Letters to the Editor
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Please Make It Stop
In the interest of honoring Joan Walsh's genuine concern about how women are treated in cyberspace, I will bend over backwards to be polite this time, even at the expense of saying what I really mean. Having said that -- reasoning with Salon on their insistence on publishing this particular woman is like reasoning with George W. Bush about his war, reasoning with George W. Bush about anything. 'Nuff said? We have all gotten the message -- Walsh is The Decider.
No sooner had I talked myself 'round to sending always needy Salon more money, even though my Premium registration has not expired, than I open to once more find this woman -- whom I refuse to sully my typing fingers by naming. In many ways I love Salon and consider it American journalism's last best hope. I have been secretly pleased I discovered and recognized its virtues long before it became *the* quoted ezine, before Salon broke the Walter Reed scandal -- to choose only one solid Salon accomplishment.
After the last time Salon published -- this woman -- I tried New Republic online, I thought about subscribing to The (paper) Atlantic Monthly, only to realize that Salon has done it: they have created a space online with not only content but spirit, a sense of being a space as The New Yorker is not just a magazine, but a space, a space one wants to return to. (Well, at least one *used* to want to return there.) Salon has cracked the cyber-code. I will not be renewing my subscription, however.
I have given some serious thought as to why. Can't I just ignore -- this woman? Can't I just refuse to click on her articles?
For me, it is in part a money issue. It's part of who we are now -- we think of how the money we spend supports what we hate or what we think is killing us. I don't shop at Walmart either. I don't order Domino's. I don't work out at Curves. I have limited funds and many worthy causes vying for them. So why should I be paying the wages of this writer and woman I despise?
And to this too I gave some serious thought. Why do I hate her so much I refuse to honor her with her name?
She is part of the past -- the liberals' contribution -- that has brought to where we are today: to the Iraqi war, brought us face to face with the imminent death of 30% of the species of the planet, with catastrophic climate changes. While -- this woman -- oh-so-cleverly! found good things to say about Bush and Rush and all those good ol' boys, conservatives took over Congress, won the White House, and packed the Supreme Court. We live with the consequences -- the evaporation of rights, the torture, the spying, the waste of our collective money, the erosion of all sense of community.
While -- this woman -- continues to pleasure herself in public (that is honestly the best description I can come up with for her writing), openly adoring herself for bravely quarreling with feminism, women around the world continue to starve, to waste away from AIDS, to pass AIDS to their children, to work themselves to death not unlike American slave women did, and to die (still!) from unsafe abortions. Would it be asking too much for -- this woman -- to address that? Perhaps she could oh-so-cleverly drag in Madonna, making it worth her while.
What worries me is that Salon so doesn't get it -- and now is not the time or place for that denseness. There has been a sea change in the country. Either Salon catches that wave and rides to glory or it will be washed away, as, thank god, this woman is destined to be.
I don't seek to silence -- this woman. I think she has a brilliant future in journalism -- speaking on Rush Limbaugh and writing for *The Washington Times.* I wish her the best there.