Letters to the Editor
BryanS
Published Letters: 365 Editor's Choice: 1
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Frustration
[Read the article: Will Obama's debate stumble hurt him?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm as frustrated by the debate moderators asking irrelevant questions instead of substantive ones as I am by you not being able to tell the difference between the two.
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Remarkable
[Read the article: Will Obama's debate stumble hurt him?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]175 comments and counting, 95% of which are vehemently anti-Joan. A comments thread that has stayed remarkably on-topic in its criticisms. Even the usual die-hard Hillary supporters are laying low on this one (well, the ones who are still on their meds anyway). I don't think I've ever seen such a unified response to an article on this site.
And the sad thing is, it's not going to make a damn bit of difference to Joan. She'll continue posting the same dreck, because let's face it: with a very few notable exceptions, Salon doesn't have the talent to compete with the other major progressive news sites. Her best bet at hanging onto her readership is to piss them off with her editorials and watch the angry comments (and page views) come a-rolling in.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: As soon as Obama clinches the nomination, I'm out of here for good, and I'm taking my page views with me. As a wise man once said, "Just because someone hands you a bag of horse shit, that doesn't mean you have to take it."
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@ maureenodonnell
[Read the article: Will Obama's debate stumble hurt him?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Before I go, maybe forever, I can't get over how intolerant writers to this site are of opinions contrary to those of their own. Demands for sacking of the editor-in-chief because her opinions don't coincide with yours are horribly similar to what Arthur Miller depicted in "The Crucible".
My reasons for leaving Salon after the primary have less to do with the fact that my opinions clearly differ from those of its editor-in-chief and more to do with the fact that, in my opinion, Joan just doesn't get it. We're in the middle of the most historic presidential campaign of my lifetime, one that could potentially reshape political discourse going forward, and Joan is still mired in the personality-based, identity politics that I am sick to death of. And judging from the comments on this article and Obama's poll numbers, I'm not the only one.
If I want to read a defense of the mainstream media ambushing presidential candidates with irrelevant "gotcha" questions in what is supposed to be a debate, there are plenty of other places that do it better and faster. At this point, Salon's a third-rate progressive news and views site, and it's well on its way to becoming a tenth-rate MSM news site. I started reading Salon years ago because I value alternative and progressive voices. If Salon's editorial direction no longer supports these, then I no longer wish to support the site, either with a subscription or the page views that help their advertising rates.
And your "Crucible" analogy is just ludicrous. It's simply not possible for progressive readers like myself to blacklist anybody in this day and age. The vast majority of our media wallows in the kind of shallow, irrelevant crap that Joan doesn't seem to have any problem with. If Salon's parent company smartens up and tosses Joan out on her ass, I'm sure she'd have a brilliant career ahead of her as a token middle-aged feminist talking head on any of the cable news networks.
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@ maureenodonnell
[Read the article: Will Obama's debate stumble hurt him?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If I didn't also have respect for the way you've carried yourself in the comments section, I'd have to accuse you of being a bit disingenuous by pretending not to know what "progressive" means when applied to contemporary American politics, especially since you're a regular enough reader of Salon that you've posted over 350 comments.
But, assuming that you're not playing dumb, the Oxford American Dictionary has a pretty good definition: "favoring or implementing social reform or new, liberal ideas." I don't see Joan's ideas, as expressed in her commentary, to be particularly new or liberal. In fact, they seem rooted in a very passé form of identity politics that ascribes more importance to what a person is born as, instead of what they believe in. Perhaps at one point, Steinem-style feminism and political correctness were necessary to help redress overwhelming social imbalances, but I'd argue that society has since evolved (or progressed, if you will) to the point where their usefulness is limited, and maybe even counterproductive. Or, as the old saying goes, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.
This is also the reason that I referred to Joan as "middle-aged" (other than the fact that, y'know, she is a middle-aged woman). It wasn't a slam against her, unlike the reader who commented that her caricature was 15 years out of date. And I don't think that her age necessarily means that her "opinions don't count because [she's] spent longer on the planet than somebody else." I'm thirty-something, not a teenager.
But I do think that, in this case, her age and gender are relevant, because they indicate the era in which she came of age and the societal influences that may have helped shape her worldview. I've met many professional women of Joan's generation who turn two blind eyes to Hillary's many faults simply because they see her as their best chance at getting the female president they've been hoping for all their lives. It's certainly not a viewpoint that's unique to that socioeconomic group, but those are the people who seem to hold it most dear, for very understandable reasons.
And yes, I realize that it's more than a little hypocritical of me to criticize identity politics while ascribing certain beliefs to Joan simply because of her gender and age. But after reading months of her editorials, I believe that the circumstantial evidence backs me up, Your Honor.