- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - page 2 of 2
_______________WHO SAYS WOMEN NEVER LIE ABOUT RAPE? BY CATHY YOUNG (03/10/99)
	I would like to thank Salon for having the guts to publish Cathy Young's article. Many editorials I have read on the subject revert to the personal. Would I have the courage to report being raped? How would I feel if someone wrongly accused me? It is easy to polarize the issue along the sexual axis. However, our obligations to society are not based on I or he or she. Justice is very much a "we" concept, and we are left with the responsibility to do everything in our power to find the truth. Did Bill Clinton rape Juanita Broaddrick? I don't know, and unless more evidence comes to light, the rest of the country and I will have no other choice but to live with that ambiguity. The possibility of having a rapist in the White House is an awful consideration, but the certainty of perverting our idea of justice is far worse. -- Clay Niemann Thanks for running Jenn Shreve and Cathy Young's articles. They illustrate with crystal clarity the positions taken by the two sides in the Juanita Broaddrick story. Jenn Shreve's article is based on the premise that women never lie about rape, so let's not bother to examine the actual facts of the case: We know she's telling the truth, end of story. She's credible because she cried on TV and didn't report the rape. Cathy Young's piece is based on the idea that we shouldn't have to choose between "women always lie" and "women never lie" when deciding the guilt or innocence of an accused rapist. Instead, we should do what we do in every other court case: Consider the evidence. This is not a "nuts or sluts" defense; this is simply determining, as one would in any other trial, why the defendant is being accused. As Young points out, many men have been kept from using legitimate exculpatory evidence, such as the fact that their accusers were in the habit of making false rape accusations, in their trials -- and have gone to prison unjustly because of it. In President Clinton's case, we have the fact that Broaddrick's son and current husband are involved with the anti-Clinton movement. We have the fact that her husband in 1978, Gary Hickey, states that she never came home with a blackened lip or tried to say that she had hurt her lip in an accident. We have the fact that two of three witnesses to the alleged rape's immediate aftereffects have it in for Clinton because, as governor of Arkansas, he pardoned the man who murdered their father. We have the fact that we are expected to believe that none of the four witnesses, who seemingly recall certain lurid details with near-photographic recall, couldn't remember even the time of year, much less the month, date or time, when the crime took place until NBC provided the only possible date in 1978 (in late April) that it could have happened at that hotel. Add it all up, and it's easy to see why no legitimate journalist wanted to even come near this story. -- Teresa Huberty Minneapolis
_______________ BRILLIANT CAREERS: NATURE GIRL BY DAVID BOWMAN(03/09/99)
	I was shocked by David Bowman's small-minded and underhand treatment of Annie Dillard's work and personality. He appears to have written about her against his will and to have undercut his praise of her at every possible opportunity by implying that she's mad. He also makes the curious comment that if a woman has to say that she's not insane, then she must be. What on earth does he mean? Dillard is one of the best biology writers of all time. Nature is a lot more horrific than most of us would like to think about. Biologists understand that it's hard to reconcile the existence of a God with that of parasitic wasps. Dillard has given her attention to this problem. She has documented it exhaustively and intelligently, with passion and clarity. She may be a mystic, certainly. That does not make her mad or necessarily incomprehensible. Rather, it means that her work is interesting and extremely unusual. It would have been nice if Bowman could have conveyed this, rather than making cheap comments about Dillard's mental health. -- Rahat Glass-Husain So Annie Dillard became a nature writer because her first husband liked horror movies? Not only does David Bowman make the banal and knuckle-headed mistake of crediting the man behind the (woman) writer, he trivializes Dillard's remarkable body of work by trying to pass off the glib remarks of her critics as considered thought. I mean, who cares if Lehmann-Haupt was spooked? Bowman also gets some things dead wrong: "Living by Fiction" is about postmodernism, not modernism. Why was "The Writing Life" unfortunate? This essay doesn't give the reader a clue. Throughout her career, Dillard has asked readers to confront the fact that the world we hold so dear may in fact be indifferent to our suffering. Frogs are eaten alive; children are burned beyond recognition. Bowman's essay would have been greatly improved if he had a rudimentary grasp of a few of the scientific principles that inform Dillard's work. -- Shelley Silva SALON | March 15, 1999

R E C E N T L Y+| FORTRESS MICROSOFT BY TONY SEIDEMAN

Do you want to respond to a letter to the editor? Join the ongoing discussion in the Welcome area of Table Talk If you would like to submit a letter to the editor for publication, please e-mail us at letters@salonmagazine.com. Letters sent by fax or "snail mail" are less likely to be accepted. Do not send attachments. Please include your full name and a phone number where you can be reached during business hours, so we can confirm your identity. This information will not be used for any reason other than verification and will not appear on the site. Letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness. Brief letters are more likely to be published. Place the name of the article you are responding to in the subject heading of your e-mail. If you do not wish your letter to be published, please say so in the subject line. For more information on Salon's letters policy, click here.