Letters to the Editor
Bukk63
Published Letters: 584 Editor's Choice: 64
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Alas
[Read the article: Gary Gygax's final quest]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I met him at a D&D Con in Wisconsin almost 30 years ago. I admit he was kind of full of himself, and didn't make the best impression on this then teen. But he certainly inspired a lot of fun over the years, and at least a small part of my current career as a novelist can be attributed to the creative practice of dungeon-mastering lo these many years ago.
Good hunting wherever ye be, Master Gygax.
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I don't understand why anyone listens to him
[Read the article: "Pennsylvania prefers a beefier sort than either of these people"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How does he continue to have a platform? The man is deeply creepy.
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Yes
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]CSMS is truly wise.
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Yes
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]CSCS is truly wise.
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What amuses me most in the responses
[Read the article: Quote of the day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Is how humorless so many are.
"quoting anonymous blogger" RAWR! Anger!
"Obama is NOT" RAWR!!! Rage!
"Hillary is SO" RAWR!!! Spittle!
"I heart NADER!" RAWR!!!11!1 Heartattack!
That "anonymous" post hit you folks right between the eyes.
Oh, and cscs is not particularly "anonymous", which a moment at TPMCafe would reveal. The blogger in question has a long history there available for anyone who wants to see. Sure, maybe we don't know name, address, and phone number, but then who the hell is "A Billion Angry Bees"?
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Okay
[Read the article: Lohan as Monroe]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That is hilarious.
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This is a dumb thing to get in trouble for
[Read the article: N.Y. Gov. Spitzer linked to prostitution ring]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Omigawd, he had sex for money. That anyone cares says more about them than it does about Spitzer.
But then, Spitzer is such a hardcore law-and-order type in other areas, and given that he lives in a nation that FREAKS OUT about sex on a daily basis, it's no surprise if he goes down for this.
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Count me among the unimpressed
[Read the article: Introducing 5 Things!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But whatever. At least there's still King.
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Oh, brother, another one of these articles
[Read the article: I don't believe in atheists]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And, golly, he sounds so proud of himself. Who'd've thought?
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Suddenly...
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wish I'd named my son Bumpus.
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Good riddance
[Read the article: Randi Rhodes calls Hillary Clinton a whore]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She's rude, talking over her guests over and over and over. Her thoughts are rarely fully formed. Her callers don't dare disagree with her (Rush Rhodes?) And she gets prime drive time?
Right after her in my market is the amazing, funny, thoughtful, appropriately biting Rachel Maddow. She should be in the Rhodes slot. She's much smarter, much more interesting, and much more respectful of her guests.
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Not YouTube, not MySpace
[Read the article: Don't blame YouTube, MySpace for teen beating video]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This kind of crap has been going on for a long time. Bullying, harassment, and misplaced violence is as old as human memory. Some people are just mean and petty and cruel, often poorly parented. MySpace didn't make those idiot savages laugh their crime off in their holding cell while worrying petulantly that they might miss cheerleading the next day.
I'm going to make a possibly unfair generalization here, but when I hear "X is the Anti-Christ", I'm guessing a conservative said it, i.e., those folks who blather on about "personal responsibility." And yet those same types are the quickest to point to some "other" to place blame. It's always something else.
Dear Sheriff Judd, In many ways you sound like a sensible person and a good cop. Don't fall into the trap of blaming them god-durned intertube interlopers from what those eight young adults did. They did it. Them. Not YouTube. Not MySpace. They did. Don't let your fear give them an out. They're responsible all by themselves. And here's the thing, they would have done it anyway. That's clearly the kind of people they are. Don't let them off the hook by blaming a computer server somewhere. Blame them. They did it.
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I dubious on the deterrent effect
[Read the article: MySpace, YouTube, and the cheerleader beating video]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let's face it, if the risk of getting caught were a deterrent, there'd be a lot less of this sort of thing.
My time as a cop was mostly pre-YouTube/MySpace. Could be they were both around by the time I left police work, but they definitely weren't around for the majority of my time in the bureau. As a patrol officer, I took plenty of calls to local schools for bullying and assaults. Trash talk happened, and kids flipped out and tried to resolve things with their fists. They didn't need YouTube to instigate them.
Beyond that, bullies and fighting were more than plentiful when I was a kid, well before this so-called evil thing called the internet. And they were plentiful when my dad was a kid, and his dad was a kid.
It's fatuous to claim that current culture has desensitized kids. As a species, we're generally prone to violence as a problem-solving technique (hardly unique among the animals kingdom, of course) and always have been. Trash talk has existed throughout history, and petulant bitchiness has as well. Hell, they used to paint it on the walls in Rome a couple thousand years before the internet.
If anything, the current media culture, internet, teevee, etc. has made discussion and condemnation of this all-too-commonplace behavior more common. Violent hazing, violent bullying, domestic violence, peer group violence, all of these are things that are now discussed and analyzed in ways they never were before. Too often the analysis is idiotic ("movies are the devil, MySpace is the anti-Christ"), but at least we're talking about it more than we were in the past. Used it be, it was one of those things we ignored, or even encouraged. "You got beat up? Well don't whine to me, go be a man!"
We're savages. The only difference between now and the magical, non-existent then is now our savagery is better documented.
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Doh. I'm dubious, I'M dubious.
[Read the article: MySpace, YouTube, and the cheerleader beating video]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Silly typos.
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Salon really needs an ignore button
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]With one click, all the interesting letters could be on one page.
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Once she Giuliani'd Obama last night, she lost me forever
[Read the article: "She's not as bad as you think"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]She's been pushing me toward Obama for months now, but the moment she invoked 9/11 to make a specious attack, I'd reached the final straw. To hell with her.
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All sports are dumb and pointless, except curling
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But King writing about them makes them interesting. Even hockey.
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I have to admit
[Read the article: What should Obama do about Rev. Jeremiah Wright?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm also in the shut the hell up about this bullshit already camp. Good. Fucking. Grief.
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Anything to Outlook is not an upgrade
[Read the article: How the White House lost 5 million e-mails]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Chisel and granite, charcoal and bark, iron gall ink and parchment to Outlook is not an upgrade.
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How meta
[Read the article: King Kaufman's Sports Daily]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I lol'd.