Friday, Jul 25, 2008
The "other woman" should dump that loser! Plus: Brill's Content editor questions Salon angle; e-commerce today, gone tomorrow?
Nov 11, 1999 | The other woman
BY JANE UNDERWOOD
(11/04/99)
Jane Underwood started "settling" long before she reached the dreaded mid-40s; after all, she chose to have a child without caring enough to provide a full-time father. I'm a 48-year-old, never-married woman who has a full and gratifying life. Do I wish I also had a partner? You bet -- but not one like Underwood dredged up. My advice to her: Ditch the loser, toss the hair dye and get a life.
-- Barbara Nordin
Chinese take-out
BY SEAN ELDER
(11/01/99)
Sean Elder's article on our coverage of the New York Times' handling of the China espionage story characterizes our story as a hit piece, but Elder adds very little of substance other than the Times' unfavorable reaction. While Elder is free, of course, to argue the Times' side in this matter, the article came as a surprise to us given Elder's comments to our reporter, Rob Schmidt. In an e-mail to Schmidt. Elder wrote: "Good work on the Los Alamos spy story ['Crash Landing']. Any feedback from the Times or elsewhere? I'm trying to write a follow-up for Salon but the editors at the Times haven't called me back (funny) ..."
Elder also told Schmidt that he had been planning a similar piece, but needed a new angle now that we had beaten him to the story. It looks like he found that angle.
-- Eric Effron
Editor, Brill's Content
Get Uncle Sam off my back! and other misguided impulses
BY GARY KAMIYA
(11/03/99)
Wills' book is a complete failure from a critical, intellectual point of view. Just to pick one example of the author's egregious failures, he states that the "'right to bear arms' language in the Second Amendment is a purely military right, intended to apply to the militias of the day." If the evidence of the Federalist Papers is to be believed, the author shows a callous disregard for the facts. The purpose of the Second Amendment, as explained in the Federalist Papers (as well as many other documentary sources), is that the individual citizens of the United States possess the weapons necessary to defeat a standing army which threatens them, either from internal oppression or from foreign aggression.
In this and many other cases, Wills has deliberately chosen to ignore contemporaneous evidence contrary to his ideology. This book is not history, neither is it constitutional scholarship. It is about ideology, and not an ideology the Founders of our country would espouse. Wills lacks the intellectual honesty to say as much. A more correct title to this work of fiction would be "Reasons Why I Like A Powerful Federal Government: and Why Those Who Don't Are Inbred, Religious Fanatic, Hicks."
-- Robert Vance
Gary Kamiya's review of Garry Wills' new, pro-government screed is as flawed as the book itself. Kamiya writes, "The anti-governmentalists, far from being true to the spirit of the Constitution, are really partisans of the flawed and derided document it superceded." The Constitution with its Bill of Rights was undoubtedly created to limit the power of government. The 10th Amendment, drafted in 1789 and ratified in 1791, reserves to the states all powers not delegated to the federal government. Only certain powers were delegated to the United States. The rest were reserved to the states or the people.
As for the foolish claims made for gun control in the early republic, one need only point out that there were no federal laws against the people possessing the same firepower and weaponry as the military until the advent of the 20th century. Most Americans certainly were armed in the early republic because of the great fear of a professional army. Moreover, the original Minutemen were hardly a "proto-FBI." They fought their Lexington and Concord battles against government troops dispatched from Boston to seize their firearms.
In a century that has witnessed mass murder and totalitarian enslavement of hundreds of millions by government, Wills' and Kamiya's citations of the few hundred victims of America's home-grown, "right-wing extremists" is disingenuous and absurd.
-- Michael Hoffman
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho
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