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In the
Bible Belt, "WWJD" Can Mean "Willy Wonka Just Died"
After reading Alfred
Gingold's July 10 article, "Onward, Christian Clothiers," my first reaction was that ol' Alfie
should take a breath. Who doesn't go through everyday life and see things that
disturb one's aesthetic sense? Our culture is a sloganeering one. Why should
Christianity be any different? Every company's marketing strategy has an
underlying secondary message--drink Mountain Dew and you're extreme ; buy
Tommy Hilfiger (Gingold's example) and you're young, attractive, and not afraid
to look like every other frat boy in the country.
My guess
is that Gingold doesn't get out of New York much. Here in the Bible Belt, we've
learned to desensitize ourselves to the crass underbelly of organized religion.
My daughter comes home from school and tells me that other kids have come up
with alternative meanings to the WWJD acronym--"We Want Jelly Doughnuts,"
"Willy Wonka Just Died," etc. There will always be people who wear this crap
and others who get to make fun of them. Fair trade.
-- Edward
Goggin Tulsa, Okla.
I'll Take
the Bait
I was
offended by the article "Onward, Christian Clothiers," even though I am not religious. The
idea that someone wearing their religion on their sleeve is someone to be
looked down upon is anti-American at best. I am happy that people of faith are
finally coming out of the closet, so to speak. Articles like this one invite
reactionism, which is, I suppose, what the writer wants. Too bad.
-- Matt Denny
Double
Standards
I find it
interesting that Alfred Gingold, in "Onward, Christian Clothiers," doesn't have a problem with
pro-abortion T-shirts or vulgar T-shirts ("shit happens," "coed nude
basketball," "bitch on wheels," etc.) but finds it necessary to tee off on
evangelical Christian apparel. Why do overtly Christian messages bother him so
much? Could it be that the claims of Christ make him uncomfortable? It seems
that the only time liberals get excited about censorship is when it comes to
preaching Jesus. Hmm.
-- Jim Ost
Get With
It, Ye of Little Faith
Regarding
"Onward, Christian
Clothiers": I often wonder if the peddlers of religious schlock have
actually read any Scripture beyond the gory "here's hell in your face"
passages. But, please: "The Christians are at it again"? There is more to
Christianity than the "Christian right"--both Roman Catholic and
evangelical/fundamentalist. The broad brush paints a picture of
self-righteousness, whoever wields it. A great many of us witness to a faith of
grace, not judgment--and do it with grace, not judgment.
-- The Rev. Paul W.
Sundberg
Who
Gives a F*** About Tina Brown?
Now I'm well aware that it's
Tina Brown's world and the rest of us are just living in it, but really, folks,
enough's enough.
Slate
's coverage of Brown's departure to La La
Land has been a tad, shall we say, excessive. It was bad enough that the
subject was covered ad nauseam (and I mean ad nauseam) in "The Breakfast Table" this week and treated as a serious news
development in "Culturebox." But when I saw this morning's teaser,
"
Slate
's Tina Brown Roundup," I had to wonder whether you people
have lost all perspective.
Perhaps I'm wrong and other
readers are as endlessly fascinated with Brown as
Slate
itself
is. But I suspect many agree with me that Brown's job change is essentially an
industry insider story that holds little interest for those of who 1) don't
work in the magazine trade and 2) don't hang in New York's trendier
circles.
L'affaire Brown was worth maybe one story in
Slate
. When
you reach the point of needing a roundup, you might want to re-examine your
editorial priorities.
--Justin
McGuire Washington
And Who
Gives a F*** About Linda Tripp's Motives?
I am at a loss to explain the
media's (and public's) desire to understand the motives behind Linda Tripp's
tape recordings, as exemplified in the "Linda Tripp: Victimized or
Vicious?" dialogue between Jonah Goldberg and Margaret Carlson. What do her
motives matter in the context of either the investigation of the president or
the investigation into her own taping?
The importance of Tripp's
motives is not the same as for, say, Paula Jones'--because Tripp is not the
president's accuser. She has passed along tape recordings that (allegedly)
implicate the president by the words of a third party. Now, whether Lewinsky's
words are truth and whether they were drawn out through Tripp's entrapment
(which would also be on the tapes) are valid issues. But not Tripp's motives in
making the recordings.
Maybe she's good, and maybe
she's bad. Maybe you or I would not tape a friend, or maybe we think that
Tripp's friendship is not what we would call friendship, but her motives in
making the tapes are irrelevant to the charges against the president. While I
have been a staunch Clinton supporter (and, to some extent, defender), the fact
that we are allowing our debate over Tripp's character and motives to enter
into our debate over whether the president perjured himself or encouraged
others to do so shows the effectiveness of the White House spin doctors.
Please
stop worrying about Tripp's motives--if there is a debate over this it is a
debate over the limits of friendship when confronted with (potentially)
criminal acts on the part of the friend. This is a valid question, but Tripp's
morals per se are irrelevant. Stop wasting your editorial bandwidth and
reporters' time on this.
-- Phil
Gilbert Austin, Texas
Proto-Nerds
In his July 11 piece,
"Nerd vs.
Nebbish," Franklin Foer presents a few alternative explanations for the
origin of the word "nerd." When I was an undergraduate at Rennselaer
Polytechnic Institute about 30 years ago, it was widely believed that "knurd"
(the pronunciation was the same) was simply "drunk" spelled backward.
The usage was similar to
current usage: A knurd was someone who spent too much time studying and not
enough time socializing. This was in sharp contrast to the stereotypical frat
boys, who, in a time when the word "party" was exclusively a noun, would
consume excessive amounts of alcohol as part of their recreational activities.
The two campus archetypes were considered to be such polar opposites that the
word knurd emerged. In those days, in addition to the ill-fitting
permanent-press clothes that didn't seem to work, the pocket protector, and the
thick glasses held together with electrical tape, the proto-knurd wore a slide
rule on his belt. The stereotype was so pervasive and pejorative that even at
RPI, one seldom actually saw a belt-mounted slide rule, a pocket protector, or
glasses repaired with tape.
I have
seen evidence of this usage and spelling in old campus humor magazines dating
back to the '40s and '50s. I don't have any explanation for the current
spelling.
-- Eugene Bryton Los
Angeles
Blond
Roots
Anne
Hollander, who wrote "Clothes Sense," must be either very young or very something
to miss the roots, so to speak, of the not quite blond bombshell phenomenon!
You don't have to go back to the 15 th century, although I'm sure
some people find that stuff amusing, or to Dennis Rodman, whom nobody finds
amusing. The modern origin of this look is none other than Debbie Harry!
Blondie!! For Christ's sake!!! Look it up.
-- Pete Ostle
Trashing
"Recycled"
Maybe
William Saletan could do a spin analysis of how
Slate
reposts
"Recycled"
stories and labels them "new." While it's true that recycling generally means
finding a new use for something previously used, to slap a "new" label on a
story written a year or more ago takes a certain bending of reality. Is this a
low cost means for creating the appearance of beefed-up content? I would much
prefer that
Slate
cough up the dough for one more new new story
each week.
-- Michael
Page-English Oak Harbor, Wash.
Combat
Readiness
I read with interest Lawrence
Korb's July 10 statement in "The 21st
Century Military" that "Reserve ground combat units at the brigade level
and above cannot be maintained at any reasonable level of readiness on a
part-time basis because of the complexity of combined arms." He accurately
states the current situation for U.S. Reserve and National Guard combat units.
He also implies that it would be impossible to maintain combat readiness in
such units. I believe this is wrong.
The current Army Reserve and
guard units typically conduct their training one weekend each month and two
weeks each year. For combat and combat support units, the weekend training is
usually a waste of time. In my six years as a member of a U.S. Army Reserve
military intelligence battalion in the 1980s, we did useful field training on
at most a dozen of the more than 60 weekend drills I attended. Even on those
occasions, most of the time was spent traveling to and from the training areas.
The two weeks' annual training was much more useful, but even that gave us at
most a week of field training, since there were several days of preparations
for the move to the training site and several more days of equipment cleanup
after training.
I believe that reserve and
guard combat and combat support units should eliminate the weekend drills and
instead have a single, one month annual training (AT). The benefits of this
would be to:
Increase the number of
effective field training days from seven to 23. This assumes that the number of
preparation and cleanup days could be kept the same.
Reduce the effect of
personnel turnover. In a 12-man unit, about every four months we lost a person
(due to enlistment expiration) and gained a person. There was no way to set up
a stable team to build skills because we constantly had to train someone new in
the basic tasks. During AT, the teams could be restructured once, at the
beginning, and then remain stable through the remaining portion of
training.
Reduce the geographic
dependence of units. Since unit members must go to weekend drills every month,
they must be close enough to the reserve center. With a single AT, even
personnel from across the state or country could be flown out and back once a
year to the reserve center. (Estimated cost to fly 400,000 reservists at $500
each is $200 million. The cost could be even less if Air Force Reserve units
transported the Army reservists--and not every reservist would have to be
flown. The cost would also be offset by the lower personnel costs: 30 days' pay
instead of the 60 days' pay the typical reservist receives each year.)
Please
note that I am not advocating a change to the training for combat service
support (maintenance, personnel, and logistics) units. Many of these units are
able to conduct meaningful training on weekend drills, since their training
does not rely as heavily on being in the field.
-- Randy Heath
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