Social issues |
Mark Seely - 08:30pm Jul 14, 1999 PDT (# 155 of 165)

People who are members of a class of race, religion, sexual orientation, or
the like, are no more important than people who are members of a class of
personality type, socioeconomic level, IQ, learning style, political party,
profession, marital status, etc. The former classes do not deserve any more
protection than the latter classes.

Many of the latter classes are treated poorly, too, you know. Why is there
a movement to single out some classes of people in preference for others?
What is the real motive behind hate crimes laws? It is certainly not a
moral motive. It is not a motive based in love or sympathy. Such a motive
would not distinguish between people on the basis of their class.

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Books Judith Greer

[Ozick] has struggled with some of these "revelation" issues herself. Did
I imply that she didn't feel deeply about it? I merely point out that she
has also gotten plenty of publicity from her outrage on Salinger's behalf,
and that can't hurt.

And, okay, I'll say it: frankly I find her "feelings" about the situation
(which really come down to "Salinger is an Artist and thus must not be
disturbed by lesser lights, or judged by the same standards we use to judge
the behavior of a non-artist in relation to him") equivalent to the folks
here who have claimed that your thoughts on this scandal could have no
legitimacy until you had read Salinger's work. You bought into that
concept, for some weird reason, but I still say it's bogus.

I don't care if Salinger's writing is the best ever seen in the world, to
me that should have no bearing AT ALL on how we judge his private behavior
and its consequences. Just as his being a great writer excuses exactly
nothing, Maynard's being a lesser one does not automatically make her
behavior worse.

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Social Issues | Edward Cole - 02:50pm Jun 22, 1999 PDT (# 610 of 623)

Its a pet peeve of mind that relationships are often treated like
spreadsheets or score cards."I spent $5 on gas so you have to spend $5 on
dinner" or "I drove the kids to soccer practise so you have do the
laundry." Their seems to be a lot of record keeping in the contemporary
relationship in order to avoid the unavoidable fact that relationships and
love don't neatly add up. I think what I was trying to get at, on topic, is
that men are still being taught an older lesson about relationships and
power. Women have something they want and they have to be strong enough and
crafty enough to get it. Gay men are thought to subvert this through either
cowardice or conceit.

Quoting Auden:

If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.

I STINK! and other tales of terror

Mothers | Charlotte Johnson - 04:57pm Jun 18, 1999 PDT (# 28 of 54)

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Movies | Mike Backus - 06:41am Jun 10, 1999 PDT (# 70 of 117)

To me, the two main problems with romantic comedies are they posit a
(basically conservative) world view that everyone (though particularly
women) is desperately looking for love, they fall back on cliche after
cliche (woman more desperate, man hesitant, losers abound) and for me the
biggest problem, they structure such movies like action films with the
climax being the two people finally find love. Now anyone who's lived past
16 knows finding love is one thing but living with it day in and day out is
quite another; in other words, most of these movies end where I think they
should begin.

The specimen cup runneth over--drug testing

Mothers Who Think | Erin McGinty - 08:09pm Jun 6, 1999 PDT (# 25 of 124)

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Education | Jen - 12:30pm May 27, 1999 PDT (# 10 of 14)

I think the parents' role is to communicate with the school district about
the standards and the tests and to be informed about things like: How many
school days are my kids spending in test preparation & test taking? What do
the tests look like? What do you do with the scores?

I don't feel very good about standards. I work in the training field, and I
am new to it. I used to wonder why some of the technical classes I took
were so shallow. Now I understand that the instructors were "teaching to
tests," specifically Microsoft and other certification tests that are so
trendy. The tests (and I'm talking about user-level tests, not technical
MSCE or CNE tests) seem to test for a broad understanding of the software,
touching on many of the features but not requiring in-depth understanding
of them (in my opinion, anyway). Everyone benefits by the system: Microsoft
and other vendors who rake in licensing and certification fees, content
developers who sell "certified" books and software, "certified" trainers,
who hold the key to the tests, and employers, who have a measurement to use
when hiring.

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Social Issues | Vikki Wing - 12:12pm May 26, 1999 PDT (# 31 of 83)

It wasn't solely a lack of insurance that caused the delay in the child
receiving professional help. It seemed to be a bureaucratic tangle of
needing this form first, to get that form, to finally get the form that
let's you get free treatment. There seemed to be a string of unrelated and
separate SNAFUs, each one perpetrated by a different individual sometimes
in different agencies that finally accumulated in to one big tragedy.

I saw an hour-long report on this case many months ago. After watching
Tabitha Walrond talk about what happened and how she felt, I remember
thinking that this was a truly horrible and tragic case of "shit happens".

I don't mean to sound unfeeling, because I'm not. But as a society we seem
to have forgotten that every situation in life does not come fully resolved
in a one hour long episode, with the bad guys in jail and the good guys
having a beer with Miss Kitty. There isn't always someone or something to
blame for every unpleasant event.

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Movies | southpaw - 11:14am May 21, 1999 PDT (# 605 of 611)

Reading this thread is like watching Crossfire. The sides are
diametrically opposed to each other, and must, for reasons of survival,
disagree on every point. To agree would be to undermine your own relevance
and reason for being. Funny.

To me, the interesting thing about the hype for the movie is that most of
it really hasn't come directly from Lucas. Most of it is media
organizations and news services, desperate to fill air time, all reporting
how much hype there is. Most news organizations don't report news anymore,
they just re-report it over and over and over. That's why so many anchors
and "reporters" today seem like little more than teleprompter reading
mannequins and models--that's all that's needed. So, the trailer comes out
and someone reports (really reports) that people are going to see Meet Joe
Black and walking out after the trailer. And then the wire services get a
hold of that and it goes out all over the wires, and then all of the
newspapers all over the country grab hold of it and run with it. And then
all of the TV shows go with it and, of course, broadcast it like we haven't
already heard it 50 times. And then, finally, weekly hack sheets like Time
magazine "report" it for the benefit of, well, whoever depends on sources
like Time for news. Then inevitably, someone starts a thread of news off
of that by noting that EVERYONE is "reporting" about this trailer thing,
and they report that, WOW!, the hype is just off the charts for this thing.
And then it starts up again, and the cycle starts again and before long,
this is the most hyped thing ever! And meanwhile, all Lucas did was put a
drop of blood in the ocean and the sharks went into a frenzy. I'd be
shocked if the guy's spent five bucks on advertising for this thing. Kind
of seems a little unfair to blame him. I mean, I know he would have hyped
it if he had to, but he didn't have to because the media and word of mouth
did the job for him.

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Books | Teresa Neal - 01:45pm May 11, 1999 PDT (# 61 of 91)

Dear Mr. Flaubert,

My husband is a good provider. He's faithful, dependable, and shall we say,
unadventurous. I don't know what I want but I want more. If I had to say
what's missing I'd say "Je ne sais quoi." Is this all there is? I'm about
to go mad.

Emma

Dear Mr. Homer,

My middle-aged lover of seven years has been having some kind of midlife
crisis. What more could he possibly want? I'm the nymph of Eternal Youth,
for Jovesakes. But all he does is sit on the shore and stare into space.
You don't seriously think he'd go back to his boring old WIFE, do you?

Calypso

Dear Ms. DuMarier:

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Mothers Who Think | Nancy Campbell - 02:48pm Apr 27, 1999 PDT (# 15 of 42)

I think participation awards, especially in sports, are fine. I object when
prizes and awards make no distinction between hard workers and slackers. At
my daughter's 6th grade public school awards ceremony, the guidance
counselor opened the event with a speech about how awards didn't really
mean anything, basically comparing winning academic awards with winning the
lottery. She managed to insult students who worked hard for their awards
(NOT my daughter), without making non-award-winners feel any better.

My daughter competed in cross-country this year, and the coaches, parents
and team all seemed to be about healthy competition. No one disparaged
anyone. My daughter improved her time dramatically and got an award for
that, even though she was not one of the best runners. I think it's
possible to acknowledge everyone's efforts realistically in a way that
doesn't make anyone feel like shit. When my daughter started in
cross-country, she came in last several times. She told me that her coach
told her to hang in there, that she really had heart and would improve. I
thought it was great coaching: encouraging yet honest and believable. And
the coach was right.

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Social Issues | Jonathan Day - 03:03pm Apr 21, 1999 PDT (# 10 of 140)

Actually, blowing away the school =ISN'T= new. This is, what, the third US
incident in how many months? School shootings in general aren't new,
either. I shouldn't need to mention Dunblane.

Blaming popular culture is always the easy way out. It never explores WHY
things happen, what causes people to behave like that, why they cease to
see the other people as people but targets. Popular culture, IMHO, may
reflect those attitudes and the underlying cause, but is not, in itself a
cause.

I don't think there are any easy answers. Limiting gun access WOULD be a
sensible course of action, so will never happen. Neither will parential
responsibility, or any other possible beneficial thing. Everyone'll just
point fingers at everyone else, and nothing will ever change.

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Movies | David Watkins - 08:16am Apr 6, 1999 PST (# 261 of 308))

I protest against the depiction of Hitchcock as some sort of moral monster
- "a troll" as one poster called him.

Obviously he took pleasure in frightening his audience, but since his
audience took pleasure in being frightened, what right have we to
disapprove. I'm sure that nearly everybody in this thread takes an
ultra-liberal stance on kinky sex between consenting adults - isn't the
principle identical?

Hitchcock's wife and daughter, who surely knew him better than anybody else
could have, have been loyal to his memory. This must count for something.

His fondness for practical jokes didn't alienate the people who worked for
him. Towards Tippi Hedren he does seem to have behaved very badly, but this
was one episode in a long life - haven't we all done things we'd love to
forget. And OTOH Hedren owes her position as a minor but unchallengeable
movie icon only to Hitchcock. Without him she'd be a woman who once
appeared in a beer commercial.

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