Letters to the Editor
Hummel-Levy
Published Letters: 35 Editor's Choice: 2
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Generalizations Lead Nowhere/Where are the men?
[Read the article: At home with David Brooks]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with many of the posts which point out that so few of us have the luxury of a one-income family. There's no way my wife and I could get by just on my income, despite the fact that we have made several choices that have enabled us to live on less income. My assumption is that Brooks and others like him who denigrate working women are of such an elevated social class that they have lost touch with the economic realities of the vast majority of Americans.
One thing that I often see missing from the "working mother" discussion could be summed up by the question "Where are the men?" During my child's first year my wife and I swapped work and child-care schedules, and even though my daughter, who was nursing, no doubt saw "Mommy" as her greatest bond, she also had the experience of being cared for regularly by her father. To this day (daughter is two, now), I am very involved in her care and my wife continues to work half-time. We have patched together a mix of Mommy-care, Daddy-care, and some babysitters to enable us to give her as much time as possible but also to allow us both fulfilling work lives.
I think, after a brief of window of alternative possiblities for masculinity, being a man has been redefined, at least in our cultural dialogue, in the most cliched, macho terms. I bet a LOT of men help with the kids far more than ever before, but would be loath to talk about it.
Clearly, pundits like Brooks also like to think that ideal outcomes happen magically and without social and government support--and he ignores that many social and government changes have made family life so much harder.
In conclusion, I think David Brooks too often speaks without facts or reality, and some feminists are still holding too tight to some of the early understandings and lessons of feminist thought. The whole darn thing seems like a gray area to me, and individual families make individual decisions based on resources and needs. And of course, in the meantime, I believe the needs of children should be paramount--it's really hard to maximize outcomes for everyone.
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Shapiro "Beltway Wisdom"
[Read the article: Lamont: "This is not Fox News, Sir"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm with many of the other writers who found Mr. Shapiro's characterization of Joe Lieberman as "centrist," his questioning Ned Lamont's party loyalty for even running against Lieberman, and his repetition of certain incomplete spin points to minimize the meaning of Democrats's dissatisfaction with the incumbent Senator, a bit puzzling, and yes, frustrating.
Joe Lieberman, as others have pointed out, talks the talk, but then votes the other way all too often. He also does something that many Dems have been upset about--he gives interviews in which he says many critical things about his own party members, but few if any about Republicans. This has been a recurring phenomenon in which rather than exercise oversight on the President and his party, Mr. Lieberman questions the patriotism of his fellow Democrats.
And let us not forget that Lieberman took money from William F. Buckley for his first campaign, refused to give up his Senate seat when he ran for Veep (even though this assured a Republican would be appointed to replace him if Gore had been installed in the White House), and undermined support for a full recount.
He has not been a loyal Democrat, and has used his bump up in status from his vice-presidential nomination to garner more publicity, but not as clout to help steer Bush toward the center.
Mr. Shapiro previously wrote another column in which he spun Karl Rove's non-indictment into something that was good for democracy and good for Democrats, too. Taken with this column which seems to suggest that the status quo really is a good thing, I am now starting to think that Mr. Shapiro suffers from inside-the-beltway journalistic thinking. I think Salon can do better than this.
Mr. Lieberman's problems are not just about Iraq, and Mr. Shapiro should certainly know this and write about it thoroughly and completely instead of repeating tired, old "intra-party" "blood sport," it's all a big horse-race rhetoric. It's not a game--there are big things at stake here--many of us feel the future of our nation is at stake, and a defeat for Lieberman will wake some establishment Dems up.