Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 69 Editor's Choice: 4
-
With apologies to Heather Havrilevsky...
[Read the article: Race matters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]... (to whom I extended the same plea after she wrote a barnburning article about "Deadwood" several months ago): Debra Dickerson, will you marry me? (I feel certain my wife will approve.)
I can make no sense of the comments from the people who've posted claiming ignorance or apathy toward the charms of Ms. Dickerson's writing. If you don't get this article, you a) neither are nor know well a black American, and b) have no freakin' sense of humor whatsoever. That you, Ms. Dickerson, can cut through so much 21st century race-relational bullshit with such surgical insight and wildly entertaining wit seems to me a gift from heaven. I didn't need another reason to check Salon seventeen times a day - King Kaufman alone would be enough, not to mention Prospective Bride #1, Ms. Havrilevsky - but damned if I haven't gotten one anyway.
Keep it coming and let the stragglers catch up at their own pace.
-
Missing the point
[Read the article: Girls gone wild, again!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have to say, I think Ms. Clark-Flory's objections are misplaced. Look, I'm the father of a 17-month-old girl, and believe me, the sex-and-romance values I hope to raise her with are anything but, well, paternalistic. I am no hypocrite, and so my daughter will enter her teens armed with as much education as she could possibly need about love, sex, STDs, pregnancy, and the hormonal urges of the boys she'll be interacting with (or girls, if that's the way she goes, although I'll probably rely on her mother for more of the intel there).
So understand that I'm in no way coming at this from a position of sexual prudishness when I say that what I find indefensibly horrifying about young girls seeing Lindsey, Britney, and, worst of all, Paris as role models is not the freedom of their sexuality or even their despicable materialism (ghastly though it is), but rather their total lack of substance. Their one goal in life is to be famous and rich - not to have done anything to earn those conditions, mind you, but simply to make them happen.
At least Spears and Lohan started out as people with some minute spark of creative passion, at some dim point back in the prehistoric days of 1998. Paris Hilton, however, is to my mind the poster child for everything that is most wrong with the culture my daughter will, despite anything I can do, grow up immersed in: she is shallow, uneducated, narcisstic, self-satisfied, racist, and possessed of a sense of entitlement that would embarrass a Windsor. And she has achieved nothing - not one thing, not one iota of a mere thought of a thing - worth celebrating. She has achieved nothing, and very likely WILL achieve nothing, in her grandly offensive life.
I'm frankly not sure how this is an issue for "Broadsheet" in any case. To deplore the example Hilton and her cohorts set should not be mistaken for subconscious chauvinism. It should properly be seen, rather, as the moral duty of anyone who hopes to see more happy, healthy, empowered, strong young women in the world. (And certainly of anyone who hopes to raise one. :-) )
-
Huh?
[Read the article: Girls gone wild, again!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]<<lack of substance is a problem
but it isn't caused by too much sex.>>
No, indeed. I certainly didn't suggest otherwise.
-
Okay, you're starting to freak me out.
[Read the article: Where Hilton meets Hirshman]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I couldn't agree more that including Linda Hirshman on the "cringe" list suggests bizarre confusion on the part of the list authors; at the very least their criteria, whatever they may be, are rendered incomprehensible. But I am starting to be seriously creeped out by Broadsheet's recurring function as apologist for Paris, Lindsay and Britney. If you're going to call out other writers for intellectual inconsistency in the definition of feminism, as you should, it makes no sense to then rush to defend these three young women, at least two of whom are themselves on record as having no respect for feminists or feminism. Not content to disrespect the struggles of those who made their own lives possible, these three would have other young women who idolize them disdain similarly the movement and even the word itself. Why does Broadsheet support them in this hypocrisy?
-
I can't agree, Kristina...
[Read the article: Where Hilton meets Hirshman]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You certainly have put your finger on what seems to be the justification for the Paris/Lindsay/Britney apologia, which is "Hey, they're just making their own sexual choices - we're in favor of that!" I'm in favor of that, too; thet can run around screwing all the actors/models/heirs/whatevers they want as far as I'm concerned. I certainly would, if I were them. But that's a qualitatively different thing than making a videotape of yourself doing it, then releasing it and feigning shock and indignation while you, as Paris was reported just today as doing, smirk with the man you did it with over how much money the two of you made off the deal. I'm not arguing with P/L/B's right to do any of these things; I'm arguing with our celebrating their naked greed and pathetic judgment.
And I am unconvinced by those who protest that P/L/B pay more for their peccadilloes than those who behave similarly but are less famous. These women courted their fame; it is clearly their most prized possession. They are adults; if parental ambition might have been the original impetus for their lives' directions (except for Paris's, of course), that excuse has long since lost its potency. Infantilization, too, is properly seen as a violation of the principles of feminism; somebody, at some point, needs to take responsibility for their own choices.
-
You get what you vote for
[Read the article: Supreme Court upholds ban on "partial-birth" abortion]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm shocked - shocked! - to discover the court that (Bush) voters installed Bush to put into place is moving to do what he said he'd want them to. All due respect to Ms. Harris, there's nothing "stunning" about this assault. Tragically, Roe's days are numbered. Let's see if all those young women who think feminism is hopelessly retro like having their freedom of choice yanked away. Sad but inevitable.