THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer’s name, city, and state.
*1*
After reading David Skinner’s Stardumb: Richard Clarke and John Calley, I am hoping that someone will make the Richard Clarke action figure. He would, of course, have the Secret Service-issued .357 as his weapon (as well as a comb and some hairspray). Or perhaps the makers of the action figure should get as grandiose as the book did.
Clarke could have a lightsaber, to fight Darth Cheney and The Emperor W. Or perhaps he could be Batman, fighting against Condi Rice as Catwoman.
–Peter Byrnes Jr.
*2*
In Death by Cool, Jonathan V. Last complains about the excess of “homage” in which Quentin Tarantino indulges. To drive home the point, Last ought to have called upon Shakespeare, who stuck a knife in homage for all time, condemning performers who “cry out on the top of question,”–i.e. make contemporary references–and “are most tyrannically clapped for it,” because undiscerning audiences like to show they “get it.”
In Shakespeare’s view what is actually happening in homage is that uninspired artists are giving undemanding audiences the most debased form of understanding that is possible, just as puns are the lowest form of humor. Homage also interferes with the suspension of disbelief, rather than into the rapture of total immersion in a good story.
–Eric Fern
*3*
Larry Miller’s It’s the War, Stupid strongly resonated with my feelings about what’s going on in Iraq.
I support the current war. I believe that the war, though horrific (like all wars) was and is necessary. And I desperately want Bush to win reelection in November. But I am deeply disappointed in the way this war is being fought. We clearly need more troops. We need to kill the bad guys; we need to make it clear that the United States will not tolerate the status quo. Sometimes I think that George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld just don’t get it.
When Donald Rumsfeld explains that he will send more troops if the commanders in the field request them, I find myself wondering what would happen to the careers of the commanders who did request more troops? I suspect it would be career suicide for any commander to tell the truth and request more troops. I have military experience and I know how these things go.
–Wayne Johnson
*4*
I followed the Jindal race, albeit from afar, and I had suspicions that Jindal’s background would hurt him. (Fred Barnes, The Vote that Dare Not Speak Its Name) I think the difference between Blanco’s campaign, which Barnes acknowledges did not make racist appeals, and a typical Southern Republican campaign in a similar situation is that the Republican always finds a way to inject race into the campaign implicitly and explicitly.
For instance, in Carroll Campbell’s first House race Lee Atwater had telephone polls ask questions about citizens voting for a candidate who “does not accept Jesus Christ as the Lord and Saver” when his opponent was Jewish. It is sad that Southern white voters fall for these appeals but at least Governor Blanco did not engage in these kinds of activities.
–Alex Tisch
*5*
I’m surprised at Fred Barnes. For months Bobby Jindal seemed to have the complete support of everyone in Louisiana. However, late in the campaign, someone asked him to express his beliefs on abortion. He said that he was against abortion for any reason. By the next day, the bottom had dropped out of his campaign. His managers were quick to pick up on the mood change and he eventually said that there were cases in which the Catholic church allowed for abortion–after all other efforts had failed. This explanation came too late to reach many voters. Southern Louisiana is predominantly Catholic and northern Louisiana is predominantly protestant, but it seems that most people, while not believing in abortion for birth control, do support it for other reasons. Landrieu and Blanco stated that they supported abortion under certain circumstances and did not lose votes the way Jindal did even though they, too, are practicing Catholics.
–Alice Allison
*6*
Many people enjoy making comparisons between the Iraq conflict and the war in Vietnam. Most of them do not apply. However, one comparison with Vietnam that any observer of history can see is the events around the Tet offensive. The purpose of that event was to demonstrate an overwhelming image of strength at a critical political time to convince Americans of the futility of continuing the conflict. In reality it was a desperate gamble that decimated the Vietcong’s remaining strength. But it worked.
America blinked and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The insurgent groups in Iraq (of all varieties) will be very active throughout this year in an attempt to sway the upcoming political process. This tactic worked for the Vietnamese (and in Spain), but if we can learn from our historical mistake and match our commitment against theirs, we can truly say we finally learned the lessons of Vietnam.
–Landon Farmer
*7*
I agree with Hugh Hewitt that Kerry was weak on Meet the Press. (International Man of Apology) I also enjoyed the following exchange:
KERRY: Yep.
RUSSERT: . . . and cut the deficit in half in your first four years.
KERRY: Yes, sir.
RUSSERT: If you don’t achieve those goals, would you pledge that you would not seek re-election?
KERRY: Well, it would depend on the circumstances. If I don’t because there’s a war or something terrible happens, of course I’m not going to make that pledge.
Here Kerry recognizes that a war (like Iraq, for which he voted) or something terrible happening (like terrorist attacks on our soil) have unavoidably damaging implications for jobs and the deficit. Yet Kerry maintains the insolence to lambaste Bush for the loss of jobs and the deficit despite the events everyone knows his term has seen.
–William Rohner
*8*
In You’re Hired, Irwin M. Stelzer speaks of more than half a million discouraged workers dropping out of the job search market. I have always wondered–how can a person without a job afford not to look for work? From where I sit in Canada, it seems to me that the United States has no unemployment. You have to go so far as to import illegal workers by the millions to do things Americans won’t. My envy of your system is unbounded.
–Ken Ramsay
*9*
I was listening when Richard Ben Veniste questioned John Ashcroft. (Hugh Hewitt, Hatchet Man) Parenthetically, I am no fan of BV, in fact quite the opposite. But I thought Ben Veniste was giving Ashcroft a public forum to disabuse conspiracy theorists who were sending the Commission letters stating that Ashcroft knew about 9/11 in advance, their “proof” being the fiction that he had switched to using government airplanes instead of commercial airliners. It seemed to me that Ben Veniste knew Ashcroft’s answer in advance.
–Charles Quinn
*10*
Paris Hilton, like 40 percent of adult Caucasian females, is a common Bleached Brunette. (Rachel DiCarlo, Do Gentlemen Prefer Paris?)
The blinding bleach spotlight on her head does not give her any right to use the name Blonde. The name “Blonde” belongs to a very small color minority group and Blondes are actively disassociating from Brunettes who have assumed the name Blonde for “business” purposes.
Pass it on.
–Carol Cox
BlondFromBirth.org
