Letters to the Editor
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I have...
I have posted as 'anonymous' a few times.
I don't use it as a cover for some asinine personal attack, I have used it to conceal from the other readers (we are all known to the interests that run Salon.com) my involvement in some areas of the topic under consideration.
I have only posted a few times (Salon.com would know how many) and don't try to abuse the privilege by using it as a cover to harass other people posting here.
Anonymity can be a powerful tool and a powerful weapon.
Since Salon.com knows who is posting as 'anonymous' and who is sniping from behind that cover, I'd be all in favor of Salon either identifying that/those persons or of Salon.com barring that/those person/people that abuse the privilege that 'anonymous' provides.
We are allowed to post here at the pleasure of the owners and those that don't respect the rules and insist on using features meant for one purpose to exact their own petty vendettas on others should be dealt with without removing a feature that does come in handy from time to time for other users.
Barring repeat anonymous snipers the ability to shoot from the safety of 'dense cover' is acceptable to me. Removing the perceived benefits of that cover for realistic reasons isn't.
In regards to the two Opus panels, I have only to shake my head. Cowardice takes many forms.
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If addressing the anonymous...
If addressing the anonymous issue has to be a 'one size fits all' solution, then I must sadly say that removing the feature will be acceptable. Wading through post after post of childish sniping to pick the meat off the bones is tiring, tedious and often extremely frustrating.
I still feel it is a high price to pay for childish actions of some, but have been on other sites that dealt with the snipers by eliminating the 'anonymous' option and the sites survived, although it did dampen some discussions...
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I remember on the CSPAN boards
I used a username that was all underlines and that freaked people out more than anything except when I changed it to all blanks. I actually got kicked off. I figure most of you just want to be part of an angry mob and will look for whatever excuse you want to be one.
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Ask for your money back
I plan to call the Washington Post tomorrow morning and ask for my money back for the two Sundays they didn't publish the real Opus. They ought to pay a price.
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Opus
You said only Salon has the original version but it was the same one I read in the Datebook of the S.F. Chronicle.
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Iranian hair
Clearly, the dozens of Iranian women arrested in May of this year for allowing their hair to show hadn't read the salon letters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2070293,00.html
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I have to admit...
...that I'd find the whole "censorship" thing more interesting if the strips themselves had some quality.
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What's so ironic about Joan's pose here
She's so against censorship.
But if you read Salon, you could be convinced that marijuana no longer exists. Cocaine and heroin and crystal meth still exist, but there is no longer any marijuana in America.
And no candidates have any position whatsoever on its medical use. You're never going to find that information from Salon.
And the Bush administration is doing everything RIGHT on this topic -- because you'll never find Bush criticized in Salon for his ongoing and escalating rough treatment of the seriously and chronically ill.
I'm getting a pretty good laugh now. But not from this cartoon, which I still don't get.
It's absolutely hilarious (in a kind of sick way) that Joan Walsh, of all people, is riding on such a high horse against censorship.
And it's also sickly hilarious that she's indicting the mainstream media, which is a place where you CAN go these days to get informed on current marijuana policy and current events relevant to said policy.
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so what can we (the U.S.) do for (or to) Iran
the consensus here seems to be that "we don't like what's going on in Iran, but we can't do anything about it", particularly using military means. boycotts are ok but with the lust for oil, there's no international agreement for that. there wasn't such consensus about south africa or southern rhodesia. but they didn't have oil. besides we cannot know the future. Ian Smith was a terrible racist, but mugabe is WORSE. ok, consensus says no invasion, international non cooperation says no effective boycott, what's left? only insults. cartoons. the feckless left doesn't even want to allow that. tough for the West. "Silenced", the "reason" that there's nothing on medical marijuana is that Salon "lives" in San Francisco. there, anyone can "cop". it takes an unusual man to "march for breast cancer" - and you can substitute for those any danger not faced. finally, the results of registration have not been good. the level of discourse (to my mind) has gone down. interesting antagonists (like Golden Boy and LeCastor) have left, much to the detriment of the letters. true, some annoyances have been curbed, like folks writing in your name or blatant insults, but it wasn't worth it. but even those annoyances told you something about yourself (i really react violently when someone misquotes me or writes in my name. but why? after all, who cares? so it told me about myself).