ArticleIP_3845.txt

   
   
      
         
            

            
               Geriatric
Gist
            

            Was your
primer of pop music, Mark Jenkins' "The Gist," meant as a joke? I mean, really, are you
KIDDING? Who do you think your readers are? Bob Dole?

            
               --Emily
White
            

            

               Un-coolio
            

            Why, exactly, is Slate
publishing a primer on pop music (see Mark Jenkins' "The Gist")? Is pop music a
largely undocumented phenomenon? Certainly not. We wouldn't call it "pop" if it
wasn't popular. Surely your intended readers are keen observers of the world,
much like you try to present yourselves. Why, then, does pop need explaining?
You publish articles on economics, opera, Broadway musicals, and lexicography
without cheeky "background" pieces. It's as if you're explaining this facet of
low culture to your high-culture audience: "Let's explicate the silly art forms
of the masses for our elite readership."

            
Hopefully, your coming music criticism won't be so pedantic or derisive--or so
simplistic and misguided: To imply that Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" is
celebrating violence is to admit that you haven't actually listened to the
song.

            
               --Ben
Auburn
            

            
               Krugman's
Nakedness
            

            "The Lost Fig Leaf," Paul
Krugman's explication of the Republican revolution's collapse, ignores the two
main reasons why Clinton will win re-election. First, Clinton cynically
undermined the Republican effort--tentative and modest as it was--to take care
of the Medicare nettle. His action on this front will remain a model of
political sandbagging for years to come. Second, Newt Gingrich and the rest of
the congressional GOP establishment were successfully demonized. Newt's no
saint and no statesman, but his early conduct as speaker showed promise. He
managed to push along more of the Contract With America than most thought he
would. He did shoot himself in the foot (e.g., the Air Force One faux pas), but
the Democrats and the media have preferred to knife him in the back. All that
Clinton-inspired cynicism will, in the long run, breed more contempt among the
electorate than familiarity ever did.

            
               --Chuck
Peterson
            

            

               Ear-itation
            

            So just
what the hell was this week's "Readme" column about? Ear irrigation? Say it ain't so!
Since none of the staff told you, I will: Don't publish it. It is not:
interesting, funny, or newsworthy. It is: disgusting, childish, and
unnecessary. I MAY decide to pay for the witty articles and intelligent social
commentary in Slate when you start charging. I promise I will NOT pay for this
kind of silliness--and I sincerely hope other readers won't, either.

            
               --Joe
Riehm
            

            
               Willing
Executioners
            

            There is
one angle I would like to add to David Plotz's "The Gist" on the Kurds. The
Kurds have played an active role in terrorizing and killing members of another
once-stateless people--the Armenians. It is chilling to read the many firsthand
accounts of the massacres of Armenians in the 1890s and during the Armenian
Genocide of 1915. The Kurds were willing and extraordinarily cruel tools of the
Turks: another example of how nobody cares what happens to a group once it is
defined as the "other." Now it is the Kurds who are defined as the "other" by
Turks, Iranians, and Iraqis.

            
               --Jim
Cerny