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Don't
Give Me That
Ann
Castle deserves congratulations for her prodigious compendium
of philanthropic donations in the "
Slate
60." But it's simply not
true, as Jodie T. Allen asserts in her introduction, that the
Slate
60 is the first list of its kind. I compiled what I believe
is the first list of "Most Generous Living Americans" for Town &
Country magazine in December 1983. Three years later (December 1986), I
updated that same list. And in December 1989, for the same magazine, I compiled
a list of "Most Generous Living Americans" under age 50. Thanks for setting the
record straight.
-- Dan
Rottenberg Philadelphia
New News
Is Good News
"Fiddling Around,"
Emily Yoffe's assessment of differences between reporting in the '60s and the
'90s, overlooks one important issue--media distribution. In the '60s, the
national media was censored by a small handful of gatekeepers. Any news outside
the established national news held relatively little credibility in comparison,
and therefore held little influence. Since the '60s, the number of national
news distributors has grown tremendously. National print magazines, cable and
satellite news, and of course Internet distribution put the news into the
nation's living rooms too quickly to be entirely monitored by the old guard.
There was never a better demonstration of this shift in media distribution than
the Monica Lewinsky story, which would have died in the hands of
Newsweek were it not for the Drudge Report .
-- Bill Muscato
Prejudice at 160 MPH
As a New Yorker born and
raised, I must confess to a visceral appreciation for petty jabs at
Southerners, "good ol' boys," or other similar cultural unknowns. Seth
Stevenson's "Dispatch" from a recent NASCAR race, however, illustrates how
easily such "harmless" prejudices collapse into crude stereotypes.
When the crowd rises and
gasps after a wreck, Stevenson notes that they all, including himself, are
"hoping for a violent accident." Some fans may harbor such wishes. For all I
know, some hockey fans go for the fights. Most race fans, though--real ones,
not Stevenson's cartoonish inventions--react to the wrecks for different
reasons. First, wrecks usually knock the victims out of the race, itself a
dramatic event. Second, it is exciting and even encouraging to watch one's hero
smack a concrete wall at such high speeds and walk away unscathed. Most fans
prefer that such wrecks not occur, but when they do, fans pay justifiably close
attention to the driver's fate. The flashy team apparel, etc., send a relevant
message--the fans really care about the drivers. A lot.
Stevenson's eagerness for
violence is his own business; he should not presume the same of others. Did
Stevenson speak with any of the fans with whose hopes he claimed to be so
familiar? Virtually all the fans with whom I have spoken over the years (quite
a friendly bunch, actually) consider the absence of big wrecks,
injuries, etc., a key component of a good race. Stevenson might simply have
trouble believing that mustachioed, tobacco-chewing men wearing big, black
T-shirts can resist the temptation to cry for blood. If so, I'd suggest he
attend a future race and talk to some of his section-mates.
There are
other reasons that wrecks cause fan excitement--e.g., remaining cars must
continue racing to the start/finish line; it releases tension built up over
long green-flag runs. It is sufficient to note, however, that Stevenson was
content to rely on a mix of his own admitted bloodthirstiness and good
old-fashioned prejudice for his conclusion. I expect better from
Slate
, and hope that it survived editorial pruning only because
you were busy counting your otherwise well-deserved subscription money from
NASCAR fans such as myself (look for my
Slate
umbrella during the
next rain delay!).
-- Gregory
Vogelsperger Elmhurst, Ill.
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your e-mail to the editors to [email protected]. Please include your address and daytime phone
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