Letters to the Editor
Asher Steinberg
Published Letters: 224 Editor's Choice: 12
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I Forgot About Lani Guinier
[Read the article: Our first black president?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]All the poor girl did was write a few law review articles advocating proportional representation and he cut her loose as if she had been found guilty of child molestation. Then he had the nerve to say that her views are anti-democratic! How can such a bright man not realize that 90% of democracies use some form of PR?
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Who Cares About Campaign Tactics Anyway?
[Read the article: An old-fashioned thumpin' in South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mean, how are you going to base your vote on whose campaign tactics are more "Rovian"? Nothing could be more irrelevant to how good a President either of these two will be than how nice or honest they are on the trail. Huckabee and McCain are probably the most honest candidates in the race - does that mean I'm supposed to vote for a guy who doesn't believe in evolution and wants a national sales tax, or a candidate who wants to stay in Iraq for a hundred years? Of course not. In fact, McCain's doubly stupid for being so honest about his extremely unpopular views. I don't want to elect a President who always says what he's thinking. Hillary's a slightly mean campaigner, and Barack talks a lot about change. Big deal. I think either one would represent a huge "change" from the current administration, and I can't see what Hillary's manners have to do with anything. If Nixon were running against this guy, he'd have an ad running nationwide with footage of a little kid who bears a striking resemblance to Obama smoking crack. In the scheme of things, Hillary's a downright softy. All she's done is (a) point out that Obama took tons of money from a guy headed to jail and paid above appraised value for property he purchased from the guy - kind of hypocritical given her husband's contributors, but it's true all the same - and (b) harp on his Reagan comments, which were stupid. However much she distorted them, and really, she didn't distort them that much (after all, he said that Reagan had a greater impact than Clinton), you just don't say anything that can be interpreted as praise of Reagan in the middle of a Democratic primary. It was dumb, and he had to know she would jump on it. He would have done the same.
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You're Right About Bill's Campaigning
[Read the article: Obama and the Kennedy legend]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In fact, what you didn't mention is that, among voters who thought Bill's efforts were "very important," Hillary won 48-44. Among those who thought it was "not important," she lost 13-62. And she only got 9% of those who thought it was "not important at all."
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Yoyo1952...
[Read the article: We're failing our kids]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If your wife's students choose to not pay three dollars for a field trip but shell out fifteen to wrestle, or whatever you said, I mean, surely that's more the school's fault than society's, or the social system's, as you call it. It's not as if they're poor and don't have the money, the problem seems to be that they are unexcited about going on school field trips because the school has failed to instill any kind of enthusiasm for learning. When I was a kid and went to private school we all happily paid for our field trips (most of which cost much more than three bucks) and looked forward to them with great anticipation, and no, it's not because we all had great parents. If the federal government wants to incentivize literacy, I don't see anything wrong with that. I mean, are you seriously telling me that kids shouldn't be able to identify the main character of a short story? Of course they should. Is main character identification, in and of itself, a terribly important skill? No. But I imagine the reason they test it is that it's a basic sort of way of measuring young kids' reading comprehension. Obviously if you can't read a story and at least say who's the main character, you're not going to be able to understand much else.
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I'm Not A Romney Fan, But He Won That Debate
[Read the article: McCain tees off on Romney]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]McCain's sneering-act was just too much. So was all that facetious "my friend" stuff. And Romney definitely won the timetable exchange. He quite clearly explained what he meant in the interview, and McCain, instead of apologizing for getting it wrong, which not only would've been honest but smart, continued to insist that Romney supported timetables, and to further confuse the matter, quotes this bizarre out-of-context line about "laying in the weeds" just to raise this shadow of doubt that somehow "laying in the weeds" = supporting timetables. Even Romney had no idea what he himself meant by that one. I guess it all comes down to whether gratuitously condescending not-so-honest "straight talkers" or pandering greasy flip-floppers are more your type. One thing that was really noticeable last night is that McCain's personality is a lot more attractive when he's the underdog. Winning doesn't suit him very well.
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And Could Someone Get Paul To Shut Up Already?
[Read the article: McCain tees off on Romney]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can't stand to watch this stammering idiot any longer. He just sits there and makes funny faces and rambles on about how we must abolish the IRS and go back to the gold standard, and how Reagan campaigned for him once in 1978, and how Reagan once told him that he was for the gold standard too! And let's not forget, "greenhouse gases is property rights," and any great nation that goes off the gold standard ceases to be a great nation. Well that's funny. The whole world is off the gold standard and there are still quite a few great nations. But maybe if we stay off the gold standard for too much longer all the great nations will crumble and die and we'll be taken over by strict constructionist aliens.
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Like Morrison, Obama "Feels Too Good And Smart For Us"?
[Read the article: The battle of the literary endorsements]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, I feel I'm too good and smart for Obama. As for the poem, it's junk, though at least it's Hallmark card-type junk and not pretentious junk, which Morrison's endorsement letter is.