The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Clothes Make the Nation

6.18.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 3)

As I wrote in my column, life is complicated and children will be raised in all kinds of environments. Many of them will be loved and well cared for in nontraditional arrangements. But everything we have learned in the last few decades of family breakdown suggests that we shouldn't make marriage more about the comforts, desires, and emotional satisfaction of the adults involved at the children's expense. Everything we've learned suggests it would be a mistake to rewrite the basic assumptions of marriage and family law to put the deliberate creation of fatherless or motherless children on the same level as the two-parent family. And these same lessons show that it is no attack on adoption to support the fundamental responsibilities of biological parents to the lives they bring into the world.

UNDERSTANDABLE BEHAVIOR
Re: Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar's Against the Grain:

I agree that hoarding is a problem and thanks for pointing it out. However, when the world's largest agricultural producer forces its people to burn their food in their cars, can you really blame less fortunate countries for protecting their food supply? It seems to me the problem is GROPEC, Getting Rich Off Producing Ethanol from Corn.
-- Les Rensink
Freeman, South Dakota

OBAMANAGER
Re: T.C. Gunter's letter (under "Managerial Style") in Reader Mail's SCOTUS Pocus:

Your correspondent T.C. Gunter extols Barack Hussein Obama's qualifications as a successful manager and a leader. Well, he started out as a "community organizer" (that's the new name for a welfare pimp). Then he was a lawyer for welfare pimps; and finally, he was a law instructor for future lawyers for welfare pimps. Then he was elected to the Illinois legislature, and finally to the US Senate. His wife is University of Chicago VP in charge of "community relations" (what exactly is that?) at an annual salary of $320,000. Is she a world-known scientist -- perhaps a professor of thermodynamics or of atomic particle physics -- to be worth $320,000 a year? If an academic year is 12 months -- or is it only 9? Mr. Gunter is thrilled with the phrase "Obama '08-16"! Perhaps he envisions nationalization of oil companies, automobile companies, utility companies, plus much increased subsidies for wind mills and solar panels, plus imaginative peace treaties with Iran, Syria, Cuba, and North Korea with American war reparation payments to them. He will also enforce the old saying "From everybody according to his abilities, to everybody according to his needs" - the basic dogma of every professional welfare pimp. I'll bet that in that span of 8 years many new-borns will be named Barack or Hussein.
-- Marc Jeric
Las Vegas, Nevada

WOLF ATTACK
Re: Wolf Terner's and Jack Wheatley's letters (under "Caveat") in Reader Mail's Burden of Proof:

While I don't take necessarily take issue with Wolf Terner's and Jack Wheatley's responses to Robert Stacy McCain's Tim Russert article, I would invite both gentlemen to read Thomas Sowell's reminiscence of Mr. Russert in Tuesday's RealClearPolitics, "What Made Tim Russert Special." Dr. Sowell's closed his appreciation of him with this statement: "How people treat those who cannot do them any good or any harm reveals a lot about their character. For me, Tim Russert scored high in that department as well."
-- Paul DeSisto
Cedar Grove, New Jersey

Wolf Terner, in his letter, states that it is not polite to talk of the dead. Is it OK if I point out a couple of things to the living?

It is perfectly polite to "talk" of the dead, Mr. T. It is considered extremely poor taste to speak ill of the dead. In light of Mr. Terner's opinion of Tim Russert, his condolences to the family seem insincere at best.

One wonders how Mr. Terner came by his ability to judge towering intellect. Twice in a short letter, he used the hackneyed "enough already" and referred to Ed Murrow as Morrow.

If Mr. Terner never cared for Tim Russert as a journalist/moderator that is his business, but to deny others the opportunity to mourn the loss of someone whose life enriched theirs, whether on Sunday mornings, in his books or just by his jovial smile, seems a little -- what is the word? -- crappy.

I look forward to the day MSNBC hauls out the video of Tim in a baseball "stroll down memory lane" with the likes of Yogi Berra, Roger Maris and other greats. His delight at being in the presence of these legends of the game was evident. He grinned from ear to ear as they told tales on each other. Talk about your Inside Baseball!!! I don't know a thing about the game and I loved every minute of the hour.
-- Diane Smith

Thanks to reader Wolf Terner for having the courage I lacked, in being one of the first to place the canonization of Tim Russert in its proper perspective. While civility and decorum for the dead and his family caused me to pause in my criticism, the over the top adulation of Mr. Russert by the M.S.M., talk radio, and even the conservative blogs has just been too much to take. Mr. Terner, to his credit, has succulently and accurately summarized Mr. Russert's career, as it really was.

I too was never much impressed with Russert's "gotcha" journalism, and to add to Mr. Terner's observations, many times Russert deliberately edited quotes out of context. I remember a specific instance a few years back, when Sec. Rumsfeld was misquoted by Russert. Rumsfeld however, in his forward thinking, came prepared, and pulled out a copy of his exact remarks, which he read, while a chagrined Russert merely looked down in silence. I would add one final comment; and that deals with Mr. Russert's participation in the criminalization of Bush Administration policies, with his carefully crafted testimony, that helped convict Scooter Libby, in that most shameful of American prosecutions.
-- A. DiPentima

BIPARTISAN
Re: Mike Roush's letter (under "There He Goes Again") in Reader Mail's Burden of Proof:

Geez, all Mike Roush has to say about Jay Homnick's column is "are you willing to impose the same standards on the Right, Mr. Homnick?"

Guess what, Mr. Roush, this was not about The Left or The Right. It was about human decency and the lack thereof regardless of which side of the political spectrum it comes from. Why couldn't you just agree with Mr. Homnick that the book is appalling? Because deep down inside you thought, well, I agree with what the book says therefore it's not so bad -- which is exactly the problem. The same problem Obama has with his church. When you agree you really don't see a problem, right?
-- Deborah Durkee
Marietta, Georgia

Letter to the Editor

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