Letters to the Editor
calgodot
Published Letters: 250 Editor's Choice: 6
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Joan Walsh admits her lacks of ethics and professionalism
[Read the article: The Brazile-Begala smackdown]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll give you this, Joan Walsh: you don't try to hide your complete lack of ethics or professionalism. Of course, this simply magnifies your arrogance and sense of entitlement, neither of which are desirable or charming traits, particularly in the editor of a national publication which (according to your statements when you got the job) wants to promote its reporting above other matters. (Chalk that up as a failure by the way: the national journalistic reputation of Salon.com has taken a serious dive in your tenure.)
You've done two good things as Salon editor, Walsh: you helped get Glenn Greenwald a wider audience, and you put on public display the type of incompetence and malfeasance which leads to the decline of a journalistic reputation. (Adding Greenwald to your roster actually managed to magnify and focus your own ethical failings.) You and Judy Miller should get side-by-side statues at the Journalistic Hall of Ignominy. But thanks to both of you for giving prime examples of how not to be a journalist or editor.
Of course, my opinion as a non-paying reader (since the day the site launched) of Salon matters little to you. Money talks, eh?
Here's hoping your resignation comes soon, and that your future elsewhere is bright.
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Sex makes people crazy.
[Read the article: Condoms: Sort of like crack?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Having it. Not having it. Too much. Too little. Sex makes people crazy.
Sex drives Christians batshit crazy. Even the most liberal, left-leaning, tolerant, tree-hugging Christian will get wacked about sex. Especially if their kids are having it. These less-than-reasonable people would probably use custom-designed steel-belted chastity belts, if some right-wing corporate monster would just make them. (Attention to would-be inventors: James Dobson will definitely help you with distribution.)
But even ostensibly "secular" (which in America means, I still adhere to superstitions but in a less formal, non-churchgoing manner) parents freak out about sex. Especially the idea of their kids having sex. Would that I had the proverbial dollar for every "liberal" parent who insisted that scholastic sex education was worthless, not the right or purview of the state, but exclusively the right of the parent; that such should be taught at home; only to have them turn around and, in their own ignorance and fear of the subject, simply hand their kid a book and say, "Let me know if you have any questions."
I mean, just look at the loonies let loose by this thread. From feminist wackos who believe in a government conspiracy to spread breast cancer via the Pill, to libertarian nutbags who seems to exist in a TRON-like world of order and faux reason, to the aforementioned religious wackos, who of course exists in all stripe and color, but in this country tend to be Christian. (Not Judeo either: Jews are nowhere near as insane about sex as Gentiles. Somewhere along the way, the Christians forgot to read The Song of Solomon.)
Drugs are almost passé as a parental panicker when compared to sex. I imagine most American parents would prefer to hand a crack pipe (or bottle of beer) to their teen than give them a condom. You can send a kid to rehab and keep it a secret from your neighbors: you can't hide the bastard offspring of a 14-year old.
For another thing, all the American men out there know that it's easy to talk a woman out her insistence on using the condom. And a lot of women know how often they themselves crumbled and played bareback reproductive roulette when faced with the whining 'it decreases sensitivity' man. (This must be the only time in history a man is concerned about decreased sensitivity.) American parents know that a condom doesn't mean squat. (Which is why they love to put their developing adolescents on monthly low dosages of possibly carcinogenic hormones.)
In the outside world, where actions have visible results, the biggest problems facing America are things like the war and the economy. But in the inner world, where most of us actually spend at least half our lives, the world formed of and shaped by our minds and opinions, the biggest problem facing Americans is the same one facing us and the rest of the damned human race for centuries: we are, as a nation, "hung up" about sex. We need, as a species, to get the hell over it.
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Thanks, MaddieP
[Read the article: McCain and the Latino vote]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For correcting all these geographically-challenged know-nothing blancos who claim Florida is somehow dominated by Cuban-Americans who vote Republican as a bloc. Cuban-Americans make up the largest "Latino" population in Miami. As you note, central Florida (which includes the majority of the citrus crop) has a large and growing population of other immigrant populations. It is among these groups, as well as young 2nd and 3rd generation Cuban-Americans in southern Florida (concentrated in Miami) who are changing the demographic face of Florida's "Latino" populations.
And unlike the spoiled, privileged, white, whining masses of indignant, spurned Hillary Clinton voters who threaten to sit out November if the most popular candidate is nominated, these patriotic Americans will show up in numbers come Election Day, even if they don't like Obama (which they by and large do).