Address your e-mail to
the editors to [email protected] .
(posted Thursday, Feb.
20)
Wild
About Harry, Part 1
I would just like to say how
much I have enjoyed reading Harry Shearer's "Dispatches" from the O.J. civil trial. Brilliantly well written,
and with the right mix of sarcasm and serious analysis, they have been
virtually unmissable throughout the trial. The same can be said for his earlier
"Diary" entries on the Republican and Democratic party conventions during the summer.
Now that
the civil trial has come to a conclusion, does Slate have any more projects up
its sleeve for him to have a crack at?
--James McBride
Wild
About Harry, Part 2
You really
should issue Harry Shearer's incredible O.J. "Dispatches" in book form. His "coverage" has been far more
insightful than anything else for either the criminal or the civil trial
(including the acclaimed book by that sly revisionist Jeffrey Toobin). He also
added something this whole escapade has needed from the start--a little humor.
The material ought to have much broader exposure.
--Patrick
Hudson
The
Editors' Reply
Funny you
should ask. We've collected all of Harry's O.J. "Dispatches" into one
gargantuan Microsoft Word (and Adobe Acrobat) document that will you can
dowload by clicking here.
It Was a
Simple Error
"The Week/ The Spin" (Feb.
6, 1997) contained a terrible error: "Welfare reform was the hot topic at the
National Governors' Association winter meeting. Several Republican governors
supported restoration of aid to illegal immigrants (which was cut in the new
welfare law)."
Unfortunately, the substitution of "illegal immigrants" for "legal immigrants"
in this blurb rendered this passage not only factually inaccurate, but
politically unintelligible. The cuts the governors complained about were the
elimination of benefits to legal immigrants, who heretofore have been
treated pretty much the same as citizens with regard to welfare benefits. The
big cuts were in SSI benefits to current legal immigrants, and these
cuts accounted for most of the welfare reform "savings." In California, cutting
legal immigrants off federal aid simply dumps them onto local taxpayers, even
though millions of poor continue to arrive. Your coverage made a complicated
subject even more obscure and made light of a sea change in the treatment of
immigrants which carries grave human consequences. Was it a simple error or
muddled arrogance?
--Freya Schultz
Dwarves
Through the Ages
I enjoyed
"Pop
Technology," Louis Menand's take on the Star Wars legacy,
particularly his observation that human beings have become dwarfed by
computer-created images on the big screen. It strikes me as a modern-day
perversion of ancient Chinese landscape paintings in which people are depicted
as miniscule figures at the base of immense mountains and valleys. Will our
generation one day be interpreted as similarly insignificant in the face of
colossal technology?
--David Takami
Worth
Every Nickel
"A Penny for
Your Thoughts?" by Nathan Myhrvold was excellent! While I usually go to
Slate for the political and social insights (especially those by Jacob Weisberg [see also
his latest "Strange Bedfellow"]), Myhrvold's article was the first
really well done, concrete analysis of an aspect of the Web that I have ever
seen. I hope you all continue to capitalize on your ownership by Microsoft to
get some of Microsoft's brainpower on your pages.
-- Rick Cendo
The Price
Is Right
I read
with interest Nathan Myhrvold's "A Penny for
Your Thoughts?"--especially the comparison between Internet micropayments
and the "Dutch Auction"-style downward pricing structure of movies. The
movie-going experience does have one other advantage over the other forms of
intellectual stimulation you mentioned, however: nonregulatory price caps.
Patrons of Waterworld , produced at a cost of $172 million, paid the same
flat fee--say, $7 at a first-run theater (this was two years ago, remember)--as
did fellow multiplexers interested in The Brothers McMullen , produced
for a mere $25,000. Such a price ceiling is downright reassuring compared to
the world of, say, print publishing--in which a newsstand browse yields
magazines ranging from $2 to $20 per issue. Now, micropayments for popcorn, on
the other hand, might be worth a try.
--Erich Van
Dussen
Liberal
Love Fest
I consider this 'zine to be
the epitome of corporate statism. This is nothing but a Bill Clinton/liberal
love fest. Browsing the "Contents," I see a "Dialogue" about the credibility of Kenneth Starr; "The
Conservative Collapse," about the foundering Republican Party; and
"I Had
Coffee With Clinton," speaking glowingly about a White House visit.
If Kenneth Starr is so
inexperienced, why has he won so many felony convictions, each closer
and closer to the White House? And the Republican Party is bereft of ideas?
Slate must believe that during the last 60 years, the Democrats (who never met
a tax they didn't like, and want to expand the rat hole known as the welfare
state) have had new ones. The only ideas the Democratic Party has are
tax-and-spend ideas!
And these
hundreds of White House "coffees"! Slate is obviously so misinformed that they
don't know (or don't care) that using the White House for political
fund-raising (not to mention using the Lincoln Bedroom as a motel) is against
the law! Slate is obviously a product of our foundering educational system: It
does not know or care about the law or what is right and wrong. If this is what
passes as American culture, God help us!
--Jay Campbell
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