Letters to the Editor
Ballsee
Published Letters: 232 Editor's Choice: 19
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As the South goes....
[Read the article: Do Democrats need the South?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As a progressive liberal from the South, I live in the South again after 20 years of living elsewhere in the country. Most of the Southerners I know are liberal gay men although I often encounter the red state stereotypes, mostly at work. This article, which is fairly on the mark in its analysis of what's wrong with the South (sometimes I want to run from it!), is pixilated in its recommendations. Wanna know how to appeal to Southerners? Economic populism, the very opposite approach from the Clinton/Carville/DLCers in D.C. The Republicans have become very adroit at exploiting the old fault lines of Southern culture: race, religion, sex, patriotism. The Democrats need to focus their efforts on addressing the economic anxieties of Southern whites in the ever increasing rush toward "globalization" of corporate interests. Taking up the interest of the working middle class is the only place Democrats have strength among most white Southerners. We need MORE economic progressives here learning how to talk to Southerners about who it is that really has them by the shorthairs. What we don't need is Republican lite.
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O Tanenbaum
[Read the article: O'Reilly beats WalMart into submission]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A total non-issue dreamt up by the blowhard O'Reilly to keep his name in the news. Christmas is a pagan holiday.
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Projectiles
[Read the article: National journalists believe you should trust them]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Everything neocons say makes sense if you interpret it as projection: the things people claim to hate most about others are most likely to be the things they hate about themselves.
-- prunes
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I've noticed this for years about the neocons and I believe it to be more true of them than of liberals.
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Pornly Yours
[Read the article: Porn in theory, porn in practice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Porn is bad for you, or good for you, like food is good or bad for you, or religion, or work, or war, or cigarettes, or masturbation...porn is really about masturbation, isn't it? I don't really know. I do know that men, men in the porn, men in the porn are just as objectified as the women are. This crying and wailing that women are degraded in porn...well, maybe yes, maybe no, sometimes they're worshiped. All of that leaves out male homosexual porn in all its weird, beautiful, degrading, uplifting, vain, celebrating, beastial, worshipful, glorious hothouse of sexual theater. Whenever straight men and women pontificate about porn or judge porn, those who make it and those who watch it, their view never accounts for gay porn and what it means or what its status or role or impact in society is. Porn is a theater for the exploration of sexual fantasy and desire. Porn is dangerous, like the night. Porn is good. There is an element of objectification in sex, all sex. What if you don't have a partner? Is it okay to watch porn as an aid to masturbation? How much is too much? What if you don't want a "partner"? Does that make you weird? What if your partner died or left you and your okay with going it alone? What about people who aren't "attached" in that way to others? That would be a lot of people, right? What role does porn play in straight, middle class value systems like the LW's? Isn't that the same values echoed by Carey? Not all gay people like porn. Is porn bad because we agree that it's bad or is it really bad? Too much is made of porn. Porn is a problem for some people. Porn is not a problem for everyone, like work or religion or food. Porn is everywhere these days.
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Rock of Ages
[Read the article: Porn in theory, porn in practice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Human beings have been making erotic imagery for thousands of years. Every human artifice and many common utilitarian devices have at one time or another in every culture been turned to the erotic impulse.
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What is free speech?
[Read the article: Bloggers, Don Imus and free speech]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When and how did personal assault, attacking someone's physical or sexual nature, someone's ethnicity get equated with "free speech"? Why is it that people can't make their points without resorting to attacks on someone's gender or race or ethnicity or sexual orientation? It isn't just white, straight males who do this sort of thing either. Everyone does it. How is that that kind of speech has been raised to the bar of "free speech"? So that when someone wants to control or curtail the occurrences of such speech, they're attacked for attacking "free speech"? When did ignorant, hateful, disrespectful, ad hominen speech become equated with "free speech" rights?
I have no issue with speech that focuses on someone's opinion, ideas, beliefs (including religious ones), political affiliation, et. al., but speech that denigrates someone's physical features or race or sexual nature or gender is just good old fashioned bad manners. I think those of you defending those things as "free speech" are confused.