Letters to the Editor
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Twain said it first ...
jumpyd,
If Shaw really had that quote (I can't find it online) about letter length he was paraphrasing Mark Twain's “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
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Stop watching
Chris Matthews. Write to him and tell him you're not going to watch his show because you've found actual news and opinion sources. We have to give up the adrenalin infusion that comes with being overtly angry and intellectually and morally superior to the pundits, writers, performers and broadcasters who are soulless minions and merchants, while we are filling their pockets.
If you still want to talk about Chris Matthews (Tim Russert, Ann Coulter, Bob Novak, blah blah woof woof), you can say, Oh, he's awful. I never pay money or attention to him."
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jumpyd
Digby, dude, I love your enthusiasm
Digby's not a dude.
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/06/19/ladies-and-gentlemen-digby/
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Hundreds of Thousands of Hard Hats? WHAAAAAAAAT!?
I had the same reaction when I saw Matthews mention of "hundreds of thousands of hard hats going up against lefty college students." What fantasy did THAT take place in? There WAS a ("a" as in singular) brawl in New Yoark City between protestors on Wall Street at the lunch hour and a mixture of construction workers and Wall Street types. As I recall, it wasn't even an antiwar protest that was attacked by the construction workers and Wall Street types, just an anti-establishment rant.
So apparently our talking heads of the news get their background information out of their imaginations. Let's hope that Chris Matthews didn't also see the original George Hamilton version of "War of the Worlds," or he'll interject a comment into a future show about the destruction of Los Angeles by Martians.
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He had a point there
Sure there have been plenty of protests over the Iraq war, but they aren't the same as those over viet Nam...and I, too, say it was the draft. The Iraq war still personally affects few American citizens. I was in grammar school during the Viet Nam war and I remember neighborhood guys leaving for the war (and not coming back). It became a terror. There was real panic when guys reached draft age.
I don't like Chris Mathews, but his point is well taken. The viet Nam protests were visceral, the Iraq protests aren't. This war hasn't landed on the doorstep of many people. We have the luxury of indifference. Its a concept, not a reality.
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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day
Matthews has it right on this one. As someone who was there at the beginning and throughout the entire "war against the war," allow me to point out a few things:
I returned from Vietnam in the summer of 1965, entirely against the war - having been a lesser participant in the so-called "Tonkin Gulf Incident", the lie that started the war - and didn't do anything to hide my feelings at the college I went to a week after my return. Nobody was much interested, past a few "beatniks" around the school newspaper. It was pretty much that way throughout the state of Colorado then. Over the next four years of crescendoing opposition to the war, the draft was indeed a driving force, as young guys had to consider what might happen to them if they left school - it was a way of raising their consciousness. And for many it was their only reason for opposing the war. This can be seen in the way war protests slowed and died off as the lottery system was introduced. Once a kid realized the war wasn't going to get him, he was quite happy to go back to worrying about beer and girls (and the potheads were never more than 2030% of the population even back then).
As someone who traveled around the country for many of those years as a professional shit-disturber for the antiwar movement, I saw this phenomenon in places like Ann Arbor, Madison, Berkeley, Austin, and lots of lesser-known places in between.
So, for once, Matthews is right. Whether the antiwar movement and all the rest of we over-the-hill-hippies dislike the fact that many of us were that shallow makes no difference - the facts are the facts.
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TCinLA
potheads were never more than 2030% of the population even back then
No way, man. We were, like, at least 5,000% of the population. And I'm still holding.
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It wasn't just the draft
Even the Bush administration knows the Vietnam protests weren't just about the draft - it was about body bags, atrocities we witnessed being perbetrated (in our name) against people who had done us NO HARM (just like now). That's why they don't allow coverage of those things, now. When did they get the power to censor news coverage of these things? And why haven't "journalists", and the rest of us, objected?
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Twinkie Winkie and the desert southwest use of "dude"
Twinkie,
I live in Phoenix, AZ. Out here, "dude" is androgynous and applied to members of either gender equally.
But, it doesn't matter, as it appears someone took offense to my constructive criticism and deleted the post you referred to.
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That's NOT RIGHT!
DUDE, WTF?
Deleting a post from the "Salon" on this article because I dared to voice an opinion on Digby's style?
That is not right.
I'm sorry, did I write a post without checking to make sure my computer was in a "Free-Speech Zone" first?
I think the editor's here at Salon may want to apply for a job in the Bush White House if they think that deleting my post on the length of Digby's rants is acceptable.
If you do the same things you slam the GWB admin for doing, how are you any better?
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Violence against protesters
The last time I was at the White House, there was exactly one protester. The others have been scared off by violence and espionage directed against them.
I CAN'T attend a high-profile protest. I'm a diabetic who needs to stay alive to raise his children.
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He had a point there??
Sure there have been plenty of protests over the Iraq war, but they aren't the same as those over viet Nam...
There were massive protests all across the United States during the long, blatantly obvious run-up to the US invasion of Iraq, during which many "reasonable" Americans continued to somnolently debate the straw man of where Bush should draw the line, etc, and pooh-pooh the protesters as being out of touch and unwilling to discuss things reasonably.
Almost no mainstream print papers in the US covered these protests, even local papers covering protests within their own cities, and apparently it worked -- now, 5 years later, the myth of no mass protest has become gospel even for some Salon readers.
And why not? At the time, even Salon's then-political analyst declared the marches and protests insignificant, counterproductive, and anachronistic. I guess you're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
As for "Hardball," anyone who debates the reasons why there were no mass protests of the Iraq war is essentially insane, and anything they say out loud should not be taken seriously until they can prove that they've recovered their faculties.
In fact I probably shouldn't be wasting any more time writing about "Hardball," nor you reading it!