Mr. Pot, Meet Mr. Kettle
Hyperlinked
Hypocrisy
I write this with regard to Ron Rosenbaum's
dispatch (""). Frankly, I would have responded directly to him if he were a
little more open to the cyberworld and had provided an address of any kind to
respond to. He says cyberculture brings out the worst in people. (Well, there's
no convincing him otherwise if he's not accepting debate on the issue.) Then he
launches into a tirade about the arrogance and ignorance of the "Chatroom
Poseur" based on a single e-mail he received questioning his honesty as a
journalist-columnist.
If Rosenbaum wants to be an objective observer,
fine, but he enters with too many preconceptions. Two e-mail messages and one
trip to a chat room (by his own admission) may give him room to give his
initial reactions, but not to cast judgment on an entire culture. Rosenbaum
writes, "I'm not unwilling to listen to criticism, but a critique clothed in
such an invincible armor of arrogance and ignorance is, well, typical of
cyberchat rhetoric."
You don't think your
respondent had any real logic or an equitable argument, but your posting has
even less. You take potshots at him in public as he did to you in private (you
called him a dimwit). That's hypocritical.
-- Dan O'Brien
Meriden, Conn.
Ron Rosenbaum replies:
This letter, while
unusually lucid for e-mail, is based on a misconception: While I've only
visited a chat room once, I've read numerous transcripts, excerpts, printouts,
etc. Enough to characterize the typical snide tone. I should point out that I
omitted the name of the respondent I critiqued.
Down on
Dowd
What on earth makes Chatterbox ("") think that the
"cognoscenti" of New York like the recent work of Maureen Dowd any better then
their counterparts in Washington do? The last line I heard from a cognoscente
was "Isn't it too bad about Maureen?" and that was some time ago. What seems to
have happened is that Dowd has been playing to a small gallery of
Clinton-phobes at the New York Times who laugh and applaud wildly as her
reputation sinks at about equal speed in all major cities at once.
And what makes Chatterbox think he knows all about
the Clintons' "chilly business deal" either? Surely a kinder and sadder story
can be whittled from the same evidence, to wit: that Hillary, a blue-stocking
in love with a glamorpuss, had too eagerly bought Bill's Gladstone-like tales
of helping troubled young women to find peace: enough so anyway to make a
potential laughingstock of herself by repeating them on television, and enough
also to give Bill some terrible legal advice in the specific matter of Monica.
Surely a chilly business partner would at least have known about a case that
was about to go on legal record and would never have urged her husband to
brazen it out with the grand jury and start the whole miserable ball
rolling.
At any rate, when Bill
was finally cornered by the school bully and forced to blurt the truth, Hillary
was revealed to be not just a wronged woman but a lousy lawyer--and she was
most gratifyingly furious. Hillary's rage that night was surely one of the most
authentic sights ever shown on television, prompting the thought that, unlike
the absurd Linda Tripp, both Clintons really are us, in our various phases--and
incidentally that Hillary may be the only first lady in my lifetime (which goes
back a bit) that one can even imagine being friends with. And since then, she
has played her part just fine, establishing herself as a separate unit and not
just "standing by her man," like Dowd's "failed feminist," but standing by her
family, like a grown-up--a condition that Dowd herself curiously never seems to
get any closer to as the years go by. In a column airily damning the whole
younger generation of Kennedys, she makes it clear that she has probably never
raised a child herself and worried herself sick about how it would turn out;
and in another, gleefully jumping on James Fallows the day after he was fired
from U. S. News & World Report , she indicates that job tenure has
not been a problem either. Good job tenure, that is--because in yet another
column, she sneers at Sara Davidson for working on Dr. Quinn, Medicine
Woman . Why can't the silly creature get a perfect job like hers? So long as
the pet's patriarchs at the Times continue to give her unlimited freedom
to write exactly what they like to hear, she is sitting pretty--though not,
perhaps, in an ideal position to judge anyone else anywhere.
-- Wilfrid
Sheed
Sag
Harbor, N.Y.
P.S.:
I have it on the word of a neutral party in a position to know, that in her
famous bake-off with Barbara Bush, Hillary undoubtedly made her own cookies
from her own recipe, and they were excellent. No big deal, of course--these
things happen all the time in real life. But both Dowd and Chatterbox might
like to stick it in their stereotypes anyway and smoke it for a while,
preferably in silence.
SUVs Don't Kill
People--People Kill People
Gregg Easterbrook really needs to educate himself
about SUV owners (""). Many people I know that own a SUV live and work in rural
areas, where they need the off-road and carrying capability of a SUV. Now,
those who live in the suburbs who don't use an SUV except for pure street
driving may be the ones to whom you're referring. I own a Jeep Cherokee. Yes,
it does consume more fuel than an econo-car. But it is a justification I have
accepted in order to get the performance that I need to earn a living. Much of
my time is spent working in the field as a biologist. I do a lot of off-road
work where four-wheel drive is an absolute. There really is no option for me
but to own a SUV. I am proud to say that I am one of the few who use these
vehicles for how they were really intended to be used.
You, on the other hand, are part of a growing
number of people that like to target people on the basis of association. Your
petty antics of coal-raking put those of us who are sincere and considerate SUV
owners at risk. You are generating waves that are being heard in Washington
where laws may be drafted that make it harder for someone to own a SUV.
I and the many of us
that are the responsible SUV users would appreciate it if you would take your
brow-bashing energy and channel it not to the SUV but to those who abuse the
privilege of driving one. Like guns and gun control, it's not the gun that
needs to be removed from society, it's the ass behind the trigger.
-- Tim Mallow
Cocoa, Fla.
