Letters to the Editor
moishe
Published Letters: 91 Editor's Choice: 4
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"Oswald's Tale"
[Read the article: Case closed?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nobody ever mentions Norman Mailer's excellent book, "Oswald's Tale," which I guess means that nobody has read it, but it's a brilliant study of the life of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Of course Oswald said "I'm a patsy." He had been singing one version or another of that tune his entire life. Oswald was a stone-cold psychopathic, narcissistic, mother-hating, lying, thieving, wife-beating, cop-killer.
He never plotted anything in his life. He just acted, or reacted, on impulse. Thus, his assassination of JFK was done strictly on impulse. He found himself in the right place at the right time, and he acted. It's that simple.
No one who really knew Oswald could ever imagine him being able to enter into a conspiracy with any other person or group. He was too self-absorbed, too anti-social.
Oswald was truly a "lone" gunman in every sense of the word.
In "Oswald's Tale," Mailer presents a plausible counter-theory to the Mafia conspiracy theory. His theory is that the Mafia bosses were NOT involved in the assassination, but after it happened, they claimed responsibility in order to get in the good graces of Jimmy Hoffa, who hated the Kennedys, especially Bobby.
Right after OT was published, Mailer (characteristically) boasted that he believed that, if Oswald had lived and gone to trial, there was an 85% chance that he, Mailer (who is not any attorney), could have gotten Oswald acquitted. Perhaps. But Oswald still would have gone to prison, and eventually to the electric chair, for the murder of Officer Tippett.
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No Bebe Buelle?
[Read the article: Sen. Eugene McCarthy remembered]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dana Cook left out the part where super-groupie Bebe Buelle meets Eugene McCarthy at a party at the Playboy Mansion, he falls in love with here at first sight, and she with him, but her current boyfriends, Mick Jagger, Todd Rundgren and Steven Tyler, in jealous rages, gang up on McCarthy and threaten to thrash him within an inch of his life.
In order to spare Gene this awful fate, a disappointed Bebe decides she must leave the party immediately, which she does, but from that time on, she has always wondered what "might have been" between her and The Senator.
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My middle-age mantra
[Read the article: The cold truth]
[Read more letters about this article: Here](Usually when trying to back up a boat trailer):
"Stupider people than me can do this."
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Ferrell-ed Out
[Read the article: The Fix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Will Ferrell is corrupting the youth of this country. My 11-year-old son saw "Anchorman" the other night, and now his favorite song is the 70s pop travesty "Afternoon Delight," by The Starland Vocal Band.
He won't stop singing it.
Damn you, Will Ferrell!
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Gee I miss Rodney Dangerfield.
[Read the article: Weighty matters]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dennis Hastert is so fat that, when he sits around the House, he sits AROUND the House!
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It's impossible to explain
[Read the article: Howard's world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've lived in two different markets where the radio station that carried the Howard Stern Show quit carrying it. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the hardcore Stern fans in those markets were traumatized, and literally grieved for months when the show was taken away from them.
There is a TIVO-like device for satellite radio receivers that records, I think, up to 12 hours of programming. I was in Radio Shack today, and a guy was buying one to use as a "backup," in case he missed the Stern show.
Manjoo says that Stern's plan is to try to take his show back to the "old days." As a long-time fan, I welcome that, if he can pull it off, and not because the show was more vulgar in the old days. I welcome it because, in my opinion, the show pretty much jumped the shark when Stern and his wife divorced, and especially when he hooked up with his girlfriend, Beth. Since then, he's spent way too much time yammering about their relationship. But I can say that, because I'm still a fan of the show.
If you don't "get it," then I'm sorry, but I can't explain it.
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Junky see, Junky do
[Read the article: Oprah's revenge]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I finished reading "Pieces" a week or two before the controversy about it became public. It was given to me as a gift during the holidays. I don't have anything against Oprah, but I don't watch her show, and hadn't heard of the book until my friend gave it to me.
What didn't ring true for me about "Pieces" was how Frey depicted himself as the beloved Superhero of the Rehab Clinic. Everyone who met him instantly became his friend and ally. Well, not everyone. He did have a couple of enemies in rehab, but they were quickly dispatched by SuperFrey and His Posse.
The employee who drives Frey to the dentist on his first day in rehab gives Frey, literally, the coat off his back? Frey's therapist cuts him a ton of slack, even after Frey rejects the sacrosanct Twelve Steps? Not bloody likely. Social workers learn, from training and experience, not to trust addicts, because 100% of junkies will try to con you 100% of the time.
Frey's girlfriend, Lilly, who has been brutally abused and exploited by men her entire life, takes one look at Frey and decides that he's her Knight In Shining Armor? Frey wishes.
The Federal Judge and The Mob Boss team up to save Frey from doing hard time in stir?
Whatever.
This book is the con-job story of a junky's rehab con job. Which makes it a con job within a con job. Reading it was a waste of time.