_______________MAIL ROOM DISPATCH ...
	Gary Kamiya's "Gone with the windbags" struck a nerve with readers, who wrote dozens of letters thanking Kamiya for his thorough lambasting of pundit culture. When Newt Gingrich announced he was ending his career in Congress and as speaker of the House, Salon received another bunch of appreciative letters, this time lauding Joe Conason's left-of-the-fence take on the matter in "Head of Newt." On the other hand, few of the dozens of letters sent had anything nice to say regarding David Horowitz's recent column "Baa baa black sheep," which compared African-American voting habits to those of the populations of communist countries. A selection of these letters is published below. And proving that our readers have more on their mind than just politics these days, Holly Smith's "Worse sex can be yours -- tonight!" sparked a flurry of indignant responses urging Smith to shape up her attitude about sex with her husband or prepare to be cheated on.
_______________BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP BY DAVID HOROWITZ (11/09/98)
	So David Horowitz thinks blacks vote like people in totalitarian societies that have no real freedom of choice? Let's take a look at who the richest 10 percent of Americans voted for! I'm sure we'll see the same type of "mind-control" at work, but shifted toward the Republicans. Face it, groups of people vote together in different ways. Why on earth would even a small percentage of blacks look at the shrew-faced, weasel-eyed, painfully white jerks who run the Republican Party and figure that these people were the ones who would serve their interests best? Perhaps they are simply better than the rest of America at seeing what a bunch of arrogant, petty milquetoast lawyers the GOP is comprised of. -- Mike Garringer Portland, Ore. Mr. Horowitz should know that to compare Asian-American voting patterns with African-American voting patterns is extremely misleading. Asian-Americans, much like Hispanic-Americans, are as much subdivided politically by their nationality as they are united by any racial motive. It has been noted in Salon and elsewhere that the voting patterns and political leanings of Chinese-, Japanese-, Vietnamese- and Filipino-Americans vary between each other as much as the voting of Cuban- and Mexican-Americans. Is David Horowitz going to decry the traditionally solid Republican voting blocs of Cuban-Americans? No, I didn't think so. To compare African-Americans to Asian- or Hispanic-Americans is sheer speciousness. If Mr. Horowitz wants to look at the results of last week's elections and get disgusted, he can take a look at the voting totals from the repeal of the miscegenation law in South Carolina. While laudable that the law was repealed, 38 percent of the people in the state of South Carolina voted against the repeal. And what party did those people vote for? Hmm, I wonder. -- John Kirk St. Louis It's always fascinating to me how radical pundits like David Horowitz can make any vote or poll demonstrate just the message they'd most like to espouse at the moment. Most conservative commentators seem to be scrambling these days to put any reasonable subtext on last Tuesday's referendum. They can't see the one that seems most obvious: Many voters, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation, are tired of supporting a Republican Party that waves a banner of hate and intolerance in the face of still-oppressed minorities. -- Scott Douglas New York I don't know about the blacks where David Horowitz lives, but the ones down here in Georgia voted like communists because the Republicans all behaved like Nazis. Horowitz makes as much sense today as he did 30 years ago. -- Ed Boggan Atlanta David Horowitz's endorsement of Larry Elder's misguided "15 Reasons Why Blacks Shouldn't Support Clinton" is further evidence of why this nation is so fed up with brain dead, elitist Republican policies. Blacks should vote Republican because the Republicans will lower taxes? It seems unlikely that middle- and lower-income blacks will benefit much from tax cuts for the wealthy and increased corporate welfare. America's poor waited 12 years for that boon to "trickle down." If Mr. Horowitz feels he must criticize the Democrats for actively campaigning in black districts, he must also criticize his own party's zealous courtship of the hardcore Christian right. Tactics like this have made the Republican tent that much smaller. Maybe the high number of blacks voting Democrat are misguided but they, like the rest of us, have no other choice. -- Charles H. Lumsden What Horowitz ignores is that Clinton is the first president ever who does not hate, despise or, at best, ignore blacks. He is the first president ever who has lifelong black friends, who does not see blacks as a voting block but as individuals, whose black experience is more than his black maid and who would probably not disown his daughter if she married a black man. And what is the alternative? The Republican Party has been negative and decisive, pandering to a conservative holier-than-thou minority. If the Republican Party reached out to non-whites, homosexuals, the economically disadvantaged, pro-choicers and pro-gun control groups and told the religious right where to stick it, blacks and other groups would vote Republican. The Republican Party used to be the anti-slavery party. Now it's the old white Southern male conservative, I've-got-mine-and-I-won't-share party. No, Clinton and the Democrats are not perfect, but look at the alternative. Horowitz should write an article on why 98 percent of white conservative Southern males support Republicans. That would be equally enlightening. -- Adrienne Eng San Jose, Calif.
_______________ HOLY TERROR BY CHARLES TAYLOR (11/09/98)
	With all due respect to Charles Taylor, who does a wonderfully optimistic reading of Edward Zwick's "The Siege," perhaps what separates his account of the movie from those Arab-Americans "who haven't even seen the movie" is his relationship to a cultural object and theirs. Taylor can afford such "distance" and optimism in his reading because it doesn't act on him as a member of the community. Does Taylor really think his account of how terrorism is used to justify racism is news to Arab-Americans in this country? Thanks for setting it straight for them, but this revelation is their everyday reality. What good is Taylor's account of the movie if white American viewers are clapping and cheering in the theater when the young Arab gets shot? Arab-Americans aren't nearly as dim as Taylor seems to think they are. Those of us whose public identities are invaded by Hollywood and media stereotypes know better than most that a cultural object -- a painting, a work of art, a poem -- has a cultural, political and social life all its own once it enters the public arena. Taylor falls prey to that nasty thing called intentionalism. Taylor should give Arab-Americans a bit more credit by realizing that what these people are protesting is the racism and prejudice that exists in white American audiences even before they enter the movie theater and how the movie, despite its intentions, allows them to openly express their hatred in an entertaining, publicly acceptable way. -- Connie You
_______________HEAD OF NEWT BY JOE CONASON (11/03/98)
	In the aftermath of the '98 election, the "Left Hook" essay by Joe Conason is amazingly on target. Who would have thought that an election that was incumbent safe, "status quo" as the talking heads were telling us on election night, would have forced the resignation of the speaker of the House before the week was over? Kudos. But then, you've done this kind of thing before. Thanks for being on the Web. -- George Peery Mars Hill, N.C. I wanted to congratulate Joe Conason for predicting the future exactly right in his "Head of Newt" column. I read a lot of pundit predictions before the election but this is the only one that, in hindsight, proved prescient. -- Ken Zuroski SALON | Nov. 13, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| OUT OF ACADEMIA BY ANNALEE NEWITZ

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