Letters to the Editor
Michael Indiana
Published Letters: 2 Editor's Choice: 2
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How will we get ready for 2006 and 2008?
[Read the article: Illegitimate election]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Having followed this controversy since the night of November 2, and being the brother of an exit poll precinct volunteer who described the meticulous training Mitofsky et al required of their pollers, I've known for a long time that the election was stolen.
It's likely that the Senate really ought to be Democratic; unexplained exit poll variances exist in enough states in 2002 and 2004 to tip control there.
So here we go again -- as I see it, the only way to stop this from happening again and again is to demand action of the Democratic Party, which must make this its number one issue. I keep receiving requests for funds and "preference surveys" from the party, and each time I write, "none of this matters until the election process is fixed."
Only John Conyers seems to get it. The party is too afraid of being called sore losers. But we are all the losers in a "democracy" that no longer is one. Without being able to explain the motivations of Mr. Manjoo, we should still thank Salon (and now Bob Herbert of the New York Times) for keeping this issue -- and the hope of democracy -- alive.
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Excellent article, but...
[Read the article: Deadly prose]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The piece is superbly reported and really captures the issue well. Because the students are apprentices, sometimes they can miss badly in attempts to write some kind of hard-boiled or noir or gothic work and produce instead dreck that is nothing but violence.
Still, there is something remarkably creepy about the two one-act plays of Cho's, that go beyond anything I've seen in suggesting both a level of rage combined with a complete lack of literary merit. There's no sense at all of a creative plan or impulse in either work. And the teachers that were forced to instruct Cho -- Falco and Giovanni -- are highly respected veterans. If they thought it was out of line, it was. Creative writing teachers might not be psychologists, but it's really not that difficult to identify work that is really sick, if it's like what Cho wrote. There are much harder "fine-line" cases, but Cho's wasn't one of them.
I'm also an administrator and have long been concerned about the university's legal powerlessness to take action against and on behalf of students we know are dangerous to themselves and others. Something has to change.