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I love about the web is the opportunity to share my thoughts with others.
But I also like to hear what others think and to exchange ideas. In some
cases, I also may respond to the comments. I welcome all viewpoints, including
those that disagree with my own - as long as we agree to disagree, we can
keep talking, and that's the most important part.
But
first, you have to
WRITE me!
Otherwise, this page will be filled with fan letters from my mom.
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I just wanted to give you my "two cents" on a
job well done with "Selling Out Our Mothers Dreams." I will admit that
I am not a loyal reader; I actually came across "Selling Out" by accident
with a search engine query. But, as someone who has experienced first-hand
the nightmare of a controlling, violent relationship, I just wanted to
say that you really hit the proverbial nail on the head. Congratulations
for speaking your mind and for putting it all out there for others to see.
I think that the more people we have on the Internet who publish information
like this, perhaps the more the message will get through that women don't
stay because they "like getting abused" or because they are masochists;
but because the system truly oppresses them in one way or another and at
various times. Yes, even the cops! And the judges. And the prosecutors.
And the woman's family. I know because I've been there. But enough of my
ramblings; and kudos to you for writing such a hard-hitting, truthful,
insightful article!
Name withheld by request
I enjoyed reading your column on
this film, but there is one small thing you may want to correct - the character
Branaugh plays is Reinhard "Heydrich," not "Heinrich." He became known
as "the butcher of Prague", and British-trained Czech parachutists killed
him in that city not long after the meeting which is the subject of the
film. They themselves died a few weeks later, after being trapped in the
crypt of a church. The 60th anniversary of their deaths was marked in Prague
last June.
Wayne Cochrane, Halifax,
Nova Scotia
Editor's note: Mr. Cochrane is absolutely right, and
he has my thanks for pointing out my error. The column has been corrected.
I only just read what you wrote
about the McVeigh execution. I agree with you 100%. I studied capitol punishment
and confirmed what you said about expense and at that point (a couple years
ago) 76 people had been let go from death rows in America (since1970) because
new evidence cleared them. Of course it should be noted that only a small
percentage of (wrongfully incarcerated) inmates get the attention that
can potentially clear them. Finally, I have often said that if my choice
was a "life" in prison or to be "put to sleep," I would much rather move
onward.
I was looking for Oklahoma News
about an 8-month old girl who was recently raped (in 3 places) in her own
home. She suffered a broken pelvis and ankles for starters. She was thankfully
placed in foster care after her hospitalization (hopefully the solution
is better than the problem in this case). I am particularly horrified by
crimes against children and want to know if the parents have been charged
(they claim they were in the next room and never heard anything) or if
an alternate theory exists or what. Apparently nothing is going on or the
follow up isn't sensational enough to be newsworthy. Anyway I came across
your article and had to write. You hit every point I tend to make against
the death penalty and it is always refreshing to see that others comprehensively
understand such a viewpoint.
Otto
I couldn't disagree more with you
re: Spider-Man. I'm 50, have seen hundreds of movies, am a writer
as well as a lawyer, and I thought the movie was swell. I appreciate your
take on it, but if you want to consider a horrible movie, let's talk about
"Attack of the Clones." Now there's bad writing.
Jack Thompson, Miami
The article "The Wrong Lesson" left
me with such a confusing swirl of strong emotions that it's very difficult
to pick which one to stand upon as my platform for responding. I
hope you will forgive me (as I do not have the formal training and experience
that you do) if I have some difficulty staying on track.
I would have titled "The Wrong
Lesson" as "Journalist's Recipe for Slimy Politician Pie", or perhaps "How
to Be a Scumbag Politician for Fun and Profit". While I confess that
I'm giving you the full ration of grief accumulated from reading several
articles in the past few years that revealed the same basic thought patterns
as this article, may I still say that I find your implied attitude with
respect to politician behavior appalling to the point of stupefaction.
My favorite quote in the article
is "...no one is more hated than the press". Why do you suppose that
this is true? From the text of this article, if I may be forgiven
the luxury of predicting, I would say that you think it is because of the
press's tendency to pick people to pieces in a very gory, public way. I
do not believe that this is the reason that the press is hated. This
is merely an irritant. If it were the core reason, only the people
in
the public limelight, the targets of such unhappy
attention, would have a reason to hate the press. The rest of us
would simply be ashamed of our morbid fascination. And yet nearly everyone
I know hates the press and none of them are very famous.
In talking to my co-workers
and in thinking about this issue myself, I have come to the conclusion
that "The Wrong Lesson" illustrates why the press is hated. While
you seem to be a very nice person (I draw this conclusion from the upbeat
and happy tone of your web site), you seem to be blissfully unaware of
how poisonous your attitude is. You think that you are being open-minded
and pragmatic. What you are is biased and distastefully accepting
of unforgivable behavior, except when indulged in by those who oppose your
political dogma.
In nearly every facet of life,
there is what I refer to as a happy balance. This balance lies somewhere
between dying of thirst and drowning, asphyxiation and oxidation, the vile
slime that pass for politicians these days and the fairytale heroes that
in a perfect world they would be. You have clearly, along with most
of the liberal press (as opposed to the conservative press who have their
own set of problems), gone way down the line to the complete slime end
of the scale to the point where the fairytale heroes are lost over the
horizon.
To quote the article: '...the
American public is used to politicians lying to them. It's come to be expected.'
and: 'It wasn't Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky that bothered the
public - it was the lies, the coverup, and the attempts to dodge responsibility.'
and: 'Lies, adultery, "spinning" - we're used to that. Sheer self-interest,
... that's unforgivable.'
To the liberal press, this is
perfectly all right. You're simply 'telling it like it is'.
What you forget it is that we as citizens no longer really have a clear
and reasonable choice as to what we would have as politicians. Few of us
are capable of sacrificing our own safety, security or welfare for the
abstract notion of political ethics, which is what we would have to do
to be rid of them. We repeatedly pick slimeballs as politicians because
the entire political machine has now evolved to such a state that a good,
honest man will be chewed up by it and only a slimeball can prosper within
it. You mistake our dreadful choices for acceptance and approval.
Even when patently reasonable ideas such as term limits are put forth,
we reject them as a populace because we are afraid that any novice politicians
that might result would not be able to compete with the experienced old
scumbags for public trough resources. The reality of what an American
politician was supposed to be (inexperienced, amateur, and short-term)
is gone and forgotten. Or do you actually think that the populace
likes having to vote for someone like Ted Kennedy?
If Clinton's rating did 'soar'
to 90%, it was due to factors outside of the scandal. The public wasn't
ready to forgive him. They were just tired of Starr's ineptitude at getting
the job done. It's not unusual for people to turn on the police when they
don't seem able to do their job.
"Your whole article makes
it clear that you believe that 'character doesn't matter.' In my
reading of your article, the only thing that you clearly and unequivocally
condemned was self-interest. This is the 'lesson' that you choose
to "teach" the politicians. You endeavor to further evolve the political
system by training the politicians to lie to us more efficiently.
You dismiss all of their behavior apparently as human nature in an ongoing
attempt to inoculate us into accepting the kind of inappropriate behavior
that we can expect from the kind of political candidates that the press
generally approves of.
It used to be that the press
was the fourth branch of the government, beloved by anyone who understood
its role in a free society. It was the all-important branch that
kept the other branches in check simply by letting us factually know what
they were up to and leaving us to draw our own conclusions. In a
very real way, the press used to be what helped keep us free.
Now with its 'praising by faint
damning' mentality, the press is part of the mechanism that is building
centralized machines of political power, and turning the rest of us into
sad sheep desperate to simply protect our own little plot of grass.
You don't give us the facts anymore. You presume to hand us our value
structure complete and self-contained. In truth, most of us would be satisfied
if you just didn't support your
venal political compatriots; never mind condemning
them.
I smiled at the one thing that
you really clearly condemned Condit for: self-interest. I suspect
that the reason that that was the one crime you felt he could not be forgiven
was because it violated the disgusting deal that such politicians have
with you of the press. The deal was supposed to be that you in the
press will give such politicians a pass (well, maybe just draw a little
blood to help sell papers), no matter how vile their behavior, as long
as they pursue and promulgate the activist press agenda. That was
the real crime, wasn't it? He can't be pushing your cause if he's pushing
his own.
The public, confused and terrified
in a world full of atomic bombs, terrorists, economic upheaval etc. have
been convinced by the press to follow along with the notion implicit in
articles such as 'The Wrong Lesson'; having a slimeball represent us is
a good thing. It's what we all need in today's real world.
And we should only turn on them when they violate our devil's deal.
No matter how much they lie, betray their loved ones, demonstrate that
their oaths are meaningless, it's all right. Just as long as they
vote for more welfare, protected status for women, protected status for
gays, factionalizing multiculturalism (the whole one-size-fits-all values
package), we should all like them. We should all vote for them.
After all, if we don't get our slimeball in office that will promulgate
and codify our dogma, somebody else's slimeball might get in there.
We sheep of the republic are
not stupid. Though it has taken a slow process of years and is difficult
to exactly get a handle on, we are quite aware that we've successfully
been made to sell ourselves out due to a lack of spine. But you of the
press are mouthpieces for the pimps, telling us what we do for a living
nowadays is something we should like. If we're gonna be what we are, we're
gonna want a good, strong pimp to represent us, now, won't we?
When you write articles like
"The Wrong Lesson", with its tacit approval of almost any behavior
for the larger objective of the party line, you're holding a mirror up
to us, showing us how vile we have become. How vile you have helped us
become.
And we wonder, every day, once
you have us resigned to accepting the Clintons and the Kennedys and the
Condits, what will be the next thing you try to convince us is "normal"
and "reasonable" and "reality". Who will you convince us to sleep with
next and on what politically correct pretext?
This is why we hate you, the
press.
Steve
I just finished watching
the Depardieu/Malkovich Les Miserables with my daughter, and wondered
at the end, as you did, what happened to Eponine's death scene. I did like
the film much better than the Liam Neeson version, and ran across
your essay when I went to the web to find some reviews. It turns
out that the film was shot in two versions, a four-hour English version
and a six-hour French version. (The French version is available in DVD,
and if it has subtitles I'm going to get it.) At any rate, I'd be willing
to bet that Eponine dies properly in Marius' arms in the long
version, for I'm pretty sure that the person who Thernadier sends
to spy on the newlyweds was not Eponine but her sister.
Other stuff: The musical is still the
best version of the book. (Please, read it! - find a translation.
It will pull you in; you'll not be able to escape, I promise...) I think
that Hugo endowed the work with a universiality that no film version has
been able to duplicate - simply making it longer and longer won't do the
job, for the novel is so massive that a film would need to be many times
the length of any of the existing versions to begin to duplicate its detail,
and there is so much more to it than the overwhelming wealth of detail.
It is the addition of music that adds a dimension to the portrayal of the
story which brings it closer to Hugo's vision. I think that that must be
what opera (a genre about which I am virtually illiterate) must be all
about.
Pat
... I did want to explain to you a bit about
my taxes this year as you say the richer you are the more worried you must
be.
In the last two years, through some
good investments in our country and hard work, I've generated about $600k
in income. While I only made about 15% of that in wage, the rest can be
considered a one-time occurrence. I've done what every 22-year-old
I know wouldn't. I bought a house (mainly for room and taxes), reliable
transportation to get to/from work, and saved the rest for investing in
the community in real estate and back into the market when we somehow recover
from this epidemic we're in.
Last year, 35% of my income went right to
Uncle Sam. That was about $80,000. More than I had made
at all my previous jobs combined. When I purchased my house, 2% of
that sale went to the city in which I live, and every month my $29 cell
phone bill gets about 30% in federal surcharges and taxes added on.
This year I'm going to be paying 39.6% of
my income to taxes, or $150,000. Again, more than I've made
in all my previous years of employment. That means that the government
will have made nearly a quarter of a million dollars in taxes off of me,
but it doesn't stop there. 20% of my house payment goes to local
taxes for services such as schools (50% of that). Its funny though,
I have no kids and had to pay for the small college education I did receive,
as well often had to pay for supplies for classroom activities in my grade
schooling. If teachers are so underpaid where did all this money
go? Those little yellow buses don't burn that much diesel do they?
Rich people aren't worried about paying taxes.
We know we're screwed from the start. I can tell you by being "here"
there are no simple tax shelters or loop holes. The biggest is one
you already have - children. I recently got my $300 back from the
IRS and wondered why my girlfriend, who made far less, got 44% of her taxes
back and I got barely half a percent. I don't have any politicians
in my pocket, nor do I feel I even have a voice in our government.
How else could people so easily discriminate against those who may work
hard or make wise investment choices in this way? They
money I now have gets about 3% per year in interest. Of that,
39.6% will go to taxes, so it makes about 1.8% APR sitting there.
1.8% is less than the average rate of inflation however, so technically
now that the government has taken all my money, and takes what my money
is making by being invested back into the economy, leaving me with a slowly
eroding sum.
What great advantage is it to have this money
then and not spend and flaunt it if it's going to be gone anyway?
I recently read a liberal rag from Texas which my sister pointed out to
me (the east coast liberal she is). In it, the author stated
that during all these tax cut talks the RICH were getting a 35 PERCENT
TAX CUT! Ohh boy, I was just waiting by my mailbox for my 35% mind you.
I believe the lady read the source wrong as it was only proposed to lower
the capital gains rate TO 35% FROM 36% and not taxes BY 35%.
If you fancy a bit of humor, take the total
taxes you paid that year and divide it by your gross income. This will
let you know exactly what you've paid out. Our society seems to think
those who have 10 kids, are single moms, and own their own crack house
should be paying less than those who work hard every day, don't overburden
society with children when they are not ready, maybe get married and stay
that way, and who get paid well for doing so.
I agree with you more than tax breaks should
be done - the whole process is flawed. No flat tax would be
fair to the poor, nor is such a graduated scale fair to those who pay enormous
amounts of tax. One solution I do like is to take the
welfare moms that aren't on crack and put them to work babysitting kids
for those who do work. This way our tax money they live off of can
help more than one family.
Sorry for taking so much of your time,
I tend to keep typing when I'm mad about something. I wish
you and your family well this holiday and hope that our government will
spare us the cost of paying for Clinton's sex affair investigations this
year in our 1040s.
Jon |
Note:
unless there is serious profanity or insanity involved, I edit letters
at little as possible. If you do not wantyour letter to appear on the website,
please indicate that in your letter. Thanks! |
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