Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________MAIL ROOM DISPATCH ...

Readers had radically varied, but consistently passionate, opinions on Anne Lamott's "Mother Rage: Theory and Practice," in which she candidly discusses the ways her son can provoke her to anger, and Debra S. Ollivier's two-part story exploring how circumcision became common procedure in the United States and calling for an end to the practice.
In response to Joshua Green's "Beer, babes and beatings," fraternity brothers defended their social traditions against the myths of semen-covered cookie-eating and other debaucherous acts.
John Linder, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Caucus, demanded a retraction from Salon over Nation columnist David Corn's article "Who's lying about Monica now?" which accused Linder of misleading reporters about the GOP's last-minute anti-Clinton ad blitz.
And letters have begun pouring in over Salon's Election Day coverage. We will publish a collection of these responses next week.

_______________IDIOT SAVANTS? BY KRISTINA ZARLENGO (11/02/98)

I enjoyed the piece by Kristina Zarlengo. Distilling the Alan Sokal affair down to a dispute in the left between rational skeptics and epistemic relativists is helpful. As a fan of Dawkins, Hume and Dewey, analytic philosophers A.J. Ayer and Richard Rorty and commentator Stanley Fish, I believe there is a legitimate position of relativism in epistemology that gives science a status, at least experientially, of greatest among equals in all the possible metaphorical systems we use as humans.
Never having been force-fed in academia the obscurantist banalities of the major French and German postmodern authors, but having lived through the totalitarian thought of a highly politicized and ideological period at Berkeley in the '60s, I am sympathetic to Sokal's stated aim to return the left to its scientific and rationalistic moorings. This notwithstanding, there remains plenty of room for conversations by Rorty and others. Postmodernism does not begin and end with the French or the Frankfurt School. There is room in postmodernism for hardheaded philosophy with a progressive twist.
-- Asher Wilson
Thank you to Kristina Zarlengo for writing a balanced consideration of "Fashionable Nonsense," Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's book, soon to be published in the U.S. Like Zarlengo, I also was in graduate school for six years, but in the field of experimental physics. Having published a few articles in physics journals, I am familiar with the scrutiny to which a submitted scientific paper is subjected. I have seen papers representing a significant amount of work get rejected, extensively revised, and submitted to a less prestigious journal as a result of the referee at Physical Review Letters not accepting a certain minor and, depending upon your perspective, justifiable conjecture made in order to render a complex computation more tractable. So, I don't have a lot of sympathy for these humanities scholars who got their hands slapped because they applied scientific terminology in a ludicrous way to make a point in their treatises. Muddy thinking is not tolerated in physics, nor should it be tolerated in any other "intellectual" field.
However, it seems to me that Ms. Zarlengo is criticizing Sokal and Bricmont for merely engaging in destructive criticism of these other writers' work and not providing a constructive suggestion by elucidating for humanists what "claims based on good old-fashioned empirical evidence" might be. It seems to me, though, that their point is that if you don't have sound thinking underlying your statements, don't submit them as intellectual thought! Less muddy thought and obfuscation equal better communication of the good ideas that may very well exist in those papers. And I would doubt that Zarlengo's claim -- that the logical extension of Sokal and Bricmont's argument is that "a physics-worthy slash diet of rational skepticism" should be the only tool used to understand the human psyche, racism or modern culture -- is backed up by a reading of the text. Of course, there are complex issues in the world that hard science cannot begin to address in any satisfying way. But this still in no way justifies the abuse of scientific terminology and results in further confusion for an already largely scientifically illiterate population. The absence of such nonsense can only be a good thing.
-- Kristin Abkemeier
San Francisco
I have not yet had the opportunity to read the new work by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, though I am familiar with Sokal's hoax. I suspect that most of the book would be over my head, anyway.
However, there is a trend reflected in the work they criticize that should be of importance to everyone: The distortion and trivialization of science. Science is, or should be, based on testable hypotheses. Water boils because it is heated. It does not depend on whether the water is "feminist," "New Age" or "postmodern." It does not boil because of the gender or political leanings of the person doing the heating. Yet scientific truths are being recast in our society as merely "one" view of how things are.
As a result, one Gallup poll has shown that 52 percent of Americans believe in astrology, 46 percent believe in ESP, 22 percent believe aliens have landed on earth and 33 percent believe there was a lost continent of Atlantis, even though no empirical evidence exists to support any of these beliefs. I was recently patronized as being a "left-brainer" by two women trying to sell me "homeopathic" remedies, after I asked them to cite even one controlled study that proved the effectiveness of the "patent nostrums" they were flogging. (Needless to say, my request went unanswered.) This sort of thinking has become rampant among those who really should know better.
As for the political ramifications, I had always thought that "leftist" thinking scorned the mindless prejudice and simplistic, moralistic reasoning that many "rightists" were accused of. Yet many "liberals" think nothing of giving credence to bogus statistics regarding battered women, inflated claims of child sexual abuse or the idea that scientific thought is patriarchal and narrow. Studies are conducted not to find the truth, but to confirm the tester's preconceived notion of truth, even if that means ignoring contrary evidence or simply lying.
We have not come far, after all, from the old-time medicine show, when people with advanced degrees claim all sorts of advantages from a regimen of gingkoba or St. John's wort, despite the fact that these substances have never been proven effective for anything more than reducing the weight of one's wallet.
-- Jeff Ryan
Breckenridge, Colo.

_______________CONFESSIONS OF A NEWS NUN BY FUFKIN VOLLMAYER (10/30/98)

The 24-hour flashy news biz has finally mimicked that emblem of American culture: Hollywood. Very few actors are stars that can make a living off their work. Most actors sell their creativity on the side to make a living -- as "Yo-Yo the Magic Clown" to parents looking to entertain their kids at birthday bashes. It also mimics the rhetoric of polarized society: rich and brand-name accessorized vs. poor and brandless, with a bunch in the middle who only save money if their company has a 401K plan. The state of news industry jobs, as Vollmayer writes about it, is much like life itself, lots of us in so-called cool jobs are just "getting by."
A world with 5,000 channels will only increase this trend in the media. Celebrity journalists, their producers and media owners and advertisers are the ones who really make the money. The station managers and the rest are expendable. Your writer points this out when she mentions the BBC employee looking for work in NYC.
As a former news intern at a famous Boston radio station I learned words like "news chick," which referred to producers in their mid-30s who drove an hour and a half to work everyday, at 3 a.m., and still had to work as caterers on the side to subsidize their passion (addiction?) for news and community service. Another word was "monitor refugee," named for the dozen or so unemployed editors, producers and writers for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Christian Science Monitor's radio station (which folded about two years ago). They were constantly looking for jobs there. One got lucky. He was a news reader in his 40s. He worked three days a week, selling sporting goods when he wasn't on the air at one of the most powerful NPR stations in the country: WBUR.
Vollmayer's story, like a similar Ivory Tower story about a Harper's intern, is useful because it helps otherwise glamour-glazed industry hopefuls demystify the pop careers we dream about.
-- Kenneth Rapoza
Boston
Pity poor Fufkin Vollmayer. She got her mass communications degree (or whatever) and then got all pouty and disappointed when she didn't become a Major TV Journalism Star. Instead, she had to -- horror of horrors! -- pay her dues.
As someone who's spent 17 years in the newspaper business, and who started for a four-figure salary on a weekly paper in a town of 700, going to school board meetings and taking photos at community festivals, I find it hard to have any real sympathy for Vollmayer. Gee, Vollmayer, we're all real sorry that the news business just wasn't waiting for you to arrive so you could be a big star right off the bat. There's a name for anybody who goes into a first job in the news business expecting fame, high pay and normal hours. Such a person is called an idiot.
-- Tom Pantera
Fargo, N.D.

_______________ARISTOCRACY OF THE DROPOUTS BY TODD GITLIN (11/03/98)

The scholarly value of your magazine is judged by the quality of journalism printed in it. Todd Gitlin's article is dribble. He implies that the drop-out factor accounts for the Republican control of the House and Senate and by turning out, the votes for Democrats would place the country back on a democratic track.
The flaw in Gitlin's theory is that he seems to have no recollection of history. Where has the Democratic control of both houses in the last 40 years led this country? Why should the country return to repeat the mistakes of the past? Why is an idea only good if supported by a Democrat? If one looks closely at the Democratic agenda, one will find that most of the ideas have been co-opted from the Republicans.
I would suggest that Gitlin spend less time pointing the finger at the Republicans and more time developing a balanced approach to teaching the truth (if indeed the professor still claims to teach). Telling the truth should be nonpartisan, but to paraphrase the likes of President Clinton, I guess it depends on how one defines truth. Shame on Gitlin for such a shallow piece of dribble, and shame on Salon for not having the moral integrity to challenge such nonsense.
-- Jerry Heath
Cincinnati
SALON | Nov. 6, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| WHO'S LYING ABOUT MONICA NOW? BY DAVID CORN

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_______________MAIL ROOM DISPATCH ...
	Readers had radically varied, but consistently passionate, opinions on Anne Lamott's "Mother Rage: Theory and Practice," in which she candidly discusses the ways her son can provoke her to anger, and Debra S. Ollivier's two-part story exploring how circumcision became common procedure in the United States and calling for an end to the practice. In response to Joshua Green's "Beer, babes and beatings," fraternity brothers defended their social traditions against the myths of semen-covered cookie-eating and other debaucherous acts. John Linder, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Caucus, demanded a retraction from Salon over Nation columnist David Corn's article "Who's lying about Monica now?" which accused Linder of misleading reporters about the GOP's last-minute anti-Clinton ad blitz. And letters have begun pouring in over Salon's Election Day coverage. We will publish a collection of these responses next week.
_______________IDIOT SAVANTS? BY KRISTINA ZARLENGO (11/02/98)
	I enjoyed the piece by Kristina Zarlengo. Distilling the Alan Sokal affair down to a dispute in the left between rational skeptics and epistemic relativists is helpful. As a fan of Dawkins, Hume and Dewey, analytic philosophers A.J. Ayer and Richard Rorty and commentator Stanley Fish, I believe there is a legitimate position of relativism in epistemology that gives science a status, at least experientially, of greatest among equals in all the possible metaphorical systems we use as humans. Never having been force-fed in academia the obscurantist banalities of the major French and German postmodern authors, but having lived through the totalitarian thought of a highly politicized and ideological period at Berkeley in the '60s, I am sympathetic to Sokal's stated aim to return the left to its scientific and rationalistic moorings. This notwithstanding, there remains plenty of room for conversations by Rorty and others. Postmodernism does not begin and end with the French or the Frankfurt School. There is room in postmodernism for hardheaded philosophy with a progressive twist. -- Asher Wilson Thank you to Kristina Zarlengo for writing a balanced consideration of "Fashionable Nonsense," Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont's book, soon to be published in the U.S. Like Zarlengo, I also was in graduate school for six years, but in the field of experimental physics. Having published a few articles in physics journals, I am familiar with the scrutiny to which a submitted scientific paper is subjected. I have seen papers representing a significant amount of work get rejected, extensively revised, and submitted to a less prestigious journal as a result of the referee at Physical Review Letters not accepting a certain minor and, depending upon your perspective, justifiable conjecture made in order to render a complex computation more tractable. So, I don't have a lot of sympathy for these humanities scholars who got their hands slapped because they applied scientific terminology in a ludicrous way to make a point in their treatises. Muddy thinking is not tolerated in physics, nor should it be tolerated in any other "intellectual" field. However, it seems to me that Ms. Zarlengo is criticizing Sokal and Bricmont for merely engaging in destructive criticism of these other writers' work and not providing a constructive suggestion by elucidating for humanists what "claims based on good old-fashioned empirical evidence" might be. It seems to me, though, that their point is that if you don't have sound thinking underlying your statements, don't submit them as intellectual thought! Less muddy thought and obfuscation equal better communication of the good ideas that may very well exist in those papers. And I would doubt that Zarlengo's claim -- that the logical extension of Sokal and Bricmont's argument is that "a physics-worthy slash diet of rational skepticism" should be the only tool used to understand the human psyche, racism or modern culture -- is backed up by a reading of the text. Of course, there are complex issues in the world that hard science cannot begin to address in any satisfying way. But this still in no way justifies the abuse of scientific terminology and results in further confusion for an already largely scientifically illiterate population. The absence of such nonsense can only be a good thing. -- Kristin Abkemeier San Francisco I have not yet had the opportunity to read the new work by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, though I am familiar with Sokal's hoax. I suspect that most of the book would be over my head, anyway. However, there is a trend reflected in the work they criticize that should be of importance to everyone: The distortion and trivialization of science. Science is, or should be, based on testable hypotheses. Water boils because it is heated. It does not depend on whether the water is "feminist," "New Age" or "postmodern." It does not boil because of the gender or political leanings of the person doing the heating. Yet scientific truths are being recast in our society as merely "one" view of how things are. As a result, one Gallup poll has shown that 52 percent of Americans believe in astrology, 46 percent believe in ESP, 22 percent believe aliens have landed on earth and 33 percent believe there was a lost continent of Atlantis, even though no empirical evidence exists to support any of these beliefs. I was recently patronized as being a "left-brainer" by two women trying to sell me "homeopathic" remedies, after I asked them to cite even one controlled study that proved the effectiveness of the "patent nostrums" they were flogging. (Needless to say, my request went unanswered.) This sort of thinking has become rampant among those who really should know better. As for the political ramifications, I had always thought that "leftist" thinking scorned the mindless prejudice and simplistic, moralistic reasoning that many "rightists" were accused of. Yet many "liberals" think nothing of giving credence to bogus statistics regarding battered women, inflated claims of child sexual abuse or the idea that scientific thought is patriarchal and narrow. Studies are conducted not to find the truth, but to confirm the tester's preconceived notion of truth, even if that means ignoring contrary evidence or simply lying. We have not come far, after all, from the old-time medicine show, when people with advanced degrees claim all sorts of advantages from a regimen of gingkoba or St. John's wort, despite the fact that these substances have never been proven effective for anything more than reducing the weight of one's wallet. -- Jeff Ryan Breckenridge, Colo.
_______________CONFESSIONS OF A NEWS NUN BY FUFKIN VOLLMAYER (10/30/98)
	The 24-hour flashy news biz has finally mimicked that emblem of American culture: Hollywood. Very few actors are stars that can make a living off their work. Most actors sell their creativity on the side to make a living -- as "Yo-Yo the Magic Clown" to parents looking to entertain their kids at birthday bashes. It also mimics the rhetoric of polarized society: rich and brand-name accessorized vs. poor and brandless, with a bunch in the middle who only save money if their company has a 401K plan. The state of news industry jobs, as Vollmayer writes about it, is much like life itself, lots of us in so-called cool jobs are just "getting by." A world with 5,000 channels will only increase this trend in the media. Celebrity journalists, their producers and media owners and advertisers are the ones who really make the money. The station managers and the rest are expendable. Your writer points this out when she mentions the BBC employee looking for work in NYC. As a former news intern at a famous Boston radio station I learned words like "news chick," which referred to producers in their mid-30s who drove an hour and a half to work everyday, at 3 a.m., and still had to work as caterers on the side to subsidize their passion (addiction?) for news and community service. Another word was "monitor refugee," named for the dozen or so unemployed editors, producers and writers for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Christian Science Monitor's radio station (which folded about two years ago). They were constantly looking for jobs there. One got lucky. He was a news reader in his 40s. He worked three days a week, selling sporting goods when he wasn't on the air at one of the most powerful NPR stations in the country: WBUR. Vollmayer's story, like a similar Ivory Tower story about a Harper's intern, is useful because it helps otherwise glamour-glazed industry hopefuls demystify the pop careers we dream about. -- Kenneth Rapoza Boston Pity poor Fufkin Vollmayer. She got her mass communications degree (or whatever) and then got all pouty and disappointed when she didn't become a Major TV Journalism Star. Instead, she had to -- horror of horrors! -- pay her dues. As someone who's spent 17 years in the newspaper business, and who started for a four-figure salary on a weekly paper in a town of 700, going to school board meetings and taking photos at community festivals, I find it hard to have any real sympathy for Vollmayer. Gee, Vollmayer, we're all real sorry that the news business just wasn't waiting for you to arrive so you could be a big star right off the bat. There's a name for anybody who goes into a first job in the news business expecting fame, high pay and normal hours. Such a person is called an idiot. -- Tom Pantera Fargo, N.D.
_______________ARISTOCRACY OF THE DROPOUTS BY TODD GITLIN (11/03/98)
	The scholarly value of your magazine is judged by the quality of journalism printed in it. Todd Gitlin's article is dribble. He implies that the drop-out factor accounts for the Republican control of the House and Senate and by turning out, the votes for Democrats would place the country back on a democratic track. The flaw in Gitlin's theory is that he seems to have no recollection of history. Where has the Democratic control of both houses in the last 40 years led this country? Why should the country return to repeat the mistakes of the past? Why is an idea only good if supported by a Democrat? If one looks closely at the Democratic agenda, one will find that most of the ideas have been co-opted from the Republicans. I would suggest that Gitlin spend less time pointing the finger at the Republicans and more time developing a balanced approach to teaching the truth (if indeed the professor still claims to teach). Telling the truth should be nonpartisan, but to paraphrase the likes of President Clinton, I guess it depends on how one defines truth. Shame on Gitlin for such a shallow piece of dribble, and shame on Salon for not having the moral integrity to challenge such nonsense. -- Jerry Heath Cincinnati SALON \| Nov. 6, 1998