The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Here's Johnny

7.1.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 4)

R. Emmett Tyrrell's column about Don Imus and Johnny Miller included some sloppiness about the meaning of the First Amendment. Tyrrell suggested that "As an ardent defender of the First Amendment I opposed Imus's extinction." Of course, the First Amendment only refers to government actions. If Imus was terminated by his employer because his sponsors were afraid that he would alienate too large a segment of the listening audience, too bad for Imus, but it is not a First Amendment issue. The First Amendment does not protect anyone from offending their employer, nor should it.
-- John A. Penkrot

I don't think Mr. Miller's problem is with ethnicity, but he does have a problem that at time causes one to cringe. I remember a year or so ago he said that golfer Rod Pampling (paraphrasing since I don't have the exact quote) "looks like the guy who show up to paint your house or garage door" or something along those lines. What to read into a comment like that? I don't know, but it was senseless and certainly added nothing to the commentary.

Miller also frequently makes references to how much money Tiger Woods has (how rich he is), which I find in rather poor taste.

I don't what Miller's issue is, but it doesn't reflect well on him.
-- Diane Shomper
Wilmington, Delaware

The Constitution guarantees the right to say almost anything. Etiquette demands that we don't abuse this right.
-- Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

Great article. Well said.
-- John Marino
Director of Government Relations & Public Policy
National Italian American Foundation (NIAF)
Washington, D.C.

RAINY UNITY
Re: Andrew Cline's Used in Unity:

More than failing to note the stage-managed nature of the non-event, I'm annoyed (but not surprised) that nothing I've read so pointed out the timing of Clinton's endorsement -- less than a week after Obama called together his leading donors/bundlers and asked them to raise money to help retire his former opponent's campaign debt. He flat-out bought her support and, with the stunning hubris that has become a hallmark of his campaign, did not even make the pretense of disassociating the two events.

Of course, his hubris was well-grounded, as no one in the press called him (or her) out on it. The image of the reporters in Unity complacently being herded into a pen and denied access to the people at the event, and not objecting, about says it all.
-- Peter J. Lyden, III
Rumson, New Jersey

According to Obama, words have meaning. And so do symbols -- Unity New Hampshire. Got it! So words, names included, are important, but to paraphrase Mr. Cline, "They [the people] were nothing more than props, hauled in and out of this tiny town to serve as a backdrop for the media event..." For the Democrats, when have the people ever been more than props and a means to an end for power?
-- Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

WHERE HAVE ALL THE COWBOYS GONE?
Re: Windsor Mann's Woman Up:

The serious public question raised by Mann's musings is what type of man will America's voters embrace in the upcoming election? I fear that the current culture may favor a candidate whose non-threatening form of maleness reflects a national personality that no longer values strength, decisiveness and patriotism.

Obama is a perfect storm of liberalism, pacifism, racial guilt, feminism and charisma. He is mysterious, soothing and messianic to those who would allow government to relieve them of the responsibility of struggling to succeed in a competitive world. Obama represents the Final Solution to the nation's long-standing (but illusory) obsessive mania with a racist past. Aside from his well-modulated baritone, Obama's manner is -- as Windsor Mann pointed out -- decidedly feminine. Not effeminate, but calculated to present no threat to any voter who can be convinced that hard-edged Christian cowboys have had their way for too long. So, why not give The New Man a chance and show the world that we are no longer racists?

The state of maleness in the U.S. is at low ebb. American boys are derided as budding cavemen early on and doped accordingly. They are bombarded with messages that they are all potential sexual predators, unneeded as fathers, husbands and professionals and should just generally behave better -- like the girls do. While women complain that they can't find any real men to share their lives, most fail to draw the connection to their own complicity in that scarcity. We can't raise our boys to think like girls and expect Harry Reid, Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich or John Kerry to behave like men when they grow up. The concept is simply foreign.

Like his minister's message about chickens coming home to roost, Obama's lack of traditional male traits will be a strength against a war hero who represents The Old Man, unless of course, enough of us recognize that the New Man is a gamble we can't afford to take.
-- Deane Fish
Altamont, New York

Letter to the Editor

topics:
John McCain, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Satire, Constitution, Law, Military, NATO, Energy, Oil