Letters to the Editor
stefan nonsense
Published Letters: 75 Editor's Choice: 1
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Amish like whom?
[Read the article: Amish like me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I was young, our family lived two houses away from John Howard Griffin before he regained his sight and before he wrote Black Like Me. (Translation: I know whereof I speak.) The difference between Mr. Keillor and Mr. Griffin is that Howard actually did the thing, became black for six weeks thanks to a dermatologist, even if it was just skin deep, and then wrote about what he experienced. GK saw a stunning young Amish woman and then fantasized, like the English major he is, about what life must be like among the Amish, based, I suppose, on what others have written and the recent main-stream-media coverage of the tragedy in Pennsylvania. He includes, of course, the obligatory weekly Bush-bashing and handwringing over Iraq and greenhouse gases. His columns are getting tiresome. No wonder so few letter writers have responded to such pabulum (which, according to the second definition in my old American Heritage Dictionary, means insipid intellectual nourishment).
My advice to Garrison Keillor: Either do the thing, or shut up.
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an afterthought
[Read the article: Amish like me]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Langston Hughes must be spinning in his grave.
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As they used to say in the valley, "gag me with a spoon"
[Read the article: I love L.A.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This must be a new low in Garrison Keillor columns. Really, now. As one English major to another, can't you (Mr. K) just picture an over-the-hill James Russell Lowell coming up his latest poem:
"And what is so rare as a day in Minsk?
Then, if ever, come perfect days."
Neither can I.
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Oops!
[Read the article: I love L.A.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I meant "coming up WITH." Sorry.
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Carl Sandburg said it best...
[Read the article: I love L.A.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Los Angeles!
Mind butcher to the world..."
OK, so it just doesn't have the right ring. But read these letters, both pro and con, carefully. I rest my case.
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To mintosh of the 7-point Iraq Platform
[Read the article: Hillary's hard-won experience]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That, dear sir or madam (as the case may be), is the reason why you could never be elected president of this (or any)country. Unfortunately, however, you do sound like many of our citizens these days, except for your points 4 and 5, which clearly propel you across the line into crackpot territory.
The editors of Salon must be thrilled at the diversity of its readers.
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Terrific column!
[Read the article: Fathers get no respect]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]At last, a GK column that had me chuckling throughout. Funny stuff. So now I'll have to go read that Thurber story.
I read somewhere that Mothers Day is the day with the greatest number of telephone calls, and Fathers Day is the day with the greatest number of collect telephone calls. I guess it goes with the territory.
I have tinnitus too -- maybe I'll be the one toting around the box of cicadas (cicadae?). Who knew?
Our town had a Dairy Queen, not an A&W, but the end result was the same.
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All this talk about drones and virgin queens
[Read the article: Fathers get no respect]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]gives new meaning to the old Sanford & Son line, "I'm coming, Elizabeth!"
But now for the really important question that only an English Major like GK claims to be can answer: Is it Father's Day or Fathers' Day or simply Fathers Day? Ditto for Mother and her day (Mother's, Mothers' or Mothers).
Inquiring minds want to know.
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you almost had me there
[Read the article: The library fix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]with your Pollyanna approach to libraries and higher learning and all the young Hmong and Vietnamese seekers of wisdom and truth in Minnesota, but then the other posters, including librarians, have clued me in to what life in the real world is like (not that fictional place where Pollyanna lives).
Talk about your Unhappy White Guys...GK should be the poster child.
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Impeachment of both Bush and Cheney is not really the answer
[Read the article: "Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]because our president would then be Nancy Pelosi. This may thrill the writers on this thread but it is not something I personally would want to see happen, for reasons to numerous to mention here. I say sit tight; November 2008 is right around the corner (sixteen months away).
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I'm appalled!...
[Read the article: His stethoscope is loaded]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]No, not at this extremely sophomoric example of GK's rage trying to masquerade as humor (I believe Al Franken refers to that sort of thing "satire"). No, not at supposed English major posters who say, "Not hardly." No, not at the regular Bush/Cheney haters all foaming at the mouth. I'm appalled at rebecalouise's assertion that India is a Muslim country. Has she ever heard of a little thing called "Partitioning" that took place sixty years ago? That's how we got Pakistan (Muslim) and India (Hindu, well really lots of things, but mostly Hindu). And the mainstream media and all of the newspapers refer to India regularly as "the world's largest democracy."
Full disclosure: I am not Indian.
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A post to some of the posters who posted to the host
[Read the article: Bridges aren't supposed to fall down]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To bernback: A word to the wise - people who can't pass an eighth-grade spelling test shouldn't throw stones. Or maybe your little fingers were flying so fast because your mind was finally in gear and you didn't have time to go back and see that they (the fingers) were stumbling over one another.
To gberke: Whaddaya mean, no government gasoline taxes??? From what I've read, the oil companies, excuse me, I mean the @#$!%&* oil companies, get about 8 cents on each gallon of gas sold, and the government gets about 30 cents. And yet the outcry is always against the oil companies, never against the government. If I'm wrong, someone please enlighten me.
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the reason there are no comments from that nice Eva Gabor, raj,
[Read the article: "Smooth as old satin"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is that she's dead. It's her sister, Zsa Zsa, who is still alive and kicking at 90 or 95 or whatever age she tells people she is. Totie Fields is dead too, so no comments from her, either. But Salon could have asked for some from Renee Taylor, who, if memory serves, came on Merv's show and dyed her shoes. Or that sweet girl singer, blond, whose name I can't dredge up right now, who sang "Try To Remember" long before Jack Palance's version trumped everyone else's.
I love trips down memory lane, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune, not necessarily in that order.
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Mr. or Ms. Apfel, as the case may be
[Read the article: Dear Sir, I write today to say that I cannot write]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You said, "I can write, speak, and think in my own language, better than anyone else I know. I'm not saying that out of a place of arrogance - I'm stating that as point of fact."
Mama used to tell me, whenever I said anything as stupid as that, "Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back."
Methinks you could stand a tad more didacticism, auto or otherwise.