Letters to the Editor
-
I can't resist being the first to post!
Of course, now that I've started posting, I'm snorkeling around, trying to figure out something to say so that I'll make it to the Editors' Choice section.
I so hate making a mediocre posting, especially since I am first, and therefore have an obligation to be a role model to all who come after me.
So, let me say, that four score and seven years ago, I was not here on this earth. That was 1920, at which time there were Giant Celebrities, not the pygmies we have today in our barbarous and fallen times.
The 1920s had people in serious need of rehab. Zelda and Scott! Dorothy Parker! Ernesto Hemingway! Warren Harding (except that he was already dead--but maybe he needed resurrectin').
These celebrities of today, with their silly little panty-less episodes and name calling and finger licking--they are but dwarves, midgets, and amoeboid things compared to the goddess and god celebrities of yore.
I have spoken. I hope this is an Editors' Choice.
If not, I've wasted several minutes on a Friday night, minutes that shall never come by again.
I am awaiting the Editors' verdict.
-
Faggot but not Nigger
Nigger becomes "The N-word" but you have no problem fully printing the F-word?
Care to explain why one kind of hate is more acceptable than another kind?
Is this really indicative of what Salon thinks of its LGBT audience?
-
It's where we get medieval on our asses
This isn't about therapy. It's a latter day, somewhat secularized version of an old institution. Penance. When you sin, you live an austere, shamed, private environment. At some point in the future you emerge with your sins absolved.
-
Niamey is the capital of N-Word
That's the geography lesson for the day
-
I'm just jealous.
Honestly, I only look contemptuously at Lohan passing out in a hotel hallway because I wish my career would get a boost every time I did that.
-
Fiona!
Apparently not! To rehab with you!
-
Another word
Take away the money and celebrity and what you are left with is trailer trash.
-
The "n-word"
When did ninja become a dirty word?
-
So rehab and psychiatry are frauds. So what else is new?
I'm sure that the people who posted before me, all probably fans of Pat O'Brien and Kato, his little blonde gay troll on "The Insider," are still tittering and giggling over the fate of these celebrities. The real point has passed them at Mach 2 over their tiny little heads.
Which is that psychiatry and rehabilitation are pretentious, phony institutions that allow the guilty - at least the wealthy guilty - to get off scot free. Now, psychiatry CAN help if the person wants to reform, and so can rehab under the same circumstances. But the entire process must take place within the person, and that person must admit that he or she has a problem they want to correct.
The only problem these folks admit is that they got caught. I can't imagine a man as powerful as Gibson, who can get all the free sex he wants with a bat of his eye, ever feeling real regret for his contemptuous behavior towards women. And Isaiah Washington's prejudice against gays is far too common, even in "sophisticated" Hollywood, for anyone except gays to complain about. The people protesting him are probably just as homophobic, but they had the common sense not to speak their prejudices in public.
These celebrities killed the albatross, and they hired expensive, babble-talking help to try to cover up the dead bird around their necks with some bling, and maybe a sensitivity slogan t-shirt. And I'm not even angry at them for this. I'm angry that, to people who DO need help and might possibly afford to get it, this will make all psychiatric help seem like a lie to them.
If the American Psychiatric Association was truly moral, they'd decry this business. But then, they're the ones who are making the big bucks off these phony consultations, aren't they?
-
Fraud? This, but not the field
No, tomreedtoon, psychiatry and rehab are not frauds. They do plenty of good when they are done in a professional manner for the purpose of therapy. This isn't part of the mental health field. It's part of the PR biz, so any medical effects are purely accidental.
-
double standard
Quoting Washington as saying "faggot" while using the annoyingly euphemistic term "n-word" to describe Michael Richard's repeated use of the word "nigger" is a glaring double standard in an otherwise amusing and entertaining piece.
-
the business of treatment
Some valid points, tom, although in my experience competent therapy can be remarkably effective in helping people improve their lives, and needing help isn’t so much about being guilty as about individuals struggling to adjust to pathological environments.
The APA doesn’t benefit so much from treatment per se, but from the medical (or “disease”) model of psychological distress which establishes a power and monetary monopoly around prescription of psychopharmacological agents. That’s trivial compared to the APA’s main prerogative of constructing who in this culture is “sick” and who is mentally healthy, as embodied in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Example: until a few years ago homosexuality was included as a psychiatric disorder, while homophobia has yet to be recognized as such.
But back to celebs and the big business of treatment: Lohan had been in AA for some time and Gibson, like thousands of others each week, was mandated to 12-step treatment, a feature of almost every addiction program in this country, and one we know to be at best ineffective and likely countertherapeutic.
But follow the money and ideology. Many clients love 12-step because it provides escape from the discomfort of facing issues underlying addictive behavior and it enables them to substitute replacement addictive behaviors (e.g. nicotine, food, advice-giving) for another (typically alcohol) while claiming to be effectively treated. System loves the protective mask of “faith-based”. And the business of treatment loves to hire indoctrinated and uneducated ex-addicts as treatment staff, for pennies.
Yes, it’s a scam, and yes the losers are those sincerely seeking change, no doubt including some celebs.
-
We faggots and niggers need to lighten the fuck up
Because when someone calls me a name, I take matters into my own hands instead of whining third-hand to the letters to the editors. Boo fucking hoo, someone called you a name. As a teen I got called a series of racist and homophobic names by another teen. I gave him the first-hand opportunity to learn to pick up his teeth with broken fingers. As an adult I got reamed by a boss who couldn't limit his vocabulary to work-related terms and had to bring my race and sexuality into it. He forgot that I was privy to his "creative accounting practices" so when he gave me the boot I dropped a dime to the IRS. I'm enjoying sunshine and he's someone's prison bitch.
If you don't like what someone else calls you, then do something about it. Be violent, be clever, be creative, but do something besides WHINE, because all that does is encourage the racists and the homophobes. You Christians can practice turning the other cheek.