they find that unacceptably intrusive. I am always surprised at non-New Englanders claiming that New England is this Brie-eating, BMW-driving yada yada yada who want government to run their lives. To me, it is Midwesterners and Southerners who want the government getting involved in their lives -- they want the government to take up religion, they want government in the bedroom regulating sex, they want the government to define the institution of marriage, they want the government to regulate and define "life" -- Jesus Christ, what a bunch of nanny-government lovers those people are! New Englanders prefer genuine self-sufficiency and abhor the government poking around into people's private lives. They threw off theocracy 300 years ago and birthed our democracy by starting a revolution against repressive governance.
But that is another example of the lazy, sloppy media picking up talking points and broadcasting them as if they were true. The self-sufficient Northeast pours more money into Washington than it gets back and the South takes far more money from the federal government than it puts in. Thrifty New Englanders, among others, are the ones who are subsidizing those whiney, self-righteous people who want the government in bedrooms, who want the church in the boardrooms and who can't shut up for 5 minutes about what their own beliefs are and how everyone else should be sharing them.
I would venture to say that Howard Dean is to the right of Rahm Emmanuel and Chuck Schumer. Howard's antiwar stance was in opposition to Rahm and Chuck's, partly because he knew it would cost too much in lives and money and that it would not benefit anyone in the end. And because it is immoral. That's a pretty conservative viewpoint. Dean was on the same side as Pat Buchanan in his opposition to the war.
Well Howard, I give you props, along with Salon and Jon Stewart and "lefty" blogs, even though the MSM won't - and even though you are little far to the right in my estimation. You done good.
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Newt Gingrich, Meet George W Bush
[Read the article: The GOP in 2008: As Allen convalesces, Gingrich unloads]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Congratulations are in order for Newt Gingrich, who appears to have just awakened from a 6 year coma to find the man occupying the White House to be a smirkingly disingenuous, thoroughly incompetent boob.
Continued wishes for improved health, Mr G....
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Janis Was So Articulate
[Read the article: The original riot grrrl]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I watched one of the Dick Cavett "Legends" DVDs which contained a few appearances by Janis Joplin. She was engaged, engaging and articulate. She really connected with the people she conversed with, she connected with the audience. She was genuine. She'd achieved her fame through sheer talent and rocks. She thought of her work as art, yet she was in awe of others she thought of as artists.
When I think of today's "talent" -- surgically altered within an inch of their lives, blemish free, giggly, stupid, propelled by obsessed parents or by personal contacts within the entertainment industry -- I marvel that for a few years, people like Janis and Jimi and the Beatles were able to pierce the manufactured identities of popular music stars for a few years. And it really was only a few years, for before them were Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis, Pat Boone, Annette Funicello. Nice people, I'm sure, but hand picked by image makers and obedient to their handlers. And after the more original, more talented rockers, the rock world itself became chock full of posers who were looking to get famous at all costs --- hang the talent and rely on shock and/or a gimmick (Alice Cooper, KISS, etc).
Oh well, it was nice - and interesting, exhilarating, and inspirational - while it lasted.
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Uh..... Carville?
[Read the article: Do Democrats need the South?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Howard Dean is on it already.
He's been on it since last year.
Thanks for playing James, but we can't have you stealing someone else's thunder. Especially because you hate Howard Dean and would love nothing more than to crack him one in the teeeth.
Go home to your wife, Dick Cheney's familiar spirit. Then get lost. And stay lost. You and your lovely, hateful, scornful spouse.
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How To Answer This
[Read the article: Fox isn't the only "fair and balanced" one]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]'I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way."
"Oh, I think you're wrong, Mr Beck. I don't think 'a lot' of Americans feel that way. I think very few Americans feel that way because there really aren't that many bigots and idiots among the American people."
(Of course, we know there ARE a lot of idiots, but the point is to sound pro-American while making a fool of Glenn Beck)