Letters to the Editor
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If we leave Vietnam, do we lose for good?
Apparently so.
The dominoes all fell and all those Vietcong did follow us home, just as the radical right warned us, didn't they? If we'd just kept fighting them over there we wouldn't be fighting them over here right now.
So many are the propaganda lies the Military-Industrial Complex propagates in support of imperial military adventurism. None of them stand up to scrutiny, though.
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Joan: You've just lost another subscriber
Joan: Your utter contempt for this site's loyal subscribers -- those of us who, like myself, have spent years funding salon.com with our dues, (in my case, five years of membership) and encouraging our friends and family members to do the same -- is reprehensible. For months, hundreds of individuals have pleaded with you to stop publishing Paglia's useless claptrap, and you have ignored each and every one of us.
Hint: When the voice of your readershp is this unanimous and outraged, there's probably a good chance that they're right. Your stubborn refusal to jettison this self-important disgrace reveals a total lack of appreciation, on your part, for everything that otherwise makes salon.com vital and unique. Indeed, you are taking OUR money and giving it to HER, which offends me to no end. Although we, your readers, unfortunately do not have the power to impeach you, our only recourse is to abandon you. Which I am now doing. My membership, it turns out, expires next week. Consider me one less subscriber to your website.
If, in the future, I should hear that Paglia has been expunged from this site, I will happily again renew my membership.
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This Is Why Anonymous Remains Anonymous
Jaysus wept. Can you imagine having this pinhead living next door to you????
<<When President Bush said "you are either with US or against us" - he meant FREE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, not just the US. Just how dumb are you? He was speaking as the leader of the FREE world – ever heard of it?>>
I'm sorry Anony-putz, but GW is no leader, and your idea of what America is certainly doesn't jive with mine. Free world, indeed.
<<You don't understand that these terrorits are going to fight keep fighting us until we defeat them or they are dead (they ARE suicide bombers you know).>>
Whereas we don't kill ourselves when we bomb the bejeebers out of people we don't like??
<<You Don't Get ITTTTT!!!!! You are right that other dems don't get it, but this is real! They are beheading people, baking sons to terrorize families, these people are evil and if we back off, they will be in YOUR backyard and mine soon.>>
Baking sons??? It must really suck to spend your life worrying that some big swarthy 'Allah-Is-Great' scimitar-swinging turban-wearing hook-nosed 'terrorit' is hiding under your bed just waiting to saw your head off. Not that you'd miss it anyway . . .
<<Wake UP!!!!!!! 3,000 dead on 9/11, 4,000 fighting them - and your team thinks the War on Terror is a bumper sticker? You people are either idiots or traitors, at worst both!>>?
Stop waving that bloody shirt already. Leave that to the Rudy Giulianis and Dick Cheneys. How dare you call anyone a 'traitor', let alone an 'idiot'.
<<President Bush will be seen in historic terms as one of the great presidents and in my book, James Randall is a great American also.>>
What is it these wingnuts and drug abuse?? Anonymous, try rehab.
<<With President Bush, he lives by the notion that "The buck stops here". With the Clintons the motto was "We didn't buck".>>
Aye, it always comes down to "The Clintons" at the end of the day.
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Subscribers vs. Non-subscribers
I just went through ALL the letters here, re-reading the ones with gold stars by their names indicating that those letter-writers have paid money to subscribe to Salon. One of them was topical but neutral on the subject of Camille. Two said she was wonderful. Every single one of the remaining ones made factual refutations of Camille's obviously poorly researched points, begged Salon to get rid of her, or in one way or another voiced serious displeasure with this ridiculous column. All the lengthy letters supporting the bizarre, poorly-written musings of this authority on pop-culture venturing way over her head into science and political science were by non-subscribers.
I conclude that Salon really does value "clicks" over paying subscribers, and that my hard-earned dollars are not valued by the company, contrary to their earnest solicitations. Therefore although I will continue to be a reader, I will let my subscription expire. Thanks for making this such a straightforward decision.
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had_enough
Your mother.
There ya happy?
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mea culpa
When Salon first reintroduced Paglia's column, I defended it against all the outraged leftie's throwing hissy-fits that Salon would dare to publish something--anything at all--that doesn't fit comfortably within its otherwise-orthodoxly-liberal rubric. These lock-step liberals had me defending Paglia's sloppy writing and sloppier reasoning...or at least her right to write and think sloppily and for Salon to pay her to do it.
But this latest column is the last I'll bother to read. Bad enough that she's a pretend Democrat (if she's genuinely still registered within the party, it's obviously as a fifth columnist, the better to destroy everything the party stands for). Bad enough that she's stuck her crone's beak into the global warming debate with arguments so transparently childish any 10-year-old with an internet connection could dismantle them. Bad enough that she doesn't have the intellectual honesty to seriously engage any idea or opinion that doesn't fit into her own rigid notions of how the world works. Bad enough that in a "letters" column, almost all letters she'll dare to engage are from yes-men and groupies that reinforce the ego-swollen echo-chamber of her own head.
No, what really bothers me is that she's become a colossal friggin' bore--a sad caricature of the superannuated professor droning on and on to herself in front of the nearly-empty lecture hall long after her younger colleagues have left her in the dust. Time to put this old nag out to pasture
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Sorting through the mental clutter
Iraq: to stay or go? The issue here is that any intelligent person has to wade through unreasonable amounts of propaganda, double-say, double think and couter anti-double think. There seems no reliable source of information regarding Iraq or terrorism. Paul Williams says "look out 7 cities in the U.S are going to be nuked", yet others say terrorists don't have and couldn't maintain nukes. A democrat says one thing, a Republican another, and sometimes they say the same but opposite thing! There are polls, there is an election year, there are wars and rumors of wars. What a mess. In the end all one can do is trust thier own heart and mind, and ignore all other things...trust your gut instinct. What does your instinct tell you? Mine simply tells me this: if it quacks and has a bill it is a duck/goose. In terms of insurgents in Iraq and various terrorist groups: They are evil. They WILL kill us, if we do not kill them first. This is simply a basic human facet of life for 100,000 of years. Die or kill those whom threaten you. With that said the rest of you may return to your overly complicated and PC lives; please continue down your blind road, like the road that the Romans took.
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Please allow Camille to spend more time with her family
Her pose as a controversial maverick doesn't make up for the fact that she's wrong. Responses to her columns should give you an idea that she doesn't belong here. There are plenty of right-wing blogs where her style of factually creative writing would fit right in.
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My Pitchfork is Down
I am not even going to address the lack of awareness Ms Paglia displays when it comes to George Bush, the Second Amendment, etc. I was horrified, but hey, she gets letters, fuggetaboutit, I guess is the stance of the editor.
Hell, I am just disgusted that the woman can't even comprehend OWN her forte, let alone the other topics she tried to "discuss" with herself (sorry, the "letter writers to Paglia"): pop culture.
David Bowie is so much more important than Madonna to both the gay and straight construct (and Madonna only launched one tepid career, Bowie has collaborated and launched several), and to refuse in such a crass way to contact him shows she really didn't want to. Simple reason to me why she did not: he might have challenged her. Madonna has the IQ of a jumbo shrimp, and it must be much more suitable to project images onto a mannequin.
Bowie in 1995 was NOT in his "peak period" (anyone hear of "Ziggy Stardust", "Ashes to Ashes"? Apparently Paglia forgot....and this is what she should know like the back of her hand). The only reference to "Aladdin Sane" was an allusion to a song she misinterpreted completely (during a rambling discussion of her dissertation and its quirks and challenges), and she didn't even mention it was the follow up to "Ziggy Stardust".
Please, if you can't discuss your own subject matter lucidly anymore, don't bother.