I cannot tell a lie
BY TRACY QUAN
(10/15/99)

I can't help wondering whether Quan is really incapable of imagining reasons other than petty personal or class hang-ups for a parent to be unhappy about their adult child becoming a sex worker, or whether she's in denial about them. Yes, it's sad and telling that most of her co-workers' mothers are too "prudish [and] neurotic" to be told anything about their kids' sex lives, let alone that the kids are prostitutes. But I could hardly applaud Quan's own parents for blithely supporting her job choice just because it's sanitary and lucrative.

I hope I will never be shortsighted enough to let any of my kids' choices, short of violent crime, permanently interfere with our relationship or stop me from being fully supportive of them, but I know I would worry if one of them ended up in a job that was as likely as I suspect prostitution is to interfere with their ability to sustain a long-term, intimate love relationship or anything approaching a stable family life. Not everyone wants those things, but many parents probably associate them with happiness and fulfillment. I would also worry about how my kids' self-esteem and mental health would survive such work in the long term, given the fact that, right or wrong, sex work is widely considered degrading and shameful -- probably by the clients as much as by the general public.

Bringing sex work, and sex itself, out of the closet may well help to make these problems less likely for sex workers, which I applaud. But until that happens -- which won't be anytime soon, I'm afraid -- I suspect that most sex workers will continue to face some tall hurdles, imposed specifically by the realities of their jobs, in trying to make full, meaningful lives for themselves. Any loving parent would be remiss to not consider that.

-- Beth Gallagher

In the tiresome tradition of daytime talk-show guests, Tracy Quan wears her unabashed pride in her profession and her materialist credo as supposed proof of a self-awareness worth sharing with the public.

Any awareness worth sharing moves beyond boring narcissism and tries to contextualize one's existence and activities, thoughts, emotions, etc. within a larger picture: the range of one's life, the sweep of human history or the variety of human culture. Quan has done none of this.

Let's hear from Quan in 10, 20 or 30 years -- when the johns quit calling, the looks start fading, the biological alarm clock rings and peters out and the husband or boyfriend starts cheating; or when some potential employer remains unimpressed by her supposedly hip calling. Then she might have the perspective from which to say something worthwhile.

In the meantime, don't give her the platform from which to capitalize on her current "profession" or try to segue into a new one. Quan's banal prose and mercenary, materialistic ethic offer nothing of value to the world.

-- Kathryn Minnick
Beijing, China

How Cindy McCain was outed for drug addiction
BY AMY SILVERMAN
(10/18/99)

It seems that Amy Silverman wants what most current journalists want: to have it both ways: Journalists want their subject to tell the truth -- but only after said journalists have broken the story.

When a journalist's anger is primarily about being scooped, it's petty and, even worse, whiny. Silverman all but admits that the three-page diatribe simply boiled down to the fact that they knew the story was going to get out, so they got out ahead of it. I'm sorry, but that's simply sound public relations -- tell your story your way, don't let someone else do it.

But the weakest part of the article lies in Silverman's point that there was manipulation of the judicial system because Cindy McCain didn't receive a harsh sentence. I don't know what the judicial system is like in Arizona, but the fact that a rich white woman didn't go to jail for a crime for which a poor black woman would have served time isn't news. It's status quo.

-- Rica Guarnieri

What is the big deal about Cindy McCain? Since when do a wife's misfortunes or misdeeds impact on a candidate's platform? I am no fan of John McCain's, but if he tried to cover up for his wife's past, it rather humanizes him in my eyes. Wouldn't we all do the same? Get back onto the real issues and leave Cindy the heck alone.

-- Eve Golden

Striving to stay alive
BY CLAIRE BARLIANT
(10/18/99)

Claire Barliant implies that the SAT is unfairly measuring students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds because such students have lower scores. She also implies that the SAT doesn't predict college performance but cites no evidence.

Studies by ETS show that SAT scores alone are better predictors of college performance than high school grades alone. And a weighted average of the two predictors is better than either predictor alone. Without high school grades or the SAT, colleges would have no way of knowing whether an applicant was capable of doing college-level work.

Students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds score lower on the SAT because the SAT primarily measures intelligence, and people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are, on average, less intelligent. Intelligence is primarily a genetically inherited trait. (This has been proven by numerous kinship studies involving adopted children, identical twins reared apart, etc.) Our nation is in part an intellectual meritocracy, where people with higher intelligence obtain better jobs, higher levels of education and higher socioeconomic status. Because intelligence is hereditary, the children of low socioeconomic status parents inherit their parents' lower intelligence.

-- Michael Kantor
Phoenix

Application blues
BY LUCAS HANFT
(10/18/99)

What a pitiful testament to the state of the youth poised to embark on an important stage of their life's development. I'm not saying college is the most important time of their life, but it is an experience that can define them, give them innumerable opportunities, prepare them, mold them, liberate them, disappoint them, sour them, change them or just bore them. It's up to them for the most part. But it's a fairly sure bet that it will bore Hanft. I dare say Hanft and his generation declare amusement and disdain for the '50s-type questions for their essays because, in reality, they find the questions too damned difficult to attempt. They shy from any introspection and fear their shallow responses to the questions would belie the shortcomings of their education up to this point. For this, Hanft and the Gen X-ers can place some blame on their elders, for they are the caretakers of the education of each new generation.

-- Mike McAnally

Eleven years ago, Oberlin College asked me who the most significant person of the century was. I told them Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's.

I got in.

-- Matt McIver
Brooklyn, N.Y.

For all the girls
BY LEE UTTMARK
(10/18/99)

Lee Uttmark's essay captures the fulfillment of a wish shared by many lesbians and gay men: to share their life with the people who gave them life in the first place. My father passed away when I was 25, before I was able to come out to him, and my mother died when I was 27. I was out to her and we were slowly coming to terms with it -- I like to think she would have gotten to the place Uttmark is, and it gives me comfort that other lesbian and gay folk have a chance at it.

I know it's not easy -- my sister and I have been on again/off again in our closeness and comfort level with each other. But we keep trying, because we love each other.

-- Charles Flowers

Pot on the brain
BY DAMIEN CAVE
(10/15/99)

The truth is, there is no need for a marijuana "pill," as we already have the ability to inhale. Damien Cave repeats the claim that the NIH opposes smoking marijuana because of its detrimental effect on the lungs. If the effects on the lungs are supposedly so bad, why not ingest it in a food form? If Cave is ignorant of admittedly obscure and relatively unknown concepts such as a hash brownie, then I suggest he has no business writing about this subject.

J. Michael Walker claims that a new marijuana pill would be healthier and better than marijuana. He compares it positively to Advil, which he claims works without any side effects. Since the pill doesn't exist, however, there is no way to measure its pros and cons. The case of Marinol may give a clue: The synthetic THC pill is quite unpopular with patients, who, among other problems, have difficulty swallowing the pill, dislike the hour's wait for the effects and often become totally knocked out from the refined THC dosage when it finally kicks in. Among the side effects are irritability, insomnia, anorexia, hiccups and diarrhea, as well as disorientation, amnesia, depression, paranoia, hallucinations and manic psychosis. An overdose of Marinol can kill you, something which is not possible with marijuana.

Despite all this, as well as the near unanimous preference of pot over Marinol by those who have taken both, the feds still insist Marinol is superior to nature-made marijuana. Such dishonest insistences are the norm in the battle against marijuana, and to think that the deceit will disappear when the new "wonder pill" hits the market would be naive at best.

This is really about money. Marinol can cost up to $30,000 a year (according to a 1996 Los Angeles Times article) for treatment, much more expensive than even buying marijuana on the black market. Marijuana is also not something that can be monopolized and patented.

Just as politics is perverted by dollars, so is science. Walker can gush about the supposed neutrality of science, but I'm fairly certain he's not doing any research for free. He is investigating derivatives that can lead to more cash for the chemical industry rather than the benefits of a natural product.

-- Robert Sterling

An empire after all
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
(10/16/99)

Globalists and one-world government advocates lambaste those like Buchanan who courageously stand up to them and expose their vile objectives -- making our nation a province of their one-world government scheme. This has been done by destroying America's industrial might and converting it into a service-sector economy, miseducating America's youth and waging undeclared wars against sovereign nations like Iraq, killing and maiming their residents. These one-world government advocates do not advocate a "global democracy," as they claim. These monsters are the true advocates of totalitarianism; they want to plunge our nation and the world into a new Dark Age.

-- Sean P. Porter
Metairie, La.

Christopher Hitchens takes to task those liberals who look the other way on some of the more unpalatable aspects of Pat Buchanan simply because he opposes trade agreements like NAFTA.

Wasn't the same criticism leveled against Hitchens during his dalliance with Ken Starr and Bob Barr? Didn't Hitchens look the other way when it came to some of the more unsavory aspects of these gentlemen, simply because they shared his hatred of President Clinton?

-- Ted Paliobeis