Letters to the Editor
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Rolling hills of what!?
With the glaciers melting and literally falling apart around us, it would seem that there are far more important things to discuss than spelling and dictionary flames.
Still, it was painful to see Camille Paglia first properly identify the feature(s) around her childhood home as a drumlin(who today actually knows, particularly in the mass media, the geomorphology of anywhere they've lived?), but then stumble by identifying the content as being a heap of bovine pestilence(murrain) rather than the accumulation of glacial till(moraine) that I know she meant.
My college geology of almost 20 years ago is one thing that still has not been swept away by the glaciers of time.
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If we ignore these articles and
don't post letters then they may go away...but we seem to enjoy complaining. I say boycott works better than bitching.
Di
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Second hand opinions
Camille Paglia seems to be working with second hand opinions these days; either one she's heard on talk radio, or her own opinions from ten years ago.
At least Christopher Hitchens (say) seems to take the time to form a new opinion, which may be sharp or may be boneheaded, but is actually often thought-provoking.
I laughed out loud at the image of Paglia as the bear rummaging in the trash bin ... that nailed it.
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Editor's choice?
A couple of people refuted this article quite thoroughly, one producing a line by line refutation, with substance and clarity. So far the editors who select the "Editor's Choice" letters are ignoring these letters. What does that say about Salon's commitment to honest discussion of controversial issues?
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Emily, I think we can do better
Emily,
I love your letters, so I wanted to write back respectfully regarding your vote for Ms. Paglia.
Don't you think we can do better than this? We are back to denying global warming for goodness sake! Scientists have dedicated their lives to studying the phenomena, and we lazily return to the discussion as if they said nothing?
I live in upstate New York, so perhaps I can be thankful to Ms. Paglia. If we follow her path of non-thought, I might be sitting on beach-front property. (Hey, she used to live in Binghamton. Is this a conspiracy? Does she own land here? It will be worth a heck of a lot of money if we keep chattering on about the myth of global warming. Heck, Binghamton will actually be the new 'Hamptons!')
However, I know that's not funny because it's not really a joke.
I have no problem with controversy. Let's just up the ante a bit. Why not bring in a left wing thinker with power, guts and actual thought. Why are we turning to the pseudo-right wing?
I've been out of academia for a while, but why not Bell Hooks? She'd never be boring, and she's got a killer intellect. She also doesn't provoke with nonsense.
With respect,
LBS
(Emily, I'd much rather you write than Paglia. You have a good sense of humor and grit. I bet you would write with more intelligence too.)
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If you are going to speak on a topic that you know little about, you have a duty to educate yourself before opening your mouth.
"From my perspective, virtually all of the major claims about global warming and its causes still remain to be proved."
What exactly is your perspective? As someone who once considered majoring in geology? As someone who refuses to watch “An Inconvenient Truth?” As someone who doesn't like Al Gore? These perspectives certainly make you an expert. (Pause while letter writer snorts with disgust…)
Perhaps if you'd done any sort of real research on this topic, I'd have more respect for your opinion. In matters of arts and letters, it is possible to have a reasonable opinion about a topic without doing much homework. However, opinions about issues in science and technology really should be informed by an understanding of the facts. Simply basing your opinion on a matter of science on a general dislike of “dogma” and a high school science class view of the environment is intellectually lazy.
Please visit the website of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): http://www.ipcc.ch/. The IPCC is an international committee of real research scientists that spend their lives studying global climate change. They are convincing that global warming exists and that it is caused by man's activities.
You are a public person. People listen to you. If you are going to speak on a topic that you know little about, you have a duty to educate yourself before opening your mouth.
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a train wreck with lips
OK Salon, now you owe us.
You have a wonderful enterprise here, with some terrific writers - Blumenthal, Grieve, Greenwald - and some not so - Dickerson and in my opinion Ms. "I, Icon" Paglia herself.
When you put such faith and import in a writer as provocative and high-profile as Ms. Paglia (whose main skill seems to be in pissing off the majority of your readers and vicariously entertaining the few rubberneckers who like to watch), and when said icon takes on the scientific community regarding the (arguably) most important issue facing us as a planet - well you owe us a forum that will debate Ms. Paglia's glib demurrals seriously.
Not as tit for tat, not as a right or left wing echo chamber, but as a public service on a subject that has profound implications for us all.
Poor Amanda Griscom Little publishes a piece about a bipartisan bill to investigate the national security implications of global warming, and gets a measly 16 letters. Camille is 125 and counting.
She's got the floor, and so do you dear Salon. Use it wisely, or you are well on your way to becoming part of the problem on this one.
And a big PS: When you get this amount of letters - impassioned and articulate as well as "ad hominem" - the vast majority against Camille's specious handling of a life-threatening subject, and you cherry pick 3 out of 4 of your starred letters as pro-Camille.............
...you are either supremely disengenuous or seriously sizing up some shark-jumping yourself. At least as far as the inviolable Paglia goes.
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Dear Camille
Nobody cares about what a dried-up old 80s relic like you thinks about anything. Please go away and give someone who isn't 90 years old a chance to have a say. Nobody cares about your ancient references to movies nobody cares about anymore, either. You are irrelevant and old. Stop boring us and move to Florida to die with the rest of your generation.