Letters to the Editor
amspeck
Published Letters: 279 Editor's Choice: 45
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On the question
[Read the article: Is rape ever funny?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I didn't watch the video, but I can say that, yes, sometimes simulated rape can be used to make a point that is funny. For example, I think I recently saw a video with a pretend Vice President Cheney using a blow up doll to demonstrate the proper ways to use planet Earth. If what the character was doing had been with a woman, it would be rape, but that was the point of the joke. And I laughed.
I suspect the point of this video is to point fingers at some of the stupid, pointless ways people choose to be environmentalists. And I'm okay laughing at that too.
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Robert Allen
[Read the article: King of the housing speculators]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When I read the title "King of the Housing Speculators" I thought instantly of Robert Allen... king of the "buying real estate with no money down" shelf of get-rich quick schemes. I know he was promoting buying rental real estate and using rents to pay the mortgage when my dad was young; and then he was promoting liar's loans and quick flips when I made my trek through his books. I wonder how he's doing today?
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He's right
[Read the article: Fantasies in black and white]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hannaham makes the very valid point that there is a hill to get over when it comes to getting out of poverty, and because black people are assumed to be on the wrong side of the hill, those who start out there have an extra-hard time getting over it.
It isn't "personal responsibility" when the black kids are the ones who get the extra time on the bus, time they could be sleeping or doing homework or reading with their parents. It isn't "personal responsibility" when the police pull over every black man in a three-block radius when a crime has been committed. It isn't personal responsibility when a jury sends a black man to prison because whether he committed this particular crime or not, he was likely to have committed some crime worthy of jail.
When I worked at a mutual fund company, I ran across a client's account that was marked to be very sure to include "Mr. and Mrs." on any correspondence to the shareholder. The back story was that after a lifetime of living in a town where blacks were denied "Mr." or "Mrs." on their bank accounts, they finally won the right and were insistent on using it. I was always a little sad that just as they won the right, the nation -- including our company -- pretty much stopped using the honorifics at all.
But then again, maybe that was the point. Maybe something that is so common as to be boring to my white ears really was constricted to keep certain people out, and when they got in, it didn't matter any more.
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Traditions and habits
[Read the article: Keeping men out of the kitchen?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanksgiving is a huge meal. For the sake of efficiency, I think we fall back onto our habits to get things done. But in my family that went this way: My dad cooked the turkey. My mom made the cranberry relish and the peas and potatoes. My brother made the pies. I made a rice side and my sister made a salad. This formula got settled while we kids were still in elementary school.
So there is nothing about "the Holidays" that requires us to act in any gender-prescribed way.
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Robert Allen
[Read the article: Fake it until you make it: A housing flipper saga]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Another question to ask is how many of these folks were inspired by Robert "The One Minute Millionaire" Allen? This sounds like his real-estate investing advice taken to its logical conclusion.
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"I don't get into investments I don't fully understand"
[Read the article: Is Orange County too sophisticated for its own good?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The good news is many investment advisors can say, "I don't get into investments I don't fully understand" and keep their jobs, because they're quoting Warren Buffet:
"I am out of step with present conditions. When the game is no longer played your way, it is only human to say the new approach is all wrong, bound to lead to trouble, and so on. On one point, however, I am clear. I will not abandon a previous approach whose logic I understand ( although I find it difficult to apply ) even though it may mean foregoing large, and apparently easy, profits to embrace an approach which I don't fully understand, have not practiced successfully, and which possibly could lead to substantial permanent loss of capital." - in a letter to his partners in the stock market frenzy of 1969.
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TRS
[Read the article: Huckabee, Obama, Kerry, Dean: Are they Macs or PCs?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I think the brand that best represents Huckabee is the TRS. He's bit stuck in the past, not quite what he represents himself to be, and libel to glitch in unexpected places because he isn't really the hip, current guy he pretends to be.
For a more current example, how about CompUSA?
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The power of emotions
[Read the article: Who do you trust, on YouTube?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The attraction of uninformed folks holding forth on a topic is not the correctness of their information, but the fact they are speaking passionately. If more public service announcements said things like, "I was uncomfortable getting the flu vaccine at first, but since I started, I've had far fewer colds! I think it's great!" there'd be more interest in them.
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It's all in the definitions
[Read the article: Does Huckabee believe wives should "graciously submit" to their husbands?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The thing that irks me is that people who bandy the whole "women should graciously submit to men's servant leadership" thing around is that too often what they mean is, "women should be able to put up with my doing whatever I want as long as I put food on the table."
My suspicion is that Paul was trying to describe a way in which both partners in a relationship would actually have to listen to each other before a decision was made, but that's not generally how this is applied.