The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Menaces, Loons, and Blowouts

6.17.02 @ 12:01AM

DADDY'S HOME
Re: Francis X. Rocca's Fathers Are Optional:

Fathers are optional? I want to thank The American Prowler for making me feel so important this Father's Day. I guess putting out the fire on the hair of my daughter's head twice when she stood too close to the stove as she was cooking or speeding her to the hospital when she got really sick doesn't count as being important. Or when my other daughter had a serious blowout on the freeway and had to pull off on to the narrow inside shoulder and then called me, her father, and not her mother, on her cell phone for advice. I'm sorry if I didn't read the entire article because I couldn't get past the main idea of it....
-- Bob Green

HIGH LOON
Interesting column by Bill Croke today, "The Myth of the New West." I'm familiar with the protesting Western literary movement from my long association with Diane Alden, editor of the very good aldenchronicles.com. Diane is definitely not a leftist of any stripe. Diane began (and I hope, finished) a wonderful modern west novel which I helped edit in the days when Spintechmag.com was still publishing a literary supplement.

I do have to dispute some of his characterizations of Edward Abbey, however. He calls all of Abbey's novels except The Monkey Wrench Gang "frankly bad," and calls The Monkey Wrench Gang itself "a narrative train wreck." Yes, Abbey was a loon, which he himself knew better than anyone else. (He drew a marvelous cartoon caricature of himself as a bearded buzzard glowering over a desert landscape.) But he was, at his best, a fabulous, laugh-out-loud writer, with the kind of gift that can be driven only by obsession. "Society, too, human society, is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top." What Jeffersonian couldn't love that?
-- Lawrence Henry
Westfield, NJ

DALLAS DIVISIONS
Re: George Neumayr's Doing Dallas:

As a practicing Catholic living in America I am very disturbed by the unraveling of this recent crisis. I think it is hypocritical of the Church to protect abusive priests while condemning this very behavior from the pulpit, however, we must be careful, as the public and media, not to condemn the church as a whole. A church by definition is the collective community, and in this case the Catholic Church as a community, including priests, bishops, cardinals, parishioners, deacons, etc. has and continues to do God's work in a manner that I can be proud of.

The recent attacks on the "Church" may have a more far reaching detrimental effect on the country than we may be able to see now. As we all know this country was founded on Christian beliefs, and by attacking the "Church" as a whole community without singling out those select few perpetrators, will continue the steady erosion of Christianity and the belief system this country was founded upon. This seems to me to be a greater underlying problem than is currently being discussed.

I ask you to please use a bit more responsibility in your commentary before we completely dismantle everything this country has worked so hard for.
-- S. Donahue
El Granada, CA

George Neumayr ... apparently so loves himself that he cannot be objective.
-- Bill Guentner

Is there any thing you could do to help publicize (and ultimately remove) the GAY PRIDE Rainbow Triangle that appears on the Official Diocese of Cleveland website?
-- unsigned

The Catholic Bishops didn't get it. The Dallas Conference was a sham -- Dies Irae, the day of wrath! How can the faithful remain faithful? It's impossible. I commend George Neumayr for all of his timely columns (and criticism) of the Catholic Church.
-- Jack Hughes
Chicago, IL

WORKING ONE'S WAY THROUGH LIFE
Re: Reid Collins' Sky High Ed:

As a retired Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor I have for some time questioned the emphasis on a four-year college education for all children.

Ever try to have any work done around your home?

As a nation we have a shortage of carpenters, plumbers, mechanics and other skilled tradesmen. These skilled trades often pay as well as most professional careers. A quite affordable education in the trades can be obtained at the two-year community college level and can often be combined with part-time work in the trade of choice.

There are many high school kids out there who would rather swing a hammer or turn a wrench but are pushed into four year colleges by their parents.
-- Jim Woodward
Allen, MD

HONORARY DEGREE
Re: Jeremy Lott's Commencement Duress:

I am a few subjects shy of graduating from Auburn University. May I transfer my transcript to Trinity Western University or Redeemer Pacific College in British Columbia and with a little effort get a degree?

Auburn University is in Auburn, Alabama, U.S.A.

Thank you for an answer.
-- Tom Jelks

FOXED IN
Re: The Prowler's White House in Control: This Weak:

Someone ought to tell that moron staffer in the White House communications office that the only show that will get the message out clearly is Fox News. Not even a mention ??? Truly lame and aclueistic.
-- Don Cohen

REFIGURED PRIORITIES
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.'s Fifty-Five Years Ago Today:

Good info, but IRAN is the real problem. Islamic fanaticism began with the Iranian revolution. KILL IRAN not just IRAQ.
-- Dennis Gould

Mr. Tyrrell writes: "A judicious reading of the news stories of the past few months suggests that the vigorous reordering of Washington's priorities seen in 1947 is being attempted again in 2002. The havoc that Islamic terrorists have brought to the Middle East, to Israel, to Palestine, and to Lebanon, makes it clear that our present reordering of priorities is of the utmost importance."

Gee, and all along I had thought it was the Sept. 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States of America that was behind the proposed changes.
-- Chuck Rosemond
Virginia City, MT

OFFSIDES
Re: Enemy Central's Soccer Mums:

I don't get it, maybe it's the air, or the giant mosquito's here in the northwoods creating a lack of blood circulation, but color me "confused."
-- Jack-Pine Savage

NO STARS
Oh come on -- it's been over a month since Attack of the Clones came out. Why hasn't James Bowman ripped the movie to shreds and predicted the imminent collapse of civilization on the grounds that people went to see it anyway? I know he went to see Phantom Menace; this one was nowhere near as bad.
-- Roy Koczela

James Bowman replies: Well, Roy, the way I look at it is this. The reason I haven't gone to see Attack of the Clones is the same as the reason why I didn't go to the latest Ed Burns movie. Life and Nothing But, I think it was called, though it disappeared so quickly that I have forgotten it already. Having watched Burns's downward progress from The Brothers McMullen to She's the One to No Looking Back, I decided at that point that I never needed to see anything else he had directed. In George Lucas's case, the decline from the original Star Wars trilogy to Phantom Menace was so precipitous that it made Burns's angle of decline look like a gentle slope. Enough! There is no criticizing such unresisting imbecility. It cannot but seem to me to be a waste of your critic's time. But if there are a large number of requests for a review, as there were for Lord of the Rings, I shall go anyway, and report back. It is my duty.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Education, Trade, Islam, Law, Iraq, Iran, Israel