Letters

Maxwell's House, Angry at the Grammarian, Bankable Productions, Making the Grade, Stacked Against Them

Maxwell's House

To Craig Lindsay on last week’s Power of Soul column about Maxwell:

I cant imagine why Maxwell would turn you down. You’re so eloquent and gracious. I mean, “light-skinned bastard!” and “carmel-ass”? Wow! You’re so witty! I know that if I were Maxwell, I’d be running to sit down and talk with someone like you.

Aw. Sorry you didn’t get your 15 minutes of convo with Maxwell. But damn, as you said, with all the concerts he’s doing, dude has to be tired. Maybe sometime in the future for sure. For you and me both, maybe.

Craig, shame on you for downing that light-skinned brother. You know, Barack Obama got the light-skinned brothas at the top again. El DeBarge who?

Angry at the Grammarian

To Jeffrey Barg on a recent Angry Grammarian column about Sarah Palin, in which he suggested she have a hysterectomy:

I can appreciate wanting more Americans to speak proper English, but your piece is absolutely classless. I’m sure you think yourself to be enlightened, but you’ve only proven you’re a fool. Your little hate-filled rant has no place in journalism. Get a life and get a heart.

I’m much less worried about grammar and vocabulary than I am about the overt woman-hating speech scattered throughout your article. Whether the word is pronounced correctly, or whether the punctuation is right, is much less important than the underlying dark attitude exhibited.

We had two qualified women running in this presidential race. Each one was from a different political philosophy. Both were trashed. Both were verbally assaulted. Both were disrespected. Both were expected to take it in stride.

[The attitude is] let the weak little woman go crawl back into her hole and leave all the big job of running the government to those big men! Once she has been put into her place, they will go ahead and do the job. No interlopers allowed here!

Now don’t you feel better? Perhaps we should schedule the grammar king a castration and prostate-ectomy? While we’re at it, maybe we can find some way to give you a brain transplant. Then maybe you can justify your sorry existence some other way than by bashing women gratuitously.

Thank you­—you said it all. Sarah Palin is a menace, thankfully now retired from national politics. She is a walking advertisement for birth control.

Bankable Productions

Regarding Daniel McQuade’s recent TV column about Tyra Banks:

This article is a disgrace! Tyra has worked very hard for everything she has. Nothing has every been given to her throughout her life. Her intelligence far surpasses … Ha ha! Sorry, I couldn’t finish that sentence with a straight face. Whoever gave her a show understands how truly dumb the American public is. Bravo, sir. Bravo.

Making the Grade

Regarding Becca Trabin’s article about the Philadelphia Student Union:

There are other forms of child abuse beyond the physical kind. This is a great example of the abuse handed out in the form failing to disabuse a teenager of misguided and injurious opinions about the world under the guise of “empowerment.”

A responsible adult would have informed Candace Carter and her friends that, contrary to the bizarre charge by fellow students, the police at Sayre High School didn’t “incite the violence,” but were simply the ones who responded to the student brawl at Sayre High School. There is nobody working to keep them bogged down in a “spiral of oppression” and no government plan to keep them uneducated and to prepare them for prison. A responsible adult would tell Ms. Carter that the only way to succeed in school, and in the world, is by hard work, a good attitude and making good decisions.

There is a malicious force that threatens the future of Ms. Carter, and millions like her, however. It’s perpetual self-pity and the pernicious narrative—advanced by so many well-meaning people—that she’s ultimately not responsible for her actions.

Stacked Against Them

Regarding Tara Murtha’s recent article about the library closings:

Closing libraries in any of our neighborhoods is a huge mistake. They’re safe havens to youth. They provide many of the cultural stimulation lacking because of cuts in arts and culture programs in our schools.

They’re the neighborhood gathering place for youth to volunteer. They also offer summer reading programs that help kids retain what they learned during the school year, and provide after-school and weekend computer access to families who can’t afford a home computer.

Closing libraries is robbing some children of their means to learn. Would you tell a portion of Philadelphia schoolchildren they won’t have school? That’s what you do to the children who won’t have a library in their neighborhood; you rob them of tools they need to succeed.