TOO MEAN
Re: Enemy Central’s Nixed
Doubles:
Enemy Central started off just great, but then it deteriorated
into personal insult. Too bad.
— Paul Kellogg
New York, NY
NEW DEMOCRATS
Re: The Washington Prowler’s This
Bash Won’t Be Fun:
Jim Moran’s behavior is nothing new — just the feigned outrage
by his Democratic fellows in the Congress. They will go to any
lengths to excuse anti-Semitic or race baiting by one of their own.
Whether it’s Al Sharpton, Jesse “Hymie Town” Jackson, Robert “The
Grand Dragon” Byrd, Democrats become extremely tolerant when one of
their own waves the bloody shirt of bigotry. Does anyone doubt that
a Republican Congressman would be spinning on a spit if he or she
has uttered the same crude, thoughtless remark concerning the state
of Israel? One hopes the Republican Party can find an alternative
to this ignorant cipher next year. The sad truth is most of Moran’s
constituents would vote for a Democrat if he stood at the polling
place with a sheet on.
— Chris Healy
Hartford, CT
“Moran is now claiming that one reason for saying what he said was
that his district has one of the largest numbers of Muslim and
Arab-American voters in the U.S.”
So Moran insults the Jews to curry favor with Muslims and Arabs?
Yeah, sounds like the typical garden-variety Democrat.
— Paul Higdon
What I don’t understand is Jewish support for Democrats in the
first place.
— unsigned
SWISS MIX
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s The
Last International:
It’s a bit unfair: now that we, the people of Switzerland, are
finally fully integrated in the UN (we’ve had the privilege of
paying much money for UN activities for a long time, but we were
not a full member), you’re telling me that the party is over. Mind
you, in our country it isn’t up to a few politicians to say “hey,
let’s join that club,” we had to coax a majority of the electorate
into spending that extra international money. So we’re
irritated.
Having been skeptical for half a century ourselves, we can
understand your disdain. I suggest that the USA step out of the UN,
the organization be re-established in Paris so that our delegation
could save on travel expenses.
In your absence, you could read up on the meaning of
veto. It was introduced to bar any action envisaged by
others just in case that one member had a serious problem with it.
Not easy to swallow for those who would rather go ahead, but an
important way of showing respect for minority positions. You blew
it. Now everybody around the globe knows that you don’t respect the
rules.
The French are not easy customers. Neither are the USA and many
others. From now on — that’s your message — countries are free to
do whatever is in their power, unrestricted by the law.
I wish the coalition soldiers success with Saddam Hussein. And
the
aftermath.
— Kurt Schori
Biel-Bienne, Switzerland
WAR COMES TO SADDAM
If you will excuse my lapse into the American vernacular:
“WOO-HOO!”
— Peter Phelps
Canberra, Australia
LA MÊME CHOSE
Re: Mark Goldblatt’s Minstrel
Show :
“It’s possible, perhaps, to reconcile the two conspiracies by
imagining that the United States is confronting Iraq in order to
conquer the entire Middle East and turn over its oil fields to
Israel. This is just the sort of paranoid delusion that percolates
on the so-called ‘Arab Street.’ The fact that a New York City
Councilman cannot see through it calls into question not only his
own sanity but also the collective sanity of the district that
voted him into office.”
It also calls into question the sanity of one of the UN Security
Council’s members, France. Because I’ve heard the exact
same argument from bartenders, taxi drivers and people-in-general
all over Paris.
— unsigned
FOGGY BOTTOMS
Re: George Neumayr’s Nervous
Bullies:
The Vatican’s “diplomacy” in the Iraq affair is driven by a
desire to enhance the Chaldean Catholic community in Iraq. In other
words, it’s politics.
Tariq Aziz, whose opportunity to be the new Talleyrand may have
been cut short by a daisy cutter, got an audience with the pope
because he is a Chaldean Catholic and Rome wants to encourage that
community’s growth.
Solicitude for one’s co-religionists is all well and good. But
cloaking it with pious piffle about peace and God’s will is
dishonest.
It seems Departments of State are the same everywhere. Maybe we
should bring back the Papal States so the Vatican can measure words
against responsibility.
— Bill Roughton
THE ONE AND ONLY
Re: Lawrence Henry’s The
Great Imposter:
Interesting, I knew the real Roger Cook in Nashville. He died a
few years ago while I was living there. He was a true Brit and a
great writer, who could play his songs well and had wonderful
stories to tell. Some of my favorites were about Jimi Hendrix who
rehearsed with his band in a room in the evenings at Roger’s
publishing company in London.
Roger died with his guitar in his hands — his wife said he’d
just told her he was going out back to work on a melody.
Small world,
— Ed
MORE EVERGREENS
Re: George Neumayr’s Self-Inflicted
Tragedy:
The death of Rachel Corrie is hardly a “tragedy.” If her death
requires a label, I’d call it a “fool’s death.” Rachel Corrie lived
the life of a fool, then died like one. Her parents and professors
must be very proud.
— Tillman L. Jeffrey
Manteca, CA
Unbelievable. This women was murdered. By eyewitness accounts they
reversed back over her body. Neumayr is a heartless s———, plain
and simple.
— J. Mathews
Studio City, CA
Back when I was a school principal in Oregon, I attended a
conference on alternative schools at Evergreen State College in
Olympia. This was my first and certainly my last visit to that
toxic waste dump they call a campus. To be in the middle of a
gaggle of latter-day hippies and drooling, knuckle-dragging lefties
was indeed a personal culture shock. At a large open air plaza
there was a ring of folding card tables staffed by the hairy and
unwashed activists touting all sorts of anti-American programs and
begging for dollars. In just a few steps one could buy an armload
of commie crap like bumper stickers, hats, shirts and the like with
their logos plastered all over them. I declined totally to make a
single purchase or even engage one of the resident creatures in
conversation lest I be labeled as one of “them.” What caught my
attention were the clouds of marijuana smoke I walked through. Why
the college officials, who certainly knew what was going on, would
give tacit approval of the violation of our drug laws is beyond me.
Also, why didn’t the cops bust up the smoke in? My use of tobacco
was truly out of place.
— Al Martin
Depoe Bay, OR
FAIR VOTERS
Re: Bob Johnson’s “Gender Locks” letter in Reader Mail’s The
Evergreen Syndrome:
The simple fact, which Mr. Johnson refuses to acknowledge, is
that the gender gap — which is a correlation of partisan voting
behavior based on the gender of voters, and a perfectly valid way
of predicting said behavior if the data supports the
conclusion — vanished from the Big Media radar screen once the
2000 election was completed. Big Media didn’t suddenly start
characterizing the gap differently, they simply stopped talking
about it. I think a true Big Media skeptic would have to draw some
kind of conclusion from this.
I remain convinced that Mr. Johnson is assuming that
George W. Bush “repelled” women voters in 2000 simply because up
‘til then that was the predictable conclusion from Big Media’s
previous description of the phenomenon. And I have no doubt that if
Mr. Johnson were right about this we would still be hearing about
it from Big Media. But we’re not. Where once talk of the gender gap
often drowned out substantive issues, now there is silence.
Since all the latest figures I have seen now show that women are
more open to military action in the war on terror — a tendency
that contradicts what Big Media used to say about why the gender
gap existed — I am fairly confident that in any case the voting
behavior of women can no longer be predicted as facilely as Mr.
Johnson attempts.
Besides, has anyone seen any survey data indicating women’s
overall assessment of Mrs. Clinton? I haven’t, and until I do I
don’t think it’s valid to say that women are drawn to her, any more
than to say they’re repelled by the President.
— Kevin McGehee
Coweta County, GA
