Letters to the Editor
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Go ask Henry Ford
The Dearborn Independent ran for more than 7 years a ceaseless parade of hate filled antisemitic nazi ravings that blamed the Jews for everything from drugs to 'negro music' to WW1. The standard Gordon Wagner/aVulcan cant. No one made him stop.
In more recent history, every hate filled group from the Nation of Pris-lam to the Posse Comitatus has been free to distribute their message by any means necessary. And if some newspaper wants to print up something......
Now stay with me here........
Just to get people to pick it up and read it, even if it's objectionable
......shit, Glenn, no one would ever write according to click counts, would they?????
Then that's kind of taking the good with the bad, isn't it? I mean for every giant head paper mache puppet protest with a sign that says "Kill Bu$h!!!" there's some crackpot across the street with a placard that says "Exterminate the Faggots" isn't there?
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@Chris c
Thanks for the very kind words. A good thing to keep in mind is that Orally and Rushrant and Parker and many of the others that make the most outlandish statements, aren’t expressing what they believe, but what they think will get them attention and readers/viewers. They are playing their followers and feeding that part of the M$M, a substantially large part, sensational nonsense that will create controversy, ratings and circulation. Parker gets ego attention and makes money, the only things she really cares about.
I forgot to mention in my earlier post that a prime purpose for op-eds is exactly for the reasons I just cited. I agree opposing views on the same page are very effective and printing them as op-eds instead of a letter to the editor does give the authors more stature that they deserve.
Another thing to keep in mind is that close-minded, uninformed, malleable people, usually don’t read op-eds, especially those in that terrible “liberal” WaPo. So, who is being fooled and mislead?
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White Pride
I can trace a significant number of my ancestors to North America prior to the creation of the United States of America. Quakers, Puritans, (probably drunken) Scots-Irish. And Cherokee -- they were here a long time ago!
So I think I can speak for "real Americans" when I say Kathleen Parker can shut the eff up.
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sorry the two quotes I cited were from her JWR article not the WaPo one
I hope I didn't confuse anyone with the two cites about "G-d" and guns. On the face of it, it should be impossible to market redneck americanism as a jewish asset, and I suppose I ought to look more carefully at JWR, since I think the problem with "zionism" nowadays is not so much a problem with "zionism" per se (which used to have anti-imperialist elements) as the fact that "zionism" as a brand has been hijacked by white supremacist evangelical US imperialism, and this JWR material seems to be a sort of epitome of that.
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@ Bill Owen
I hope McCain wins. People get the kind of government they deserve.
I appreciate the sentiment that you wrote prior to the above statement--that it is okay to inflict war on people but that Obama is not "Presidential" material to the narrower-band thinkers in this country.
However, under no circumstances can I agree with what you say about what "they (we) deserve." My children, our collective communities, our nation, does not "deserve" the kind of legacy that Bush inflicted upon all of us, nor do we "deserve" the hair-trigger approach that McCain spouts. What we "deserve" is a healing process, a movement in another direction, where dialogue, negotiation, and (as a last resort) and a resolved and principled firmness is the order of the day.
I want to welcome myself and my neighbors into a new day, not to inflict upon ourselves a punishment rather than a cure.
With great respect for your right to speak:
Chris C
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Trying to Learn Something from Everyone
Kathleen Parker (I thought that she originally wrote for the Orlando Sentinel) has been around a long time, and she has written conservative sexual columns (men she'd like to have sex with tend to be people that kill other people) for a long time. She's kind of a modern Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho, House), who was also fond of her proclivities for sexual interaction, even while she was in the House of Representatives.
What's funny to me is that 99% of Americans have no idea of their history whatsoever. The notion that people can stretch back and look to their Pilgrim, or their Daughters of the American Revolution roots, is just laughable in any broader sense-- especially in the NASCAR sense. THAT'S the problem. Anyone with any doubts, I highly recommend to read Tony Hurwitz's 'Confederate in the Attic'.
But she's also voicing a dysfunctional, racist perspective on something that demographers have been warning about for a while, as well as the incumbent potential for misuse-- the radical increase in immigration in this country for the last 20 years. I can remember reading about it in the Atlantic back in 1989, and the various potential effects that it could have. The fact that these fundamental mechanisms of human societies are coming home to roost should surprise no one.
While it is profoundly true that many migrants take the jobs that Americans don't want, most of us can't establish a direct connection between the benefits of immigrant labor and the problems associated with it. The rich, of course, are the clear beneficiaries. But the fact is that this country has only so much space, and you start putting too many rats in a box, you're going to end up with rats chewing on rats.
Anyone that has any expectations that the conditions around this issue should have clear, fact-based perspectives on the costs and benefits of all immigration hasn't been paying very close attention to the political discourse of the last 20 years.
Diversity is an acquired taste. It requires an expansive personality, and a fundamental inquisitiveness that is not present in the constituency that Parker writes for. With something as simple as food, I know people who eat at McDonald's every day. Forget extending that to family life stories, or different languages and rituals.
We need a controlled immigration policy-- and it is a hot button issue that unfortunately is either discussed in racial terms by the racists, or hand-wringing by the Democrats. And as population pressures increase, none of it is going to be easy. Thank Parker for laying her cards out on the table-- at least she's agreed to take over the bigotry part of the terrain.