Letters to the Editor

Letters posted here are associated with the following Salon Premium Member:

Howard K

Published Letters: 292     Editor's Choice: 33

  • Another case of blog creep

    [Read the article: I was conned by JT Leroy]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    Congratulations on leading with an article so solipsistic, content-free, and unframed that it would do any teenager's first blog proud. Kindly give Mrs. Chabon* a LiveJournal account and spend my Premium member money on someone who can write.

    * Normally I detest the Mrs. appellation, but in this case I suspect it's only because she is Mrs. Chabon that she's so often welcomed to contribute her maunderings. Which makes it all the more painful that Salon published a lead piece about one hoaxer with celebrity connections conning another.

  • Smoke gets in your mirrors

    [Read the article: We're in the red, and staying there]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    for a country that is expected to experience its fifth straight year of economic growth

    Oh, sorry, I must've missed which country the New York Times was talking about. I know it's not this one, so maybe China?

    The administration ... still insists ... that it will reduce the deficit by half by 2009

    So even the administration is counting on a Democratic president in 2008. Then after a couple terms of rebuilding and getting the economy booming, they can take over in 2016 and loot it all again.

  • The mask needs to come off

    [Read the article: Should we stop worrying about Roe v. Wade?]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    It's become increasingly clear over the past five years that we're going to have to go for the full-on Dark Ages before things get better. Why? Because the Right is wearing the mask of popular majority, while underneath seethes a morass of barely-allied splinter groups. And as long as fiscal conservatives and states right supporters can coexist with big spenders and judicial activists, you're not going to see any fault lines. (And yes, I realise the Left is an even greater agglutination of philosophies, but that's the nature, indeed the strength, of liberalism.)

    But the repealing of RvsW is just the kind of thing to rip the mask away. It would reveal to even the most insular conservative that their party has been hijacked by extremists. They would have to come to grips with the ideological contradictions at the heart of this uneasy alliance that constitutes their current party. And they, along with the rest of us, would have to decide exactly where their party stands, instead of allowing this chimera to run about unfettered.

    Yes, I know that there would be unfortunate effects for some women should the repeal happen. But under the current administration there are unfortunate effects for everyone, including nations outside our borders. And as others have pointed out, abortion is already de facto prohibited in many places by circumstance.

    I know it's a Utilitarian, even a brutal, calculus to say that in this circumstance the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. But until we wake up the nation to the nature of the beast behind the mask, things are only going to continue to deteriorate for all of us.

  • Shut up and strive

    [Read the article: Boston-area high schooler jumps on the "boy crisis" bandwagon]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    I'm not as sick of these articles so much as I'm sick of the guys who pile on afterwards with their whiney "feminism ruins everything" crap. Sorry that strong women shrink your weenies, bros, but you're just going to have to cope.

    America is an absolute cesspool with regards to education anyway, with politicians and religious bullies muddying the system as much as possible. Through in junk food and junk television and you've got a target demographic that's driven to distraction and fed contradictory information. It's amazing anyone can learn, and when you further figure in the disruptive influence of male puberty on cognitive functions, it's no wonder men fall even farther down the line.

    So if you want to make things better for men, make it better for everyone, because the system isn't serving anyone properly now. And if women are excelling despite centuries of neglect and abuse, both educationally and socially, then you're just going to have to get used to that fact instead of moaning about how men need special protection (again).

    I've adjusted to this reality. If you other men can't then maybe, like the subjects of this original article, you haven't grown up yet either.

  • PS

    [Read the article: Boston-area high schooler jumps on the "boy crisis" bandwagon]
    [Read more letters about this article: Here]

    Yeah, I just noticed that I used "through" instead of "throw" in my previous post. Must've made that error because women got the right to vote or something, since a real man never makes a mistake, and then never admits it afterwards.