Letters to the Editor
firefly82
Published Letters: 255 Editor's Choice: 28
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Dear Salon
[Read the article: Michelle Obama's sacrifice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Debra Dickerson insults my intelligence as a female and as a non-racist person. She has no sense of subtlety or complexity beyond the basest and most cliched racial and sexual politics. Every time I think about maybe becoming a paying subscriber, I stop and remember her.
Debra, just so you know, I respect Michelle Obama immensely for making a hard choice in a hard situation. I'm elated that women today have the freedom to make those kind of choices. I trust Michelle to choose best for her own life and family. She isn't holding the rest of us down by doing so.
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crazed cats
[Read the article: I hate my cat!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've read about this phenomenon before as it concerns cats who were separated from their mothers and siblings too soon--it seems like it's a cat socialization-learning thing. Animals, just like human children, need role models for good behavior. So the only thing I'd add to Cary's answer is for future rescuers of abandoned kittens: consult a veterinarian EARLY about socialization issues.
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Maybe someone already said this
[Read the article: Healthy, my ass]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]but I just can't go through 22 pages of letters, and I think it bears repeating in any case: there are plenty of *good* reasons to dislike the bubble butt fashion. To start with, those proportions are *just* as unrealistic and unattainable by most women (by healthy means) as are the fasions of tiny stick-like build, or really big boobs. In my (completely untested) observation, sex symbols are sex symbols *because* they are out of the ordinary. It's our responsibility not to judge the rest of humanity by their standard.
Secondly, BMI was not initially intended to be such a simplistic "measure" of health or overweight/obesity. All it is is height to weight ratio, without any consideration of what that tissue is composed of. It was intended to statistically classify the average, sedentary population. SO many more factors contribute to health or the lack thereof that I'd find statements like "a BMI over 30 is simply not ok" hilarious in their ignorance if they weren't so authoritarian, potentially harmful to people with non-average bodies, and widely accepted.
(See wikipedia's entry on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index)
To the writer who just doesn't believe Buffie weighs 157 because you "weigh people daily," well, you're not the one weighing HER, so how would you know? You of all people should know that people frequently don't weigh what others think they look like they do.
As a naturally skinny person myself, I'm fed up with skinny women being blamed for all of womanhood's health and emotional woes, and it's absolutely as unjust to hold up a single specimen of any other exceptional body type and blame her for the "example" she sets.
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Why I'll be unschooling
[Read the article: Kindergarten unreadiness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was infuriated by that article. While I commend the author for illuminating the practice and varying definitions of what "readiness" for kindergarten is, depending on the motivations of who's doing the defining, I think she completely missed a crucial point: we have an educational system built on pitting children against each other.
"Redshirting" not only widens the achievement gap between rich and poor, but between the biggest and the smallest children, the more confident and the quieter, the oldest and the youngest. And it broadens opportunities for teachers to further coddle the oldest, more able kids, to the express disadvantage of the younger and more awkward. The saddest, most sickening part of the article for me was to read quotes from teachers admitting that they enjoyed the older kids in their classes more because they were easier to deal with.
Redshirting makes something "wrong" with both the red-shirted kid--stigmatizing him for not being ready for kindergarten at the typical age--and the younger ones, because it makes their normal 5-year-old developmental levels a disadvantage.
That it's even possible for parents to cheat the system like this to advantage their kids to the detriment of others should be an alarm that our system is NOT designed to give each child an individually appropriate education, but rather to make sure that the strongest beat the weakest in an ever more complicated contest for teacher approval, test scores, etc.
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Grumble
[Read the article: Mitt Romney, father of gay marriage?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"...putting the word 'fine' within a 10-foot rhetorical pole of 'gay couples raising kids' had already raised Christian ire."
Can we PLEASE remember already that this is not the representative Christian view, and that the Christians with their ire raised at gay marriage do not speak for all of Christianity? Pretty please?
My own acceptance of gays and lesbians for who they are and support for gay marriage came about as a result of my Christianity, not as an affront to it.
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OhioGirl
[Read the article: Kindergarten unreadiness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I know what "actually happens" in public schools; I attended them for thirteen years.
Ever witnessed the ritual humiliation of a high school freshman at a mandatory school-sponsored, faculty-run "spirit assembly" for the entertainment of the entire student body? I have. I don't need scare tactics; I have a memory.
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BadReligion
[Read the article: Kindergarten unreadiness]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]So you're saying cruel behavior by students should be encouraged by school administrators? I thought the job of adults was to teach justice and humanity to children. Silly, silly me.
Yes, the world is a tough, cruel place. It shouldn't be anyone's job to make it moreso. Yes, school toughened me up. And I've forgiven very few of the people involved.
This thread has now gone awfully off-topic and I know I sound unreasonably bitter about my own school experiences. I am, and so it sickens me to hear about parents using the system to knowingly create hardships for other children.