Letters to the Editor
jnring
Published Letters: 10
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come on, people
[Read the article: The psychic soccer mom we love]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm severely dismayed at what y'all apparently consider to be the best way to approach a "women's blog". Take a look at your own site's best-read blogs by, about, and for women. Next to them, this new feature is a candy-colored bore.
Sincerely,
John Ring
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I can, in fact, dismiss her
[Read the article: Yes, Maureen Dowd is necessary]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Maureen Dowd writes entire columns about the sweater and shoe choices of political candidates, extrapolating from that her comparative opinion of them.
There. Done.
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Capitalism and Christianity
[Read the article: How the secular humanist grinch didn't steal Christmas]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually, there has been a 'silent war' against religious content during the winter shopping season for some time. It's colloquially known as 'contemporary capitalism': these large outlets do not want to do or say anything that will put off or offend potential customers, no matter what religion they do or don't practice.
What we are seeing here is a rightwing backlash against capitalism's deleterious effects on certain conservative symbols and values. Just like the Birchers, however, the current crop of social conservatives identifies free markets with Christ and the flag, and interference with those markets with the UN and Satan. Those making the protests would consider it impossible that anything they want to do actually means intervention where the free market provides results that they find dangerous or distasteful.
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Come on
[Read the article: "CSI: Miami" vs. "Grand Theft Auto"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Next you'll be telling me that CSI: Miami and other true crime shows have been spinning current popular fears among older demographics into ironically twisted tales of mayhem and murder all the way back to the first season of Law & Order. And that'd just be crazy.
Of course these shows are going to portray video-game-playing teenagers as a mysterious enemy sent by their masters to kill, just like they're going to portray the Internet as populated primarily by snuff film directors and child rapists. Look at their target audience.
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Yes.
[Read the article: Our Jennifer fixation]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Stop talking about her.
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Division of viewpoint
[Read the article: "People shouldn't die because they have sex"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not prone to overemphasizing the differences between 'American' and 'European' thought. However, one thing that is evident to me is that the people running the United States continue to see HIV as the wages of sin, as surely as they did when it was called 'gay cancer'; they view AIDS as a problem of people too promiscuous to be helped. It is quite convenient to their worldview that a disease has come along that makes sex an incredibly dangerous prospect, especially in underprivileged parts of the world - is it any surprise that many of them openly proclaim that it is heaven-sent? This perspective has already proven disastrous.
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Well
[Read the article: A bitch weighs in on "King Kong"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll see the movie before I comment. But blaming symbolism, and the search for it, on a bogeyman like "pomo deconstructionism" is immature and silly.
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It won't
[Read the article: Hillary takes a stand -- on flag burning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Any restriction on flag-burning will be overturned as unconstitutional without an amendment, except perhaps flag-burning for the purposes of intimidation - and I doubt even that.
I was never overly impressed with Senator Clinton and this isn't helping.
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Comparisons
[Read the article: Salon's worst calls]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It took me a long time to forgive Salon.com and Savage for the doorknob incident, which allowed not only the painting of webmedia as immature pranksterism and of bauer as a victim, but also of the queer activist population as infantile. I don't think I'll ever forgive the New York Times, however, for lying about nuclear weapons in Iraq.
Lest we fall into the same moral relativism as the "Saddam's torture was worse!" Republicans, though, we have to reiterate: shame on Salon for publishing that story, and may it never make a similar mistake again if it wants to retain the readership it has earned (and earned back).
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Both sides of the issue
[Read the article: Jolting Joe]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the Democrats should keep him in the party. But after witnessing a presidential campaign where, far from finding national bipartisan support for his views, he received endorsement and praise mainly from Republicans, I can understand why Democrats would question his fitness to remain.