Letters to the Editor
MacK..
Published Letters: 491 Editor's Choice: 49
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A matter of balance of recognition
[Read the article: What's so funny about abusive girlfriends?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]About 10 years ago I heard Diane Rehm on NPR WDCA interview I think it was Naomi Wolf on the issue of domestic violence. A man called up about a "male friend" with a violent spouse -- it was pretty clear he was the friend. They mocked and taunted him! I have never had any respect for Diane Rehm any since.
I think we need to recognise that tremendous progress has occurred vis-a-vis male on female domestic abuse. It is reliably prosecuted, socially condemned and recongised as a problem. Men are increasingly acculturated againts domestic violence and the penalties are serious. Women are not when it comes to violence against men -- worse, some like Diane Rehm seem to just think it is soooo funny. But the issue is that we have an imbalance of reconition - one problem is known and increasingly dealt with -- the other hidden in shame and ridicule.
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Ticking Time Bombs, Torture and Dr. Evil
[Read the article: When Rudy goes waterboarding]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is a great moment in Austin Powers, the Spy who Shagged Me:
DR. EVIL "Scott, I want you to meet Daddy's nemesis, Austin Powers."
SCOTT EVIL "Why are you feeding him? Why don't you just kill him?"
DR. EVIL "In due time."
SCOTT EVIL "But what if he escapes? Why don't you just shoot him? What are you waiting for?"
DR. EVIL "I have a better idea. I'm going to put him in an easily-escapable situation involving an overly-elaborate and exotic death."
SCOTT EVIL "Why don't you just shoot him now? Here, I'll get a gun. We'll just shoot him. Bang! Dead. Done.
DR. EVIL One more peep out of you and you're grounded. Let's begin.
The belief in the need to torture, the ticking time bomb which the hero always defuses with seconds on the clock, all of this BS are movie plot devices. They are not real. The tortured terrorist who just collapses into a bawling mess pleading to tell all to macho Stallone or Rudy Giuliani is also a plot device -- or worse it is projection of the script-writer, and for that matter Bush, Cheney, Gonzales and the Neocon's self assessment that they would fold under such torture.
Yep -- what the belief on these guys' part that enhanced interrogation techniques, waterboarding etc. should be used reveals is that they are well, weak, that they would yield under such torture, that despite the macho posturing, the swagger, they are in the end pussies, cowards, weak men. And why does this surprise us, since they are chickenhawks to a man. Is this what we want for leaders?
The thing is, the studies show that few persons subjected to torture yield any useful information -- and that indeed the information is doubly dangerous because someone under torture will say anything, and the interrogator tends to give excessive weight to information extracted by torture.
More to the point, and here is the reason I quoted from Austin Powers, these guys see life as a movie-script with themselves as the leading man. They see themselves as figures from a Clive Cussler novel (so does he by the way), rugged, manly, take no shit types, and they see the world of Austin Powers, and more the James Bond scenarios it mocks as somehow real. But do we really need a another vacuous fantasist in the White House, posturing as a tough guy to make up for what he (and his VP and NeoCon buddies) in his heart sees as his inadequacies as a man?
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Litigation Cost
[Read the article: Fred Hiatt's concern over "costly litigation" for AT&T and Verizon]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to say I have seen case where the run has been over $1 million per month -- but that has been driven as much by unconscionable billing practices and high billable hour requirements and they were intellectual property cases - or semi-IP such as Hatch-Waxman (patent litigation is truly the sport of kings -- and Hatch-Waxman the sport of Emperors - after all every extra day a blockbuster drug is under patent protection can, literally be worth $1-30 million, so almost any legal cost conceivable to win a day is worthwhile.) .
That said, the people who are arguing with GG about taking revenue are not right -- legal costs are largely treated as a bottom line cost along with everything else on the revenue side -- and in any event the cost of these cases is trivial compared to Verizon and AT&T's overall legal spend - and I mean seriously trivial compared to say securities legal-costs, IP litigation, compliance, collections, contracts, employment, ERISA . . .
The concern that these companies have is much more personal ... bad press .. and more to the point, personal liability and culpability of individual (senior) executives -- and I suspect it is the latter that is really making people sweat.