Letters to the Editor
Ballsee
Published Letters: 233 Editor's Choice: 19
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Spies
[Read the article: Battling Democrats' indifference]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ken Mehlman the other day proclaimed that the RNC had invested heavily in investigating the personal and professional lives of all the Democratic candidates running for office in '06. It's a safe bet that they have not stopped there but have investigated every Democrat in the House and Senate as well. The beauty of all this is that they haven't done any of this behind closed doors. No, they've been "debating" it openly in the U.S. Congress! The use of spying and snooping on political opponents by the RNC is not something that may happen or is about to happen...it's already happening. Mehlman said so himself. The DNC's response to this announcement? Well, you might have thought that it would have been..."Well bring it on Ken, we'll have a good old fashion mud fight 'cause we got the goods on you too." But no, that wasn't their response. The DNC announced that they too had investigated THEIR OWN CANDIDATES to be better able to respond to the attacks that are sure to come against the person and the careers of the Democratic candidates from the RNC. Jeeessshhh! That's why the Dems are cowered. Rove (J. Edgar Hoover's twin) has effectively neutered them, again.
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Back Home?
[Read the article: Tortured justice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How can we explain this back home? How? I know that a great many Americans are dumb as posts about much of anything that's relevant but they aren't yet brain dead! How can we explain this back home? If you can't explain it back home then why in the name of God are you weak ass, lili-livered coward, chickenshit Democrats in the freakin' goverernment? How in hell did you get there? Sherrod Brown voted for this outrage? Harold Ford, JR.? The Democrats in Washington D.C. are who is dumb as fence posts. Cowards and dumbasses. Everything Karl Rove says about you is true. You have no priciples and you have no courage. You deserve to loose. I'm seriously thinking of staying home in November. Why vote for a bunch of cowards. THAT'S what you're going to have to explain back home you freakin' nitwits!!!!
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What now Andrew?
[Read the article: Sullivan's travels]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Give it up Andrew. You were one of the drummers for war and you were wrong. You're still wrong. Granted you've come closer than most conservatives in acknowledging your mistakes, but unless and until you acknowledge that the Iraq War, no matter how mishandled or ineffectively prosecuted, was not only morally reprehensible but remains tactically and sttrategically counter-productive to both the short and long term interests of the United States, I am utterly umimpressed with your trying to wash the blood of your hands by your lame excuses for being such a scarety-cat and an intellectual sucker. I'll give you this...you've got Hillary Clinton right.
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ROTFLMAONOT
[Read the article: Cereal killer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Was that supposed to be satirical?
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Hugs
[Read the article: Hug shot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What daffy exuberance from such a darling young man.
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Mornin' Cleatus
[Read the article: Terms of endearment]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm a Jewish liberal Democrat who's an Alabama native. I don't need to be told what's wrong because I've worked for decades to try to fix it. If you're only coming here to criticize and exhibit your own moral superiority, then let me pretend to be a New Yorker - just for a second:
"Shut the hell up!"
-- countrycat
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I love you. What you say is so true. I'm a native Kentuckian and now live in Nashville. I've also lived in South Carolina and over the years traveled extensively throughout the South. But I lived for twenty years in New York City. What you say is exactly right. One of the other letter writers also expressed surprise at all the racist talk and ethnic prejudice she encountered outside the South. Boy, has she got that right! I was appalled.
I am also a Liberal Democrat. I have always been a liberal Democrat. The county where I grew up, heavily unionized, voted for McGovern. Many Northerners don't get. They come down South with a superciliious attitude that they've achieved enlightenment and that everyone else around them has not yet learned to eat with a fork. Southerners smell that attitude on you from two states away! Southern liberal Democrats are just as put off by that attitutde as conservative Republicans southerners are.
Here's the way for northerners to win the hearts and minds of Southerners:
1. Don't criticize.* They'll just shun you. On the other hand, I can critcize them all I want, and do.
2. Introduce new ideas as a fun thing to do.
3. Impart information in an impartial, non-judgemental way. Site your sources. Southerners are not stupid. They can take in new information.
4. Quietly question wrongheaded and misinformed assumptions and ideas without making it sound like a personal or political assault.
So to Keilor's question about why Southerners keep electing jerks and twits? I believe it's as much a defensive response as anything else. Because they're aware of how maligned and mischaracterized they often are in the larger culture, many of them quite consciously, and proudly, fulfill the stereotype. It's like over-the-top, self-dramatizing, effeminate-enhanced gay men. It's put on and then they start to believe it. I think that's a part of it. That and all the weird religiosity, which is not particularly Southern, just very American.
* I recall reading a WSJ article several years ago about a highly sought after, highly paid NYC hairdresser who had moved to Texas with the stated intention of bringing the ladies enlightenment. He failed. Miserably according to the article. I thought, well of course he did. He'd already started out criticizing them for their bad hair and they kept away from him. He should have kept his big mouth shut and said, one lady at a time, "Lila-jean, honey, come in here and sit down and let me try something on your hair that I think you might like. If you don't like it, you don't have to pay for it, and we can change it." He would have made them look like a million bucks, they would have been delighted and every woman in Texas would have been seeking him out.