Letters to the Editor
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Big talk ...
... for a guy they only let use the studio when "The Price Is Right" isn't filming.
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The real enemy
The only people who listen to Pat Robertson are rightwing nutters whose cultural influence is nil. (They're simply "preaching to the choir"---and often, literally so.) The real enemies of liberal "elites" are...liberal elites---the self-loathing enforcers of political correctness. The Duke University lacrosse team---white athletes at an "elite" university---are an object lesson of what happens when political correctness runs amok.
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I'm no fan of Regent ...
... but I'd tiptoe around the subject of rankings if I were the host of a television program whose ratings are blown out of the water every week by "SpongeBob SquarePants," "Ned Declassified," and "WWE Raw."
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Bill, most of the time I think you're a big nosed douchebag who wears too much makeup
But this is one of the best, funniest and most infuriating things I've read in Salon. You put all the full-timers over there to shame. Thanks.
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be careful whom you call dumb
Figure the avg IQ of Americans is about 92-95. No higher. Liberals like to point to the 40% high school drop out rate and assume that social engineering is needed. Fact is, people are just dumb. We are a dumb nation.--realname
Idiot, the average IQ is, by definition, 100. To say the "avg IQ of Americans is about 92-95" is just plain wrong, since that would pull down the scale to become the "new 100," if you will. Be careful whom you call dumb!
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i'd like to say something in defense of the fundamentalists
not much, but something. they are a large group, maybe 40 million. and here, the same people who decry stereotyping against, say, moslems, seem to have no problem stereotyping these people. first, not *all* members of the same group have the same opinions about every topic - especially in america, where you can *have* differing opinions. second, *every* intelligent person (ok, if you insist, every *otherwise* intelligent person) has *some* thing they are cranky about. something that can't really be defended rationally, yet which makes up part of them. for instance, mormons, mormons have some cranky beliefs, but all the LDS's i met when i was young were kind, decent, gentle - "nice" people. one person's experience. my solution? yes, i have a solution, but it's hard. stick to the topic when forming alliances. you're talking about free speech? talk about free speech, not the catholic list of banned books. (perhaps that's one time i really *ought* to capitalize). the Catholic list of banned books.
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Nah the bell curve is wrong
We are dumb. The NY Times is written at an 11th grade level and most people can't read it. I figure the US is getting about 1% more stupid each year.
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Bill, you're such an elitist!
And I adore you for it. This reminds me of one of the Get Your War On strips where the guy says:
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherf***er in the room," I’ll be an elitist!
Sadly, the t-shirt with that one is sold out…
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@Melinda Sue
aThe concern of most people when it comes to the so-called elite is not about how smart they are. The concern is that they may be out of touch with the people they would represent.
Since when have liberal elites been out of touch with people's needs? Who fought for Social Security and Medicare? The farmers and factory workers? Who organized every organization from Greenpeace to the World Wildlife Fund to the March of Dimes? Coal miners? Who pushed government to create the EPA and clean up air and water, to require truth in advertising and labeling, set automobile safety standards, fund public schools and libraries, frame the Freedom of Information Act, ban DDT, establish Unemployment Insurance and on and on and on? Were your housekeeper and your gardener in on that? Sure, the comman man/woman wants these things, but who actually made them happen? You guessed it. Liberal elites. People of good heart who weren't fretting about where their next meal was coming from, who could afford the time and effort to bring about change that benefited their fellow beings -- not only their fellows in the elite. (For elites whose only goal is to enrich their comrades to the exclusion of the unwashed masses, look to the conservative elites.)
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You don't get it
Many of the letter writers disturbed by the "elitism" of the "Eastern, Harvard intellectuals" don't get it. ITS A FICTION. Yes there has been an "anti intellectual" strain in American culture. Is that a GOOD thing? That people can't process an issue worth a damn, and have two colors on the emotional scale-black-white.
Over 50% of the country thought Saddam Hussasin was involved in 9/11 and didn't have the capacity to figure out it was a lie. So again, is this a "GOOD THING?"
Yes. yes, I understand "Salt of the Earth" and all that, but are Ohio rural folk REALLY "better" than suburan upper middle class Vermonters? Isn't that "elitism" in reverse.
One would do well to read Barbara Ehrenreich's "Fear of Falling" to see where this latest incarnation of smear, fear mongering, and manipulation started (with Agnnew) and traced how right wing think tanks systematically drove this message home to realign the middle class to the right. Or read "The Trouble with Kansas" to see how this notion is incredibly self defeating.
If you can't see that Maher is expressing outrage with FACTS that have not appeared in ANY major media to drive home the almost newly revealed levels of incompetence of the administration, then you have missed the point of the mockery.
The idea that so many Salon readers buy into this smear is a sad reflection that the "big lie" works when it is biggest.
P.S. Don't you think most of the higher up Neo Cons went to prestige schools? And what the hell is Bush's lineage anyway? He's a member of that "elite" himself, playing "good ol' boy" for political cynicism.
Give me a break, people.
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I Give You France
Full disclosure: I am a Francophile and a liberal from a decidely republican family.
Nevertheless . . . my brother lives and works in France, having done so for over 16 years, and he would be the first to tell you that France, a nation run by elites, is a mess both economically, politically, and socially. Young people are leaving in droves for England and anywhere else that they can find work. Those French staying behind complain that the country has no work ethic any longer; politicians ignore an internal rot brought on by socialism and the very real threat from Islamists. Over this mess reigns a cadre of graduates from elite universities dedicated solely to governance and where only the best and the brightest get in. A more secular nation you could not find, the Catholic Church still having not recovered from the French Revolution and the Enlightenment thinking still prevalent throughout France
Elitism has limits regardless whether it be Christianist elitism or secular elitism.