TOPICAL DEPRESSION
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Moody
Blues:
This is an excellent piece that addresses many obvious truths
that
people choose to ignore.
— Mark
Bob Tyrrell really does bring on the blues. Whew, somehow life
seems a bit different here in flyover country.
— Roger Ross
Tomahawk, WI
TEACH YOUR CHILDREN HELL
Re: George Neumayr’s Dumbed
Down and Dumber Still:
This is just an outrage. I was in high school in the 60’s. No
teacher of any student I ever knew used the Beatles or the Rolling
Stones as teaching tools in English class. Kids don’t need to be
“educated in youth culture.” They are saturated with it. What they
need is exposure to things other than their own little world.
— Mary M
If the educators in California teach that crap heaven help us. The
'60s are the dark ages. Just look at the Broadway scene in New
York. All the musicals are revivals . I have yet to find any
original creations in the arts or theater. How sad to learn that
the best in literature is incomprehensible for the sows we call our
youth.
— unsigned
Florida is having a difficult time finding enough teachers to staff
its public schools in this rapidly growing state — grownups having
little more interest in wasting their time in and around public
school campuses than do students. So the question has arisen:
Should people who have not jumped through all the teacher
certification hoops — including mostly being anesthetized and
ideologized in schools of education — be allowed to teach?
After reading George Neumayr’s “Dumbed and Dumber,” an
unflinching survey of educational “thinking” on planet California
— I believe a more urgent question would be: Should certified
teachers be arrested any time they attempt to set foot on a school
campus?
If, among other forms of intellectual and cultural pillage,
Shakespeare has been replaced in California schools by Sixpac
Schlemiel, then it’s time for California taxpayers to sing Dandy
Don’s little song. We all remember Don Meredith, who co-chaired
“Monday Night Football” with the repellent Howard Cosell long ago
and far away. When one team got so far ahead that the other team
had no chance to recover, the cheerful Don would break into his
song, the words to which go - “Turn out the lights, the party’s
over….”
— Larry Thornberry
Tampa, FL
LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED
Re: Michael Craig’s Joe
Millionaire’s Easiest Marks:
Is it possible that the con is that he really is a millionaire,
and that the drama will be furthered with the news that Joe is not
a millionaire to the winner to see her reaction. Is love blind to
riches or lack of them?
I predict she will fall in love with him inspite of the con, at
which point it will be revealed that he is a millionaire. I’m
dizzy.
— C. Peters
The women are “in on it” too and it is a hoax on the audience.
True or not, a caller to a local radio talk show once worked on
Star Search and other types of these “reality” productions
and he said they are so staged it’s not funny.
The winners on Star Search, he said, are picked in
advance and move up based more on backstage decisions rather than
those made by judges and the audience.
— Greg Barnard
Franklin, TN
It took you three episodes to figure all this out?
— Ed Callahan
Michael Craig replies: Hey, Ed, gimme
a break! It took me only two episodes.
CULTURE OF THE LIE
Re: John Corry’s The
Pipsqueaks’ Dirty War:
John Corry quotes from a David Remnick article in New
Yorker that “Vaclav Havel… had triumphed over a totalitarian
system, and restored the ‘dimensions and vigor of the liberal
idea….’” Interesting twist. My understanding is that Havel waged
a moral crusade against the “culture of the lie” that was the
defining characteristic of communism. When Havel and the dissenters
in other bloc countries, aided by the vocal and moral support of
the pope and Ronald Reagan, exposed the lies and evil for what they
were, the system collapsed.
The Soviets were restrained in preventing the collapse because
they were vulnerable to the Pershing missiles that Reagan had
deployed (without opposition from the Vatican, which gave the
deployment a moral standing it would not have otherwise had) and,
oddly to some extent, because Gorbachev had been elevated to the
status of great diplomat by the Western media….
Contrary to Remnick’s implication, totalitarianism seems to be
mostly confined to the left. There’s a whiff of it in much of the
Democratic Party platform, which is based on political correctness,
class warfare, race baiting, group identities tinged with
victimhood, and glorification of government as our problem solver
and protector. Maybe he misidentifies today’s “liberal” idea with
the liberal idea that guided America prior to the New Deal and
Great Society. Illiberally, there is little debate among the
Democrats and left that is aimed at getting to the truth of any
current issue. To see such debate, one must go to conservative or
libertarian sources. The Democrats, as did the communists, resort
to demagoguery, slogans, half-truths and lies to support their
positions. For instance, try to get into an honest debate with a
leftist on taxes, public schools, federalism, or separation of
church and state. You know the responses, and they aren’t reasoned
positions supported by evidence. Just more of the culture of the
lie.
— Pat Birmingham
IT’S CODY OUTSIDE
Re: Bill Croke’s It’s
Dry:
Let me be the first to blame this “ecological disaster” on
global warming. I propose the government spend $400 billion to
create rain and colder/but milder conditions to save those
unidentified bug larvae from an earlier than expected death. My
goal is eliminate “dying like flies” as a popular metaphor for all
time.
— Ed Callahan
I particularly enjoy Bill Croke’s articles from Cody, Wyoming.
Reminds me of a simpler time. Thank you,
— Bonnie P.
Las (Lost) Vegas, NV
ABOVE AVERAGE
Re: Richard Renken’s “If It’s Brokaw Fix It” letter in Reader
Mail’s Spiritual
Gains, Material Losses:
Since he was reading, Richard probably missed the lead-in to the
tax cut segment. It featured a video of children playing basketball
in an Ohio gym. The reporter stated that due to the tax cut, their
program would be canceled because the federal tax cuts would worsen
Ohio’s existing deficit and the basketball program would have to be
eliminated.
I suspect that viewers who accepted this logic would also accept
as fact a (fully tenured, I assume) college professor’s statement
implying that a sum is the same as an average. Maybe the kids
should take some time out and teach the professor, and members of
the NBC News staff, basic math concepts.
— John Kezbers
Oklahoma City, OK
The cited report can be seen at Media Research Center’s site
www.mediaresearch.org. (Link
to Wednesday’s CyberAlert.)
Note: the professor said Bill Gates’ income was $10 million, not
$1 million, which is how she came up with the $1 million average
income. It still fails to take into account that Bill Gates pays an
enormous amount of tax, and those $30,000 folks pay next to
zilch.
— Mary M.
THE BIG SLEEP
Re: Regular Guy’s “Late Night Disturbances” letter in Reader Mail’s
Spiritual
Gains, Material Losses:
Dear Regular Guy,
I feel your pain!
And if you believe that, I have some nice Whitewaterfront
property I’d like to show you!
However, I have a cure for your sleeplessness. Make up your mind
to vote Republican. Then you won’t have to try to figure out all
those conflicting, changing, chimerical images from the Democratic
hopefuls. Like me, you “frankly won’t give a damn.” You’ll sleep
much better.
Besides, whatever you decide Joe, or John, or Al (Sharpton, not
Gore) meant when they opened their mouths will change the next time
they open their mouths depending on the next poll, or a news bite
out of the White House. (Well, maybe not Al S. Unlike Al G. he’s
pretty consistent!) But Dubya, God bless him, may not always be
sure of what to say, but he is always sure of what to do. That’s
just one benefit of having a person of principle in the Oval
Office.
Let’s hear it for Four More Years of sleeping soundly. Vote
Republican!
— Bob Johnson
Bedford, TX
LATEST INSTRUCTIONS
The attack yesterday on the safety of pickups and sport utility
vehicles by Jeffrey Runge, administrator of the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), at an automotive conference
in Detroit is a perfect example of the dimwittedness that permeates
so many of our regulatory agencies. As a pickup owner, I and most
people who have bought and drive these vehicles know that they do
not handle and corner like sports cars and do not attempt to drive
them this way. To hear a medical doctor, who should know better,
attribute such inane behavior to the citizens and taxpayers of this
country, apparently to score some publicity points, and then top it
off with a threat to seek to dictate the design characteristics of
vehicles to be sold to the public, as if he and his fellow
regulators are competent to do so, is really too much to tolerate.
I had hoped that this administration would purge Washington of such
foolishness, but apparently not. Any exposure and support for the
shaming such performances by those living off the taxpayers dollars
by The American Prowler are much appreciated.
— Gary Hannah
Shalimar, FL
