QUE SERA SARAH!
Re: P. David Hornik’s Frogs and
Snails and Puppy Dogs’ Tails:
I can speak from the perspective of a child of divorce. My
mother was a “Sarah.” She left my dad in 1981 because she said she
was “not happy.” My brother and I were under 5 years old. I am
convinced that the vast majority of children like ourselves, and
there are a lot of us out there, react with extreme anger towards
our mothers.
Divorce is bad; I think what makes it doubly bad is something
I’ve never heard anyone say before but is one of my
undeniable truths of life: stepmothers, unless a font of class
and/or religiosity, will be outright hostile to their stepchildren;
and most divorced fathers will remarry. The same is not true for
step-fathers.
While our step-mom was abusing us, my mother was out “finding
herself.” It’s too long a story why I’m not as upset with my
dad.
Selfishness, narcissism, and the belief that gender differences
were cultural helped push these women into feelings that their
husbands are making them suffer. If a husband “knows” a woman needs
to talk but he “refuses” to ask her about her feelings, of course
she is going to think he doesn’t care or is even hostile to
her!
I’m married, and my values are a marked contrast from my
mother’s. I would never allow done to my children what was done to
me. I hear about other divorced children who have problems with
relationships; frankly, I just don’t think they’re that smart. If
you can’t observe your parents, reason what their mistakes were,
and do differently… That being said, I do think there is
something to the question, “…could it be we’re finding out that
— contrary to the lore and assumptions of the ages — women just
don’t like men that much?” I love my husband and he is my best
friend, but if something should happened to him, I would not
remarry; we are getting a life insurance policy that would allow me
continue staying home, unmarried, with no worries. My husband needs
me emotionally far more than I need him. My experience, especially
with old people, tells me I’m not alone.
Your overall point about the war, I think, is a good one. The
divorce types give up easily. Fortunately, we are one generation
into the divorce experiment as opposed to just having begun it, and
there are a lot of us divorced children who are hellions about
commitment! I think that, and the so-called “Roe effect” among
other reasons, are why the anti-war movement is only an echo of
what that movement was during the Vietnam war.
— Emily B.
Hornik’s insightful article points out a really cogent fact about
the war on terror: it’s a two-front war. There’s a home front and a
foreign campaign. To the extent that we promote cultural and moral
(or amoral) decadence we invite the kind of outrageous, despicable
acts perpetrated against us like 9/11. And it is worth noting that
the same media-elite, Hollywood crowd, and Clintonites who are
doing everything they can to discredit President Bush and our
efforts in Iraq are the very purveyors of the moral perversion and
decadence that help to insight the fanaticism of our enemies. To
win the war against terrorists and the nation states that support
them we must not only wage an aggressive campaign against them on
their soil, we must do what we can in our own lives and in our
communities to promote moral truth in all we do and think and say.
It’s time for a spiritual reawakening if renewal and regeneration
are to take place — which we need to survive as a nation.
— Marc Miller
What’s to figure out? For all the discussion it boils down to
this:
• Men are creatures of habit.
• Women are creatures of curiosity.
Women spend half their lives trying to figure out their husbands
and once they have they get bored. The fact that it took them that
long to figure us out is because we men hold our features closely
guarded like poker players. The trick is to keep the curiosity
factor going on the positive side.
How one achieves this is beyond my capacity, being now in my
second marriage. But I will close with this. My grandmother, God
rest her soul, had a very useful nugget — “Like someone before you
love them, love them before you marry them. It works better in the
end.”
— John McGinnis
ROGER, HOUSTON
Re: RiShawn Biddle’s Bust
Times:
RiShawn Biddle writes: “Taxpayers in Houston, whose fund faces a
$1.5 billion deficit, are looking to get from under a
state-mandated rule to meet pension obligations, while citizens in
rival Dallas are on the hook for $2 billion.”
It was not a “rule,” but a new constitutional requirement
approved by Texas voters overwhelmingly last year. However, Houston
voters were able to “opt out” of that provision in a special
election held in Houston on May 15. Now, the real work begins on
fixing the underfunded municipal employees pension liability
(deficit isn’t quite the right term) here.
It’s an issue that our local politicians, at least up until
recently, have handled poorly, and that our local newspaper has
covered poorly. This problem didn’t come about overnight, although
one wouldn’t know that from the newspaper’s coverage.
Our new conservative watchdog effort (ChronicallyBiased.com) hopes to keep a closer eye on
issues like this, and perhaps to spur the local newspaper to engage
in less cheerleading for favored local politicians and entities,
and provide better coverage of topics — like this one — important
to Houstonians and Texans.
— Kevin Whited
ChronicallyBiased.com
MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Re: Jed Babbin’s Hope Is Not
a Policy (and Robert A. Berdon’s “French Collapse” letter in
Reader Mail’s What’s So
Funny?):
I just watched the President deliver his dull speech. Too bad he
didn’t deliver the one Jed Babbin wrote. To be sure, if he had the
media and the Democrats would be shrieking from the housetops all
night, all day tomorrow and all week about his failure to
understand how an American President should behave in this world,
about his failure to apologize again for Abu Ghraib, about his
stupidity and his altogether vicious incompetence — and one more
thing: he would have won the strong support of most of his
countrymen, and gone a long way toward nailing down his
reelection.
— John G. Hubbell
Minneapolis, Minnesota
How often have I thought of sitting down and writing a speech the
President SHOULD deliver. As did Jed Babbin and his offering was
fairly close to being possible. Dubya would probably have to leave
all that stuff about the Democrats as it is too blatantly
political, albeit very true.
But the rest of the missive is right on and how I wish, how I
desperately wish, that President Bush would sit down and talk
straight to us idiots out here in la-la land. I mean some real
straight, down and dirty talk.
Congress accuses this administration of being very tight-lipped
and I must agree. Speech after speech after Meet the
Press, Bush says the same old platitudes and mouths the same
stale phrases.
Which is why the media and Democrats are winning. Because they
have the stage and Bush lets them have it.
This war on terror is as much a propaganda war as it is anything
else. Yet no one seems to care about the propaganda foisted on the
American people. I hear America broadcasts into Iraq so why can’t
we get some of that propaganda here in America?
America will be done with Iraq and the war on terror if the
media liberals and power-hungry Democrats get their way. But the
American public, the great unwashed living their quiet legal lives,
have polled time and time again to support the war on terror.
This administration is going to lose this war because they were
too timid to give some straight and serious talk. If the American
public gives up, President Bush, the war on terror and democracy in
Iraq will be totally lost.
And I won’t blame the Democrats and I won’t blame the media.
This American will blame the cowardly administration that let
political correctness rule and didn’t fight back with their most
powerful weapon: the truth.
— Pat Fish
Georgetown, Delaware
Please consider the Third Jihad when you comment on what President
Bush says tonight at the Army War College. This article was written
a month ago, and can be found here. Here
is an extract:
The so-called “War On Terror” did not start on 9-11. That was
when many realized that the United States was in protracted
asymmetrical warfare with Islamic militants. This conflict started
in the 1970s and will last decades, and longer if the Islamic
militants get overt state sponsorship. As in all warfare this is
fundamentally a battle of wills. Two questions must be
answered:
• What is a realistic estimate of the current
situation?
• What is the best strategy to achieve victory at the lowest
possible cost?
— Dr. Sam Holliday
Director, Armiger Cromwell Center
Too bad President Bush didn’t see your speech first. It would have
been a breath of fresh air. I enjoy listening to Mr. Babbin on KSFO
in San Francisco.
— Billy Maher, Jr.
I loved “Once More
Into the Screech.” Thanks for the article.
— Larry Morris
CHEWLESS
Re: Shawn Macomber’s Attack of
the Killer Cicadas:
Re: the Killer Cicada article by Shawn Macomber, he states that
the number of plants cicadas eat are outnumbered only by the
creatures that eat cicadas. Cicadas don’t eat plants. They don’t
eat anything. They may drink a little water. In their nymph stage,
they suck sap from tree roots, but they have no chewing
mouthparts.
— Lisa Ryan
COMING THROUGH
Re: Sean Michael Campbell’s letter (under “It Gets Worse”) in
Reader Mail’s What’s So
Funny?:
Hey Sean, I’m really surprised to find out they loosened your
leather straps long enough for you to pen that drivel. To say that
Nick Berg deserved to have his head sawed off because he went to
Iraq alone is like saying you deserve to be let out of the looney
bin before you are cured.
— Greg Goff
Casper, Wyoming
Yes! Yes!
I knew the left would find some way to excuse the Berg murder; I
just didn’t know how. Many thanks for the letter from Sean Michael
Campbell with his brilliant answer.
It was Berg’s own fault. He shouldna been there. He was askin’
for it. Look at the way he was dressed.
— Fred Z
