Letters to the Editor
Valkyrie607
Published Letters: 110 Editor's Choice: 3
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@chimpygo
[Read the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You can click on my sig for the full list...
But as to what you're getting at, yes, there are more commonalities than the first one. Notable are: an obsession with national security, scapegoating enemies (as you mentioned), a disdain for human rights, and privileging military funding over domestic agendas.
I'm sort of regretting having gone there, but brunnhilde's musing about the idolatrous aspect of this patriotism-gone-mad got me musing. Can't let the Goldbergs of the world restrict my vocabulary, now can I?
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@rtf100
[Read the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Eliot Sptizer has a better chance of bouncing back than Obama does because the average person finds Sptizer's problems amusing while they view Wright as downright scary.
--rtf100
Sure...
...if you define "the average person" as "the average white person who still fears that the uppity blacks are gonna rise up and get even."
As has been pointed out many, many times before: Wright hasn't said anything more extremist than Rev's Robertson, Hagee, or Parsley, all of whom have a very dim view of America. Robertson said America deserved 9/11 for being too tolerant of gays and feminists. Wright linked 9/11 to some actual historical events. To my mind, Robertson's statement was more radical and hateful, but then he's white, so it's not scary. At least, not to "the average person." To an average gay person, or feminist, it might be VERY scary.
If you read the comments here, you'll find there's a significant number of people saying, "I don't agree with everything Wright said, but I didn't find it shocking or even that far off." I realize Salon is not a representative sample, but I have been wondering: what do most Americans really think of Wright's sentiments? In my (admittedly liberal) circles, most of what Wright said would be decidedly uncontroversial. I think there are more people who think like this that you realize, because we just don't get the media coverage, except when the 0.01% of us who have the time get a few seconds of TV time at a protest. Polls show that a majority of Americans oppose the war, but you'd never know it from reading the Times or watching CNN. What other silences are the media enforcing?
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Unity?
[Read the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Salon.com is correct that Rev. Wright isn't the problem, but then misses to identify the problem. The problem is Obama who looks up to Wright as a spiritual leader while seeking to become POTUS under the banner of unity.
-- prabhata
I've heard this sentiment before, and while I understand where it comes from, I think it's short-sighted.
Can America really exclude Rev. Wright, and all he represents, and still have unity?
Obama was trying to make this very point in his speech, and this is exactly why he did not throw Wright under the bus. White folks hear black people expressing their views of America, and they think: paranoid, crazy, angry, dangerous. Black folks hear white people's response and they think: ignorant, racist, stupid, dangerous. And here we are. A stalemate, as Obama said, and we must move beyond it if we want to really tackle the war, global warming, the economy, and all of it. I mean, tackle in an effective way.
I'm an atheist, but I agree with some of what Wright said, particularly the bit about the chickens. It's not like these views only get aired at that particular church in Chicago and nowhere else. So if you want to exclude Wright from under the banner of unity, you're going to have to exclude me, and a lot of other people as well. How many? Well, we'll probably never know for sure, since the media has no interest in finding out.
In any case, we're going to have to move into uncomfortable territory if we really want to have unity, because unity means including people you're not really cool with, like me, like Wright, and understanding that we are all connected. For real.
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Oh the Folly
[Read the article: The best-laid plans]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]of stressing about shit that doesn't really matter.
I'd say Crosley's main hurdle was worrying about looking like a slut. Hard to be a slut when you're worrying about looking like one.
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@ blank
[Read the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Um... "kill whitey" is a strategy? Where'd you get that one from?
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Political emotion
[Read the article: Rev. Jeremiah Wright isn't the problem]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]@ Tom
I went to the wall too.
It moved me profoundly. I really had no idea just how moving it would be, but running my eyes across all those names, reading them, pronouncing them, moving on to the next one was undescribable.
It was similar, in fact, to a synagogue I visited in Hungary, I think it was, with the names of all the deported Jews etched into the walls.
There were thousands of them. As I stood there reading each name, they just became so tragically human.
God help us all.
-- weeping for brunnhilde
You know, as the ramifications of this election cycle sink in, and the bigotry takes its focus, and the challenges mount, it makes me reflect how deeply this matters to me. It outrages me, it shames me, I am in despair--that this is my country, so they say--with so much potential, and such wonderful people in it--that so many people are being harmed, by this, my government. When I stop to consider it I become quite disturbed. There's this myth that those people in Washington are accountable to us, the voters; if only it were so, because I would do so many things so differently. I know so many people with brilliant and beautiful ideas who want very earnestly to contribute to making the world a slightly better place to live in.
But the government spends its money transforming minerals and metals, burning up calories in order to build... weapons, which explode as they're designed to do, and necessitate more building--of houses, schools, and roads this time. It's good for the economy. The Pentagon has decided not to report Iraqi casualties, basically because it was such bad PR in Vietnam. All those souls... millions of people were touched by this awful tragedy. How many millions must die before we admit the possibility of cursing America?