Desperately seeking Silicon Valley studs
BY JANELLE BROWN
(08/30/99)

Janelle Brown mentions the "hordes of women" that "Silicon Valley's men are really looking forward" to meeting at American Singles' "annual convention" (read "sales pitch"). However, at the group's Web site, a search for single women in their 20s turns up a list almost exclusively composed of women living in the former Soviet Union, their profiles undoubtedly submitted by one of the many mail-order bride services.

If there are so many unmarried men in Santa Clara, one has to wonder why. Perhaps it's because few computer programmers are athletic enough to be referred to as "studs." Or perhaps they're looking for something other than the gold-diggers who "want to meet one of those Internet millionaires."

-- Benjamin Geer

Teen transsexuals
BY MARIA RUSSO
(08/28/99)

If the Internet had been available when I was a teen in the '70s, I would have been able to transition then, and my life since would have been very different. As it was, I thought of myself as a freak and lived with terrible shame and guilt for more than 20 years. It was only after my own suicide attempt that I finally decided to go to the Web to research the subject, and I was amazed to discover thousands out there like myself. Far from the serial killers and prostitutes the public most often sees as transsexuals in movies, I found we are doctors, lawyers, engineers, cops, artists, ordinary decent people, just like everybody else. Thus empowered, I was finally able to start my own long-overdue transition.

When I saw our suicide statistics I was appalled, and reflected on just how close I had come to becoming one of them myself. The Transgender International Rights and Education Day project was started to promote public education about transsexualism in hopes of countering the shame, guilt and humiliation that is responsible for our suicide statistics. If we can save a single transgendered child from this fate, it will have been worth all the effort.

-- Sarah Marie Scott
Director, Transgender International Rights and Education Day

There is enough medical evidence to make a strong case for a biological cause, for the feelings of "true" male-to-female transsexuals. They have no choice other than to either accept their condition or go into denial and in all probability commit suicide. The arguments against transsexuals made by some members of the lesbian and gay community, as quoted by the author, are reflective of their own emotional concerns and are both frivolous and groundless. I have heard them all before: "If gender roles are relaxed and no longer policed, no one will want sex changes," etc. Nonsense. Real transsexuals will tell you it has little or nothing to do with gender roles, but rather a strong aversion to possessing the physical characteristics of the sex they apparently were born into, and a need to have a normal female phenotype. A large portion of the male-to-females I know, are surprisingly normal women, given the fact they were raised as boys. You cannot transform a man into a woman, but appropriate sexual reassignment surgery is not an attempt to do so.

-- Natasha Lumna
Walnut Creek, Calif.

The suffering Irish
BY DANIEL REITZ
(08/31/99)

Daniel Reitz writes almost with regret that the new Ireland is less poverty-stricken and miserable than it once was. This is no loss. Although it behooves Reitz to write disparagingly of "yuppies." "cappuchino bars" and "Jag drivers," the real effects of Ireland's economic upturn have been the staggering declines in emigration and unemployment. A few have gotten very wealthy, but the bulk of the poor have gotten decidedly less poor. This is a positive development.

The fact that Ireland's literature often spoke of experiences under the grind of poverty, clericalism and deprivation was simply a result of the fact that, for many, the Irish experience embodied those things. Now that circumstances are different, this will, no doubt, be felt in the country's literature.

But the alleviation of poverty is not a threat, and it should not be presented as one. Change has happened fast, and more will come, but Ireland's literary tradition will continue.

-- Ben Walsh
San Francisco

It's obvious that Daniel Reitz is only talking about the southern part of Ireland in his article, and not the North. If he had ventured into that war zone, he would see that there is still much suffering taking place. It's amazing how the British, who won't carry guns in England, have no problem firing plastic bullets at people in Ireland. (Plastic bullets are banned as a means of crowd control in England, but authorized for use in Northern Ireland -- primarily in the Catholic, "presumed nationalist" communities). Ireland is the poorest community in Europe, with the poorest housing conditions. Maybe on his next trip, Reitz should visit Falls Road in Belfast, the Bog Side in Derry City or any street in Coalisland -- he'll come home with a very different view of the Irish condition.

-- Caitlin McCarthy
Seattle

Daniel Reitz brilliantly encapsulates one aspect of my impression of contemporary Dublin, where I lived from 1994 to 1998. Dublin was still shaking off the shackles of the past when I first moved there; by the time I left, the culture had been thinly veneered with cell phones, Harley-Davidsons, fashionable nightclubs and housing prices that made any U.S. boom I've experienced seem trivial. The opening of a Planet Hollywood on Stephen's Green seemed an emblem of this material success. However, the infrastructure of the city seemed to be collapsing under the weight of sudden prosperity, not to mention the interpersonal infrastructure of society.

-- Susan Jordan
Washington

Sharps & Flats: "Burn to Shine"
REVIEWED BY SETH MNOOKIN
(09/01/99)

Ben Harper fans will be satisfied with "bursts of delicious promise." I agree that Harper's acoustic work is more appealing than the electric stuff. But look around -- is creation perfect? Of course not. Yet there are moments in a day, places on earth that are soul-reviving -- just like the music of Ben Harper.

-- Bill Ginevicz
Watauga, Texas

Fiction, 9 to 5
BY IAN MCEWAN
(08/30/99)

I appreciated McEwan's choices -- they are a rich and meaty bunch -- but the list felt incomplete without Nicholson Baker's "The Mezzanine." In my experience, no book has ever captured the simple rhythmic inanity of office work like Baker's tiny debut.

-- Nick Taylor

With conservatives like these, who needs liberals?
BY DAVID HOROWITZ
(08/30/99)

It sounds like David Horowitz may be on the verge of another sea change in political philosophy. Apparently it's just beginning to occur to him that many, if not most, "conservatives" have no genuine affection for either liberty or democracy. They like their freedom to be sure, but the masses are another issue altogether. And, of course, like the ideologues of the left, conservatives presume they will be ones to supply the class of "philosopher bureaucrats" to "guide" the rest of us--with the full backing of the police power of the state, if necessary.

I'm looking forward to the libertarian, as opposed to conservative (and they ARE opposed), Horowitz very soon.

-- Mark Bonacquisti

The desire to control other people's behavior by means of law -- specifically, the desire to impose what nowadays passes for Christian morality on all Americans -- is definitive of American conservatism. It is therefore hardly surprising that conservatives are in favor of censorship. Horowitz has aligned himself with the likes of Bill Bennett, Pat Robertson, Dan Quayle and Gary Bauer. Is it conceivable that he doesn't understand what these people are trying to do? If it were possible, his intellectual fellows would gladly junk the Bill of Rights in favor of the Ten Commandments.

What is surprising (and saddening) is that liberals would join in with such behavior. But then, ever since Ronald Reagan turned "liberal" into a pejorative in 1979, our so-called liberals have been running from their own honorable values. The separation of religious and moral issues from government has been the heart of liberalism for its 300-year existence, and is the very foundation of modern culture and society. The shame is that Bill Clinton, Al Gore and our congressional Democrats, with their plainly anti-liberal stances on drugs, guns, tobacco and other things, are falsely called "liberal."

-- Brian Marasca

Despite the fact that I am a card-carrying member of the "Christian right," I largely concur with David Horowitz. The fact is, we need more freedom of speech, not less. We need people to feel free to speak out on behalf of moral and biblical principles such as the need for male leadership in the family and society, the damage done by divorce, the pure evil of abortion and assisted suicide, the scourge of free sex and homosexuality, the spread of occult practices and symbols, and the sanctity of work without being labeled as "religious extremists."

Years ago, although censors were active, there was not as great a need for their services because of a basic acceptance of standards of behavior and morality. The sex and violence that now pollute the large and small screens and the Internet would not have found an audience, because they would have offended those standards, and the justices of the New Jersey Supreme Court who wrote that scientific studies undergird the morality of homosexuality would have been driven out of their profession.

But today, what were once mainstream values now dare not be spoken because of the fear of offending some interest group or "imposing one's belief" upon society. Tenets of faith once freely expressed in the public square and in the schools now spur litigation and judicial sanctions, while the rights of gays, Satanists and New Agers to infiltrate the schools and public institutions are routinely upheld.

If more leaders had the courage simply to speak out against evil, and men and women of faith enjoyed their own full First Amendment rights to share their beliefs, there would be no need for censors. The sad truth is that we already have censors, and they have forced people of faith and other moral spokesmen to cede the marketplace of ideas.

-- Robert Maistros
Ashburn, Va.

Misadventures in Marxism
BY LAWRENCE OSBORNE
(08/30/99)

Osborne overlooks completely the impact that Marx had, which goes far beyond the notion of socialism as a political cause. Marx gave us a new set of tools with which to analyze the societies around us -- the notion of an economically based set of classes in structural conflict with each other that drives history. His theories, much like those of Freud, have provided us with terms and concepts that are now in everyday use and seem almost obvious.

-- David Garth

As a college instructor at the New School and at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, I teach Marx both as a grandfather in the canon of sociology and as a thinker of some contemporary relevance. So naturally, I took some issue with Lawrence Osborne's "Misadventures in Marxism," an anti-Communist treatise that relies heavily on a familiar and self-serving species of an ad hominem attack all too common among critics of Marx and the Marxist legacy.

As someone concerned with intellectual rigor and good thinking, I sharply caution students against the easy reduction of Marx's philosophical, historical and aesthetic achievements to the historical record of communism. Just as Christ and the Christian tradition cannot be judged solely on the record of the Inquisition and the genocidal ravages of the conquistadors, just as Einstein's atomic physics cannot be judged by the suffering of the people of Hiroshima, so Marxism cannot be held solely to the tribunal of the Gulag, Stalinism and Pol Pot. The same applies to the more virulent tendencies of Marxist scholars, who would litmus test Adam Smith and the ideology of the free market on the steel mills and coal mines of the industrial revolution, the banana plantations of Honduras or the Nike plants of Vietnam.

This lapse of critical intelligence is unfortunate, since Osborne's question is basically a good one: How should the political reality of 20th century communism shape our reading of Marx? Of the two most brazenly vulgar responses one might imagine from either end of the political spectrum (from the right, that it should extinguish it entirely; from the left, that it should have no effect at all), Osborne and the editors of Salon comfortably and easily slide to the first. The other failures of the piece could be piled high: Berman's vagueness concerning the contemporary identity of the bourgeoisie is not, actually, part of a "pseudo-scientific hate theory" that prefers to keep its enemies creepy and ubiquitous, but consistent with Berman's interpretive exegetical approach, which deals more with the metaphorical content than the empirical accuracy or Marx's works. What stands out, however, as the uniquely annoying aspect of the piece, is the delight Osborne takes in an ironic trivialization of Berman's attempt to engage "the problems of modern spiritual life" through an in-depth reading of Marx as a aesthetic and spiritual visionary. By quickly eliding Berman's discussion of the personal dimensions of Marx's dialectics with clichis of '60s narcissism, Osborne gets away with what is at best a cheap shot, and at worst a reactionary distortion. Osborne compares Berman's suggestion that capitalism causes us to "freeze [our] feelings towards each other" with the experiences of inmates of the Lubyanka -- as if the hardships of Soviet prison life somehow prove that capitalism doesn't deform emotional life after all! To dis Berman's subjective, emancipatory "adventures" with Marx as Prozac advocacy and "virtuous rolfing" is, by the late 1990s, about as daring and original as shooting goldfish in a barrel.

-- Sam Binkley
Department of Sociology, New School University
New York

Can Berman's Marx be the same character as Stalin's? Sure -- just as Torquemada and Saint Francis could both refer to Jesus Christ as their lord and savior. It seems elementary to say this. Osborne might have at least reflected that Marx was not a devil but a human being who wrote stuff in a certain time and social context -- stuff which was later interpreted in various ways by various people for various purposes in various situations. Not all of them were evil, even by American upper-middle- class standards. What is truly remarkable about Marx is his survival as a bogeyman who has to be killed and buried over and over again.

-- Gordon Fitch

Lawrence Osborne misses the salient reason why American academics remain so embarrassingly attached to Marxism: They have no other way to express their concern over the poverty and social inequality in this country. In America, the right continually insists that welfare, universal health care and minimum wage increases are anti-capitalist, anti-democratic and un-American. We are told implicitly that the price of freedom is injustice. People who still express concerns are silenced and discredited by being labeled socialists or communists. Is it any surprise when these people then say, Huckleberry Finn-like, "All right then I'll be a communist?"

-- Savannah Jahrling

Osborne gives us a glimpse into the problem with American universities today. They are awash in a form of group think in which one must not question the revolution. The Marxists residing behind the ivory walls in the United States today don't seem to understand that the very system which they condemn, democratic capitalism, is the only system which allows them to engage in the social criticism they love so much. Marxism, by its very nature, is undemocratic and contradictory to the very notion of free thought and action the United States enjoys because it is based on democratic capitalist system. American academics would be wise to take Osborne's article to heart and begin listening to our neighbors across the Atlantic who have suffered under the atrocities Marxism has wrought.

-- Daniel Crandall
Berkeley, Calif.