Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 56 Editor's Choice: 7
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@jeffersonian
[Read the article: Will Clinton or Obama be voted off the island?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Don't worry about KateTex ("hate bait kate" -- LOL) and her ilk.
Lots of disappointed people have said things in polls that will change after the nomination. A lot of people who claim they're shifting their vote to McCain haven't really thought about it yet.
As for the Kate types, they talk about how they represent millions, yet every effort to measure their actual numbers comes up shockingly low.
The site "Hillary is 44" -- often cited as a hub of Hillary's grass roots -- has collected over 100,000 ardent comments since last November. A lot, right? It is the work of only 340 people *total*. About 70 of those people account for 50% of the comments (that's over 50,000).
Recently, two women from Columbus began an organization dedicated to boycotting Obama. After national media exposure, including personal appearances on Fox News, I visited their site. It had gotten about 2500 hits. It's a week later and it now has a little over 64,000 hits. Remember, these women claimed to represent "millions" and got free coverage on national TV news shows.
These hyperpartisans are loud and entertaining, but there are hardly enough of them to fill a high school gym.
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Phasers didn't get through their shields, Captain
[Read the article: Rush Limbaugh was right]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]First of all, I'm a little tired of the claim that you have to find this cover hilarious or you have lost your sense of humor. I love twisted, irreverent humor.
I didn't love this.
I'm also not supposed to be bothered by its ugly subtexts because it's "satire" and it skewers the wingnuts. It may be satire, but it hasn't skewered the wingnuts -- it's energized them.
Check out the traffic on Free Republic. They couldn't be more excited that the famous New Yorker compiled "the truth" on this week's cover. And yes, they know if was meant to poke fun at them, but it has utterly failed in its mission to do so.
I suppose that one response is to laugh at the morons who are embracing this poke in the eye. Another, more realistic analysis would be to realize that Freepers aren't that stupid, they're simply heavily indoctrinated; the idiots at work here are the editors who can't identify bad satire when they see it. A characteristic of bad satire is that it's difficult to figure out who it's aimed at.
Look up the work of Andrew Dice Clay on YouTube. Is Clay performing a character engaged in self-parody? Sometimes it seems that way, but mainly it just seems that he's a bigoted jerk. That's why he faded quickly from the spotlight (he's still performing, did you know that?).
Maybe Clay could get a gig as a New Yorker editor.
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Dead Baby Video!
[Read the article: The creepiest video you will see all day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My wife just finished a chaplain internship where she worked mainly in neo-natal ICU. Too often, the babies would die and sometimes they'd bring the dead child to the parents to hold one last time. Since chaplains deal with death issues, it was her job to perform this. This video gave her dead baby flashbacks.
Ugh.
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Dennis Miller on Kerry (and, by extension, McCain)
[Read the article: Subject, verb, POW]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Back in 2004, I caught a brief glimpse of Dennis Miller pontificating his right-wing wisdom on John Kerry, and to my shock and surprise, he made a good point about Kerry's disputed status as a war hero. He said (IIRC), "The point is that it's not about what Kerry did 30 years ago, but was he's doing today."
The same thing applies to McCain.
He may have been a hero 40 years ago, but he's an opportunistic liar today.