The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Bad Times

9.17.07 @ 12:01AM

MOVING ON
Re: The Prowler's The New York Times Moves On:

I wonder how the Times's regular advertisers will take these new ad rates. For a paper said to be in a bad financial position, it must seem strange to discount an ad so much, for a group that probably would have paid the full market price.
-- Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

The New York "Slimes" like MoveOn.org is a surrogate mouthpiece for the Democrat Party. When they "speak" they are speaking for the Democrat Party (even the two-faced blue dogs). The Democratic Party needs to be "tarred and feathered" with the lies of their media whores and brainless twits (aka activists). When they attempted to undermine General Petraeus they were speaking for Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emmanuel, Joe Biden, Dick Durbin, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, Ike Skelton, Tom Lantos, Imam Obama, Mrs. Bill Clinton and every politician in America who has a D beside his or her name.
-- Michael Tomlinson
Jacksonville, North Carolina

The incredible thing about the "General Betray Us" ad is that no one expresses embarrassment. The ad was so low brow (there are more sophisticated plays on names on fourth-grade playgrounds), yet I've seen none of my liberal friends here in the Athens of the West reaching for barf bags. And this is an oasis of sagacious people. Most Dem members of Congress also are intelligent (no one -- Dem or Republican -- gets into Congress by being stupid), yet the Dem member have signed on to this silly name-calling by remaining silent. This is really scary. Does this mean that Soros owns them to a man (woman)?
-- Ty Knoy
Ann Arbor, Michigan

RIGHT SOUNDS
RE: Greg Gutfeld's The Cretin Hop:

Your article "The Cretin Hop" really struck a chord with me. Being once a Los Angeles ex-punk musician (1978-84) and now a solid conservative with latent libertarian leanings, I couldn't agree more. Now working within the "entertainment" industry by supporting IT-based studio equipment offers a continuous exposure to the biggest morons this city has to offer.

I used to be disgusted and now I try to be amused (I know, early Elvis C. was a personal hero of mine) is sometimes is the only way to get through the day. And to top it off I am Latino, so already they expect total agreement (stereotyping in the extreme) when spewing some white guilt, America-hating tripe from the 60's. The few times I've fired back with the cold slap of reality they acted like I was kidding!

Note: I do keep my conservatism under cover because by personal experience it is better to do so profession-wise.

Keep up the good work.
-- J.E Limon

HUMBOLDT ROCKS
Re: Peter Hannaford's Fame Fizzles, But Not Always:

Heavens to Hephaestus, can't you even get 18th century science right?

Peter Hannaford's paean to the good and great Alexander von Humboldt tells us that after perambulating: "Up and down volcanoes, he decided they came from fissures deep the earth, thus upending the popular view that they were built up from ancient oceans."

Hannaford seems to confuse the common wisdom about volcanoes, which antedates Pompeii, with the Neptunist versus Plutonist controversy current in academe when Humboldt was a grad student at the Royal Saxon Bergakademie in the 1790's. The Neptunists maintained that rocks were relics laid down as sediments by the Biblical flood, while godless Plutonists, drunk on secular materialism, raved that granite might once have been molten. The very idea!

As to the continuing fame of A.v.H 's magnum opus Cosmos, whose title and theme were pinched without credit by Carl Sagan's eponymous PBS series, I gave it pride of place in the Wall Street Journal last year as one of The Five Best Science Books.

Mr. Hannaford ought to read it, along with the work of Humboldt's more intelligent elder brother Wilhelm -- he's the one who invented the modern university.
-- Russell Seitz
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Education, Health Care, Joe Biden, Harry Reid, Bill Clinton, Earmarks, Social Security, Books, Military, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Conservatism