Letters to the Editor
hermesloin
Published Letters: 49 Editor's Choice: 17
-
What did she do now?
[Read the article: Dancing as fast as she can]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There is one thing I want more than anything in the world... I want to interview Madonna and ask her what she thinks is up with Camille Paglia's obsession with her. It's impossible to read a Paglia column or DVD commentary (Basic Instinct Special Edition)without hearing her take on Madonna. And man! She rakes Madonna over the coals every time. But she keeps coming back for more. I for one am happy for Madonna's success. Her new album sold 4 million copies worldwide in the first week. When she found out her album was number 1 in America (after hearing through her husband) she opened a bottle of champagne and then cried for 20 minutes. Paglia suggests that it's number 4 position on the charts in the 2nd week is something to be embarassed about. Lest we forget in 2003 when American Life dropped down to number 9, and then nosedived into oblivion without a single radio hit. After being written off, Madonna staged a world tour that broke records and landed her in the number 8 position on Forbes Celebrity Power list. And now she resurfaces with a no. 1 album and a new top 10 single, rivaling Elvis's record. What can she do to make Paglia happy I wonder? Get fat and die of a drug overdose? Now I understand why Madonna doesn't read the newspaper. Nothing she does will ever satisfy anyone, but she's held to unrealistic standards. She'd go mad. Paglia takes a jab at her for plagiarizing the ABBA sample, as if she's the first artist to ever use a sample to get a hit song. Where was Paglia with the town mob when Janet Jackson scored a number 1 hit with ALL FOR YOU with Luther Vandross's THE GLOW OF LOVE sample?
-
Thank you Anne Lamott
[Read the article: The carpet guy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Anne Lemott is a great writer and a great spirit in my mind. She tried to get a refund for a faulty product and the man refused to give her one. And she forgave him anyway. I thought it was a great article about the human condition and how we have to choose our battles and control our reactions to intolerable situations. As Eckhart Tolle would put it, we sometimes have to forgive the unforgivable. That's when we enter into grace. If everyone on Earth could show the same forgiveness and surrender that she did, it would be a completely different world, a world with far less vendettas, paranoia, vengenance, crime and insanity.
-
Tempest in a Teapot
[Read the article: A million bogus fabrications]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't know if James Frey fabricated parts of his story or not, and if he did, shame on him. But the level of schadenfreude evident in the media's spin on this latest revelation about Frey's novel is painfully obvious. Based on the story in Salon, the facts show that Frey's story may not be completely true, but they don't DISPROVE his story either. The mother of the dead girl in the car crash says she has no memory of James Frey, and the Salon story says that Frey wasn't involved in the death of her daughter. Frey's novel corroborates this latter detail: he was nowhere near the car at the time of the accident. The fact that the cops or the mother don't have the same perception of the events that James did is hardly surprising; he was a rebellious teenager who blew everything out of proportion and spun it into this fantasy that the world was out to get him, as most teenagers do in their high drama, insulated universe. And more importantly, the facts in dispute do not comprise the major plotline of the novel in the first place. As far as being discredited, I personally don't know any young thug types who read this memoir and placed Frey on a pedestal for his street cred. So I'm not sure how many disappointed fans he'll have in that sector. As far as the Oprah crowd goes, I suspect that the biggest conclusion they drew from the book was how incredibly hard the struggle to overcome addiction can be. Whether James knew the young girls who died in the car crash doesn't change the fact that he had an addiction to drugs and alcohol that almost destroyed him, and by facing his demons (in his own painfully self destructive, I wanted-to-kick-the-crap-out-of-him-throughout-most-of-the-book way) he survived. For the author of this article to suggest that Frey might be responsible for Lily's death is even more theatrically tragic and overdramatic than Frey's assertion that he was blamed for the death of the young girl. Now who's the one telling stories?
-
How the tables have turned
[Read the article: Oprah's revenge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry Hillary, but you can't have it both ways. You are doing the same thing to Oprah that you decry Oprah for doing to James Frey. If you insist on Frey going down in flames along with his "flimsy" novel, then you can't also come down on Oprah for being too hard on him. Ultimately it was James Frey who made the decision to have his fantastical work of fiction published with the misnomer of a memoir. I don't for one second feel sorry for Frey and his big bag of hooey. Rather I feel sorry for the people who struggle with real addiction who served as grist for Frey's hyperbolized, tough-guy bs of a novel. Oprah did the right thing by putting Frey in the hot seat. Insisting that Frey face the music is not the same thing as avenging an eye for an eye. Oprah was never duplicitous with Frey or deceived him at the risk of ruining his credibility.