Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________ HEARSAY RULES BY DAVID CORN (06/19/98)

Since my discovery of Matt Drudge just months ago, he has been invited to speak at the National Press Club and appear on "Larry King Live," and his television show "Drudge" debuted on Fox News Channel.
I have read enough bad press on this cat to take the life of any normal man. Larry King producers actually canceled his appearance on the show, and I am constantly running across stories and columns in different newspapers, magazines and Web pages from people who aren't shy about expressing their disapproval of Drudge.
Despite all this "hooliganism," Matt Drudge is a hero to me. As a journalist with an award-winning college newspaper, as a student and as an informed citizen, I commend Drudge on his vision and perseverance through what seems to be extremely stiff opposition. I plan on doing everything I can to bring him onto my campus to address students on an issue that affects everyone: the media and the Internet.
Matt Drudge didn't libel Sidney Blumenthal as alleged last August. He would have had to have had some sort of malicious intent. He more than sufficiently proved that he wasn't out to draw blood by retracting the statement within a reasonably hasty time, and he immediately stated in an apology that it was not his intention to defame anyone's character. Drudge is simply a man who stumbled onto the edge, and like journalists all over, he made a mistake. Mistakes that not even veterans like David Brinkley and Connie Chung are immune from.
With more than 50 million Internet users, it was bound to happen. Anyone with a computer can report. The entire field of communications and journalism is going in the direction of the Web. If a news organization doesn't exploit the Internet now, then they're practically obsolete.
Colleagues at my newspaper call this vision "The Big Picture," and will be drafting proposals of growth to various persons to insure that we move in that direction. This vision, being so "Big" and all, does encompass more than just the idea that anyone can report and the Web is where it's at; it also suggests complete integration of video, audio, print media and the Internet.
News is becoming more like it was always meant to be -- timely -- and we should embrace it instead of rejecting it as many mainstream prominent persons have. I am disgusted with what appears to be a jealous industry, but am comforted by the fact that these traditionalists will be far behind when "The Big Picture" explodes in news organizations everywhere.
-- Jodi R. Dreher
_______________ CONFESSIONS OF A BOX-SET SUCKER BY ERIC ALTERMAN (06/22/98)

Eric Alterman's piece on box sets is one of the most condescending pieces I have seen in a magazine that I enjoy for most everything-- besides whatshisname, the author of the impossibly overrated "Radical Son" -- and most all your music coverage. OK, the Allman Brothers and Led Zep and whatnot "made it out of the '70s on their own just fine" or words to that effect, but Otis Redding apparently never made it out of the '60s? So Alterman gets to smirk at his "Dock of the Bay"? And since when did Rhino sell these box sets only to people over official boomer age? Get their demographics, and you would likely be amazed. Soul music made it out of the '60s and '70s just fine, as did "Freddie's Dead," for that matter -- unfortunately. I would not call it art either, but assuming that much of the audience thinks soul music was of a quality similar to "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" is snotty and ignorant. As for jazz, gee, I did not know that it was all art and that people had used it to get laid as well. Writing about this feels ridiculous, but perhaps that is a testament to how bad the quality of Alterman's writing is. Some real insight, please.
-- Ray Mikell
Kosciusko, Miss.
_______________ CANNED OBSOLESCENCE BY AARON WEISS (06/18/98)

Aaron Weiss is quite correct about the myth of computer obsolescence. I am using an 8-year-old Macintosh SE/30. Top of the line when we bought it, it is now laughably crude and slow -- but it does almost everything I want it to, and certainly more than I need. Admittedly, my needs are not enormous, but I'd be surprised if there were too many people who really need the features they get suckered into paying for.
-- Christopher Roberson
Evanston, Ill.
Are microchips too fast for mere mortals? If so, then the graphic-arts and layout departments and anywhere sophisticated things are being done with print media must be demigods and titans. And a secretary, who in the worst-case scenario has to keep e-mail, a Web browser, a presentation program, a graphics program with which to make images for the presentation, a database, a spreadsheet, a virus checker and the boss's calendar on the desktop simultaneously, would be straight off Olympus. (As "alpha geek" in a large computerized office, I've told people time and again to make sure the secretary has the best computer in sight. After all, it most likely has to run a superset of everybody else's applications -- perhaps many of them at once -- and often has to do this on a rush deadline.)
Perhaps a better analysis would be that today's computers have more power than some of the niches in an increasingly large and diverse market can use. Home users who just want to perform a datacomm-limited task like browsing the Web (which, incidentally, ceases to leave the CPU "twiddling its thumbs" when you get a cable modem, but I digress), and even business users, whose main application is a word processor or a simple spreadsheet, may be happiest with a computer whose price and capabilities are both modest. But a lot of us find it convenient or even necessary to have all the CPU speed, RAM, disk space and monitor acreage we can get.
-- Joe Chew
_______________ DON'T CALL ME MOM BY SUSAN McCARTHY (06/18/98)

I very much enjoyed "Don't Call Me Mom" by Susan McCarthy. It made me laugh to think how shocked I would have been as a child growing up in Brooklyn, not so long ago, to have met someone who called their parents by name. In my Chinese-American family, not only did we address our parents by their titles, they addressed us by ours: little sister, older brother. It's funny to think about it now, but I couldn't even bring myself to call my brother by his given (English) name until I was well into my elementary school years, so ingrained in me was this use of "titles"!
-- Kaela Lee
_______________ ULYSSES IN NET-TOWN BY KARLIN LILLINGTON (06/16/98)

No, James Joyce did NOT invent hypertext, nor was it invented by "those earnest, pocket-protected men who grappled with computer code in the '60s and '70s." Your ignorance of the history of such important aspects of our modern culture is irresponsible and embarrassing, or would be if you cared.
Hypertext was invented by one person, Theodore H. Nelson, a well-respected pioneer of new media. Your not having mentioned him, even once, is odious proof of the superficiality and irrelevance of the pseudo-intelligentsia that you and your ilk wallow in, attributing such a seminal conceptualization to the ramblings of an incoherent Irish rambler such as Joyce.
Get your facts straight, and learn some respect for the real shapers of our modern technological culture.
-- A. D. Levine
SALON | June 29, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| MOTHERS WHO THINK TOO MUCH BY ANNE S. LEWIS

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_______________ HEARSAY RULES BY DAVID CORN (06/19/98)
	Since my discovery of Matt Drudge just months ago, he has been invited to speak at the National Press Club and appear on "Larry King Live," and his television show "Drudge" debuted on Fox News Channel. I have read enough bad press on this cat to take the life of any normal man. Larry King producers actually canceled his appearance on the show, and I am constantly running across stories and columns in different newspapers, magazines and Web pages from people who aren't shy about expressing their disapproval of Drudge. Despite all this "hooliganism," Matt Drudge is a hero to me. As a journalist with an award-winning college newspaper, as a student and as an informed citizen, I commend Drudge on his vision and perseverance through what seems to be extremely stiff opposition. I plan on doing everything I can to bring him onto my campus to address students on an issue that affects everyone: the media and the Internet. Matt Drudge didn't libel Sidney Blumenthal as alleged last August. He would have had to have had some sort of malicious intent. He more than sufficiently proved that he wasn't out to draw blood by retracting the statement within a reasonably hasty time, and he immediately stated in an apology that it was not his intention to defame anyone's character. Drudge is simply a man who stumbled onto the edge, and like journalists all over, he made a mistake. Mistakes that not even veterans like David Brinkley and Connie Chung are immune from. With more than 50 million Internet users, it was bound to happen. Anyone with a computer can report. The entire field of communications and journalism is going in the direction of the Web. If a news organization doesn't exploit the Internet now, then they're practically obsolete. Colleagues at my newspaper call this vision "The Big Picture," and will be drafting proposals of growth to various persons to insure that we move in that direction. This vision, being so "Big" and all, does encompass more than just the idea that anyone can report and the Web is where it's at; it also suggests complete integration of video, audio, print media and the Internet. News is becoming more like it was always meant to be -- timely -- and we should embrace it instead of rejecting it as many mainstream prominent persons have. I am disgusted with what appears to be a jealous industry, but am comforted by the fact that these traditionalists will be far behind when "The Big Picture" explodes in news organizations everywhere. -- Jodi R. Dreher
_______________ CONFESSIONS OF A BOX-SET SUCKER BY ERIC ALTERMAN (06/22/98)
	Eric Alterman's piece on box sets is one of the most condescending pieces I have seen in a magazine that I enjoy for most everything-- besides whatshisname, the author of the impossibly overrated "Radical Son" -- and most all your music coverage. OK, the Allman Brothers and Led Zep and whatnot "made it out of the '70s on their own just fine" or words to that effect, but Otis Redding apparently never made it out of the '60s? So Alterman gets to smirk at his "Dock of the Bay"? And since when did Rhino sell these box sets only to people over official boomer age? Get their demographics, and you would likely be amazed. Soul music made it out of the '60s and '70s just fine, as did "Freddie's Dead," for that matter -- unfortunately. I would not call it art either, but assuming that much of the audience thinks soul music was of a quality similar to "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" is snotty and ignorant. As for jazz, gee, I did not know that it was all art and that people had used it to get laid as well. Writing about this feels ridiculous, but perhaps that is a testament to how bad the quality of Alterman's writing is. Some real insight, please. -- Ray Mikell Kosciusko, Miss.
_______________ CANNED OBSOLESCENCE BY AARON WEISS (06/18/98)
	Aaron Weiss is quite correct about the myth of computer obsolescence. I am using an 8-year-old Macintosh SE/30. Top of the line when we bought it, it is now laughably crude and slow -- but it does almost everything I want it to, and certainly more than I need. Admittedly, my needs are not enormous, but I'd be surprised if there were too many people who really need the features they get suckered into paying for. -- Christopher Roberson Evanston, Ill. Are microchips too fast for mere mortals? If so, then the graphic-arts and layout departments and anywhere sophisticated things are being done with print media must be demigods and titans. And a secretary, who in the worst-case scenario has to keep e-mail, a Web browser, a presentation program, a graphics program with which to make images for the presentation, a database, a spreadsheet, a virus checker and the boss's calendar on the desktop simultaneously, would be straight off Olympus. (As "alpha geek" in a large computerized office, I've told people time and again to make sure the secretary has the best computer in sight. After all, it most likely has to run a superset of everybody else's applications -- perhaps many of them at once -- and often has to do this on a rush deadline.) Perhaps a better analysis would be that today's computers have more power than some of the niches in an increasingly large and diverse market can use. Home users who just want to perform a datacomm-limited task like browsing the Web (which, incidentally, ceases to leave the CPU "twiddling its thumbs" when you get a cable modem, but I digress), and even business users, whose main application is a word processor or a simple spreadsheet, may be happiest with a computer whose price and capabilities are both modest. But a lot of us find it convenient or even necessary to have all the CPU speed, RAM, disk space and monitor acreage we can get. -- Joe Chew
_______________ DON'T CALL ME MOM BY SUSAN McCARTHY (06/18/98)
	I very much enjoyed "Don't Call Me Mom" by Susan McCarthy. It made me laugh to think how shocked I would have been as a child growing up in Brooklyn, not so long ago, to have met someone who called their parents by name. In my Chinese-American family, not only did we address our parents by their titles, they addressed us by ours: little sister, older brother. It's funny to think about it now, but I couldn't even bring myself to call my brother by his given (English) name until I was well into my elementary school years, so ingrained in me was this use of "titles"! -- Kaela Lee
_______________ ULYSSES IN NET-TOWN BY KARLIN LILLINGTON (06/16/98)
	No, James Joyce did NOT invent hypertext, nor was it invented by "those earnest, pocket-protected men who grappled with computer code in the '60s and '70s." Your ignorance of the history of such important aspects of our modern culture is irresponsible and embarrassing, or would be if you cared. Hypertext was invented by one person, Theodore H. Nelson, a well-respected pioneer of new media. Your not having mentioned him, even once, is odious proof of the superficiality and irrelevance of the pseudo-intelligentsia that you and your ilk wallow in, attributing such a seminal conceptualization to the ramblings of an incoherent Irish rambler such as Joyce. Get your facts straight, and learn some respect for the real shapers of our modern technological culture. -- A. D. Levine SALON \| June 29, 1998