Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 74 Editor's Choice: 6
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Raised by wolves
[Read the article: This little piggy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think it's notable that no letters bear the red star of editorial approbation yet (and doubt this one will, either). As the numbers mount up I think we can be assured that so will the lunacy, idiocy and misinformation, ugh. Telling a child s/he is behaving like a pig is not abuse. Behaviors can and should be changed. Calling a child a pig is a little strong, but it is also not abuse. Calling a child little pig, take that you little piggy, little piggy wants her breakfast?, little pig boys who soil their underpants don't deserve toys, etc etc. day in day out in an effort to dominate? Probably abuse!
Frankly, children don't know the difference and cannot always be relied on to report abuse or testify accurately should it come to that. So in that regard, society has some duty to stand watch and protect children who are abused. I'd like to summon the ghost of Potter Stewart and say, in the case of name calling crossing the line to abuse, we know it when we see it. But if the tone of electronic posts in response to an online column are any indication, we don't yet. I don't think I've called my child names other than affectionate ones. But my parents called me "brat" sometimes and my father (a minister, good heavens!) swore; my wife was told "you're on thin ice, bitch" in high school (she was!) by her mother--once. Shall we draw up the warrants? Or has the statute of limitations passed?
Finally, I don't hesitate at all to point out: if raised in the rarified air of a household like the Baldwin-Basingers, the chances of becoming a little pig seem to me very very high.
This is a good article, either way. I doubt it's going to gain any traction with the wolves and dingoes who prowl the comments, either for or against name calling, but will result in plenty of chest thumping. Like this response just now.
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pfui
[Read the article: Why is "Sgt. Pepper" so overhyped?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Okay feature this: the first time I had a chance to sit down and really listen to "Sgt. Pepper" all the way thru I was in college. Seriously! Not to mention this was in 1991, and I had been listening to tons of "nevermind" and "bleach" just prior. But as I listened to the Beatles, I caught myself singing along to just about every song. How'd that happen? Could it be because these songs are not so "detached" and "cold" as we're led to believe in this lousy exercise in criticism? Instead perhaps they are likable, approachable and evocative? I felt nothing jarring about going from wailing "I don't have a gun/no I don't have a gun" along with Kurt to "lovely Rita meter maid/nothing can come between us/when it's dark I tow your heart awaaaay" at the top of my lungs. Do people do this for bad songs? I suppose. I don't like to believe I'm one of them! Chacun a son gout.
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heady? medincinal?
[Read the article: Curtains for musical comedy?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Pardon me for sounding a little more earthy than the stereotype suggests the more rarified members of my "Sondheimerati" brotherhood would, but get stuffed.
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I must respectfully disagree
[Read the article: Comics fans, grow up!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I must disagree with most of the article. I'm sure Mr. Wolk has numbers or something to flesh out his full length book on the subject, but this feels ill-researched or too-broad by half. Perhaps I'm just a lucky one, but the number of comics people I know are both casual and hard core about it in ways that looking nothing at all like the descriptions he uses. In fact the comic person depicted by Mr. Wolk looks like a poor cariacature, a badly-draped stereotype trotted out for scaring moms and dads (or the Salon readership, apparently?).
There are many many adult and young readers of comics who do nothing like the speculators and slabbers and schizo-types mentioned in the article. There have to be, else where would all the money be coming from? Surely you must realize no publisher or seller of books depends on the types in the "wednesday crowd" for their bread and butter. The most simple economic reasoning suggests these people are the far end of the bell curve. If it were any other way one or two things would happen: all the presses would go bankrupt --there simply aren't enough hard cores to sustain a whole industry of this size; or there would be no such distinctions being made, no scary stories of mylar and fyovs--if these guys alone were enough to keep an industry of this size afloat, if they were even the bare majority of buyers, there would be no distinctions described in the article; they would be the mainstream.
I guess--and I regret saying it this way--I'm saying there is a silent majority of comics buyers who do not fit the stereotypes, do not make the distinction between graphic novel and ordinary comics or just 'books in general', and certainly do not chase after a vision of respect like some white whale.
Furthermore, the anxiety about retcons and the artwork of Crumb and Ware and so on: seriously, what is up with that? So what? There's countless other writers and artists who keep trying new variations. This dismissal of nostalgia is also off the mark. What of the Busieks and Straczyinskis? Don't they mine a nostalgic vein? Yet Can you honestly look Astro City in the face and declare it inbred or poisonous? Supreme Power? Is the mind bending continuity hopping work of a Brian Michael Bendis, Grant Morrison, or Warren Ellis incestuous? (now I worry I'm just name dropping and it will stray from my intent. )
I certainly hope the rest of this book is better than the shallowness at which this excerpt hints.