Letters to the Editor
jeremys
Published Letters: 11 Editor's Choice: 1
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A grievous error
[Read the article: Richard Cohen's brilliant (and unintentional) exposé of our media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mr. Greenwald,
While I ordinarily find your writing to be insightful, I believe you are off-base in your criticism of Mr. Cohen today. Clearly, in Mr. Cohen's article, when discussing the "urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times)" he was referring to Joe Wilson's July 6, 2003 "What I Didn't Find In Africa" op-ed. Had Mr. Wilson not pursued his personal matters so agressively, Mr. Libby's entire ordeal would have been easily avoided.
I do not understand how you missed this so obvious point.
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Another bad analogy
[Read the article: Richard Cohen's brilliant (and unintentional) exposé of our media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The best part of the "[a]s with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off" line is that, if you're selling real estate, it's ILLEGAL not to disclose material problems with a property. So, if "keep[ing] the lights off" means hiding defects, then not only is it a bad suggestion, but it's against the law. Which gets us right back to Scooter Libby...
ps, to certifiedprep3ned (or whatever your name was), I'm sorry my previous comment went over your head. But don't worry, I'm sure Mr. Greenwald got it.
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no sweat
[Read the article: Richard Cohen's brilliant (and unintentional) exposé of our media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]certifiedprepwn3d - thanks, appreciated. now i just wish i could go back and fix the @%!&* typo in that post.
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Paul Rosenberg gets the cookie
[Read the article: Richard Cohen's brilliant (and unintentional) exposé of our media]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Wow. I didn't mean to start so much meta-discussion about my comments. This is why, despite being a charter subscriber to Salon, I have never posted in the comments previously...
Paul Rosenberg wrote:
Heck, I just thought it was pgs: pretty good snark.
After all, it is one of favorite rightwing tropes that Joe Wilson caused the whole thing, forcing the Bush Administration against its will to do everything Fitzgerald accused it of, and more.
You hit the nail on the head. That was basically the angle I was going for. It was not meant to be a serious critique of Mr. Greenwald, for whom I have more respect than I can possibly describe (I am actually employed by a peer(ish) firm of his alma mater Wachtell, Lipton). I just thought that, if he read my comment, he'd probably get a good laugh.
As for the second comment, about the real estate analogy, I just thought it was worth mentioning since no one else had caught that Cohen was unintentionally acknowledging that "dark politics" was illegal - like hiding defects in real estate sales - in this case.
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Binary Theory (and beyond)
[Read the article: What "truly motivates" George W. Bush?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Simplistic moralistic and conspiratorial explanations cast the illusion that it can be easily understood and navigated ("Karl Rove controls all the voting machines so everything is hopeless"). But such explanations, particularly binary ones grounded in claimed moral certainty, are virtually always wrong, and thus are virtually never valuable in understanding the way the world is.
While this is undoubtedly true, it is apparent that human nature, at its core, is defined by attempts to categorize things, and the easiest way is in binary format. This was the core of one of the dominant social theory schools of the mid-20th century - Claude Levi-Strauss's Structuralism (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_anthropology). It is also the basis of all computing technology today - 0 and 1. It is or it isn't.
The problem is not that people think this way (well, it's a problem with leadership...). The problem is how we move beyond this basic instinct, particularly in a period of uncertainty, where the compulsion is to move to the familiar and the comforting. I wish I had cogent answers here, but I am afraid I do not, at least not this morning.
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False Premise
[Read the article: Face of a psychopath]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Podhoretz wrote:
But a bombing campaign would without question set back its nuclear program for years to come, and might even lead to the overthrow of the mullahs.
(Emphasis added)
This is the entire premise upon which his argument lies, yet he completely misses the basic lesson of 9/11. On 9/10, President Bush had approval ratings of about 53%, and no semblance of a domestic or foreign agenda. There was already talk of his presidency being a failure. One week later, after the terrorist attacks, his approval rating was over 90%.
Why is this? People rally around their leaders in a time of crisis, even if they didn't much like them before. If we attack Iran, why would we not expect the same result? The most likely result is that the hard-line government, which is not much beloved by the younger generation of Iranians, would suddenly find unwavering support from the entire nation.
Is this really the result we desire?
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liquidated damages clauses
[Read the article: Freeing the iPhone the legal way]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]let us not forget that verizon only began pro-rating the termination fee after t-mobile got sued over their fees. the basic theory being that contracted termination fees must bear a rational relationship to the losses that will be suffered by the company in event of termination.