Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 17 Editor's Choice: 2
-
Gimmee a freakin' break
[Read the article: The rape card]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's unbelievable that any politician , no matter how desperate, would think that any viewer would fall for this sloppy propaganda. Patrick's remarks were so obviously snipped out of context that it's not just unconvincing, but jarring as well. One expects the further qualifications, the phrase "however" to introduce a real point, but it never comes. It raises more questions about the opposition than effectively
bringing Patrick's qualifications into question. This hot card was drawn from a cold deck.
-
Jesus, watch the email subject headlines guys!!
[Read the article: So long, sugar tits!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Do you and readers alike a favor and refrain from sending emails with subject lines like "So Long , Sugar Tits". You sound like Elton John saying farewell to Joan Rivers after a case of mistaken sex. I am hardly one to be mistaken for a prude, but I don't care to be greeted with such a witless, low grade vulgarity when I open up my Outlook program. Really, you need to be a little more clever to entice someone to read the articles, let alone pay the subscription fee for the privilege. Really, write more suitable subject lines, or it will be more than email subscriptions I'll be canceling.
-
Paglia's floundering wallow of self-regard
[Read the article: Camille's back!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a fan of Paglia when she gets beyond herself and writes about the culture and the arts it produces. It's here, and nowhere else, where the claims of her intellectual virtuosity and originality have merit. Sexual Personae had more outrageous and wonderfully defended propositions than any bit of academic criticism I've read, and Break, Blow,Burn
brought an old school rigor to discussions of poetry , prate and self-consuming criticalese and connecting her selection of poems to the world. With those two books she makes the life of the mind exciting and attractive to someone wondering whether they should bother with Great Books and avant gard posturings. As a columnist, though, Paglia tries her hand at being the public intellectual, or worse,the celebrity intellectual,and
comes up seeming comic rather than compelling. Doubtless she has Norman Mailer in mind as the self-aggrandizing
firebrand, but strange as it seemes she lacks Mailer's
charm and musical finess as a prose stylist.
Mailer might have been a boor and a lout, but he could write rings around his peers and segue into a metaphor rich discussion of war, poverty, women's rights, sexuality , theology, architecture with an intoxicating urgency. One need only compare Mailer's essay collections like Advertisements for Myself and The Presidential Papers to realize that Paglia has modeled her public persona on his amazing self confidence. What she lacks in this fast-paced world of instant opinion, though, is grace or a sense of her own absurdity, a quality that Mailer had , expressed and which endeared him even to this critics. He had a sense of irony about his attempts to light a fire in the conciousness of a post war generation he knew had been seduced by television.
Paglia, I'm afraid, is just another typing head as this stage; pioneer she may be as an ur-blogger, but her return to Salon is not a return to form. An extended bout of self-congratulation makes her sound like she's interviewing for a entry position in a new media company.
The remarks about Hillary, Obama, John Edwards et al
are likewise unremarkable. I hope that Paglia's columns yet to come are better than this slogging mass of egomania and trite conjecture. Sad to say for someone of
her daunting intellect, but she seems out of her depth.
-
Tony Soprano Approaches his King Lear Moment
[Read the article: "Sopranos" wrap-up: "Is this all there is?"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The center of the The Sopranos universe is Tony Soprano, enforcing whatever laws of gravity there were in this skewed Americana that kept the players and their agendas in something resembling order. Sheer force of personality, brutality, dry-bone ruthlessness were what it took to maintain this crime empire and to maintain a social hierarchy in which everyone--Christopher, Paulie, Silvio, Carmella-- has an agenda they would pursue to disaster had the wrath of Tony not been their shared constraint. Uneasy , wobbly and self-doubting is the head of this fiefdom ,as all the self knowledge and revelation Tony has learned through therapy has
decentered his mojo. Where he'd been able to compartmentalize his criminal career, the infidelities, the murders, and family life in square and sealed boxes whose contents and consequences never met, the barriers have collapsed, the actions and the pathologies behind have become irretrievably twined and knotted together, a perfect tangle. Tony is witnessing the world he's been the center of break apart, and he can no longer hold it together. My suspicion his rhetorical question to Dr. Melfi regarding what therapeutic results, "IS THIS ALL THERE IS?",will be enlarged in the final four episodes. Tony Soprano, demanding love and loyality while he exerted his will, is soon to have his King Lear scene, alone in the rain, stripping himself of the literal and symbolic vestments depicting an idea of omnipotence he never had. All the lies told to him and the lies he told himself are laid bare, and all that awaits is the last brick to fall from the last wall from this shoddily bolstered construction of self delusion. What producer David Chase and his writers come up with by the series is one of the few things to look forward to in this season of dim news and dimmer celebrity hi jinks.