Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________ MAILROOM DISPATCH ...

Do women lie about rape? In response to two articles -- "Why I didn't report my rape" by Jenn Shreve and "Who says women never lie about rape?" by Cathy Young -- readers wrote to say that women, Juanita Broaddrick in particular, do indeed make up rape charges and women should not be automatically believed when they say they've been the victim of such a crime.
Is Amazon.com unconquerable? Absolutely, says Robin Miller, in response to Scott Rosenberg's "Let's Get This Straight" column, "Amazon vs. the ants." One small site may not be able to cripple the Web's bookselling giant, but get an army of small sites together, and bit by bit they'll take the big guys down. "Amazon, Salon and other 'burn rate' companies will die, but I'll still be around, earning a modest income and having a good time," Miller writes.
Wednesday, letter writers addressed Silicon Valley's obsession with the physical appearance of its female employees. Gender-based discrimination is not limited to the female CEOs Janelle Brown described in her piece, "Beauty and the geeks. And on Thursday, many wrote in to dismiss the significance of homosexuality in animals, described in Susan McCarthy's article, "The fabulous kingdom of gay animals."
Who do die-hard lefties hate more than David Horowitz? In today's letters, Salon's readers from the left spare Horowitz and his column on the Christian right's retreat from politics. Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, takes a beating for his recent Newsreal on Broaddrick's rape charges, bringing us full circle.

_______________ RIGHT ON! HATS OFF TO A CONDEMNED MAN BY DAVID HOROWITZ (03/01/99)

In his recent column attacking those on the left who took issue with Christopher Hitchens for giving an affidavit to the House managers, David Horowitz writes, "Of course, Pollitt doesn't believe for a moment that Clinton is evil." What is this statement based on? Since I began writing my Nation column in l994, I have attacked President Clinton constantly: for his welfare "reform" agenda, his blaming of poverty on poor single mothers, his hypocritical advocacy of sexual abstinence to the unmarried, his signing of assorted bills that restricted abortion access, his health-care proposals, his indifference to cities, his bombing of Iraq and many other things. I wrote two columns explaining why I wasn't going to vote for him in l996 and urging Nation readers to do likewise, plus a post-election follow-up titled "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Ralph Nader." Furthermore, since feminists are always being accused of hypocritically supporting the president against his female accusers, I should note that I wrote sympathetically of Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick. True, like most sane people, I opposed impeachment over Monica Lewinsky -- but I wrote in support of impeachment over the bombing of Iraq!
Maybe David Horowitz should try reading instead of mind-reading.
-- Katha Pollitt

_______________ DAVID HOROWITZ REPLIES TO KATHA POLLITT:

Perhaps Katha Pollitt doesn't understand the force of the noun "evil." She condemns Christopher Hitchens for merely cooperating with Henry Hyde, Bob Barr and Trent Lott. Sidney Blumenthal's slavish services to Clinton get no parallel moral disapprobation. When the day comes that Pollitt condemns a "man of the left" merely for cooperating with Clinton (e.g., by passing on possibly privileged information detrimental to, say, Henry Hyde) with the same spleen evident in her condemnation of Hitchens, I'll concede that she not only disagrees with Clinton politically, but regards him as evil as well.

_______________ RIGHT ON! WALKING THE WALK BY DAVID HOROWITZ (03/15/99)

While David Horowitz accurately reports on the Christian right's retreat from limelight confrontations, no one should assume that they've now embraced cultural pluralism. They are withdrawing because they are tired of fighting a 25-year battle they cannot win. They've finally realized that America, a pluralist nation, is never going to give 51 percent of its votes to their fundamentalist ideology.
And while the Christian right has always professed to love the United States, we should note how U.S. culture has become transformed in Paul Weyrich's mind now that he cannot completely control her: Where years back he saw his wife America as an embraceable goddess of liberty and freedom, he now sees a sewer-dwelling harlot to be shunned. Such are the dangers of not seeing your wife as she really is. Weyrich would have been happy to dominate over his wife America, but she would not let him. Now he wants to terminate the relationship. What happened to trying to work things out?
At this impasse, Horowitz helps us by pointing out the middle ground of pluralism. Most center-right folks I know -- and I know many -- are much more moderate than Weyrich. They won't kill a relationship just because they can't dominate it. Weyrich needs to think about how he wants to relate to America: as a partner, or as a dominator. While he is in seclusion working this out, his followers can continue to serve the country by remaining engaged in culture.
-- Kip Leitner
Philadelphia
David Horowitz says the religious right is backing out of politics? I don't think so. Paul Weyrich may have given the "Moral Majority" its name, but Pat Robertson is now in charge, and he says he's raising $21 million to get the word out. Gary Bauer is calling Elizabeth Dole's and "Shrub's" (Molly Ivins-speak for George W. Bush) stands on abortion "weak." The right continues to have controlling interest in the platform committees of the GOP and has managed to alienate numerous groups that would seem on the surface to be "natural" GOP members, such as Hispanics and Asians. The religious right has worked its way into the GOP power structure so deeply it can't give it up. I for one hope they continue their stranglehold on the Republican Party. Their blind, "shove our morality down your throats" position continues to cost the GOP in membership and votes.
-- Rich McIntosh
David Horowitz rightly notes that the United States' support of President Clinton through the impeachment proceedings is not simply a sign that American morality has been flushed down Paul Weyrich's metaphorical sewer. What he misses is that Weyrich, Gary Bauer and the other right-wing ayatollahs have been in large part responsible for that support of Clinton. Given a choice between morality and immorality, Americans still seek to look past the complex issues of expediency, personal wants and societal pressures that gray their vision in order to do the right thing. But given a choice between a flawed sinner and the absolutist, threatening millionaires who make political alliances with the adulterers and crooks who pay lip service to their litmus issue, most Americans were willing to hold their noses and accept the flaws.
-- Phil Ponebshek

N E X T+P A G E+| Christopher Hitchens: The journalist who won't go away

_______________ MAILROOM DISPATCH ...
	Do women lie about rape? In response to two articles -- "Why I didn't report my rape" by Jenn Shreve and "Who says women never lie about rape?" by Cathy Young -- readers wrote to say that women, Juanita Broaddrick in particular, do indeed make up rape charges and women should not be automatically believed when they say they've been the victim of such a crime. Is Amazon.com unconquerable? Absolutely, says Robin Miller, in response to Scott Rosenberg's "Let's Get This Straight" column, "Amazon vs. the ants." One small site may not be able to cripple the Web's bookselling giant, but get an army of small sites together, and bit by bit they'll take the big guys down. "Amazon, Salon and other 'burn rate' companies will die, but I'll still be around, earning a modest income and having a good time," Miller writes. Wednesday, letter writers addressed Silicon Valley's obsession with the physical appearance of its female employees. Gender-based discrimination is not limited to the female CEOs Janelle Brown described in her piece, "Beauty and the geeks. And on Thursday, many wrote in to dismiss the significance of homosexuality in animals, described in Susan McCarthy's article, "The fabulous kingdom of gay animals." Who do die-hard lefties hate more than David Horowitz? In today's letters, Salon's readers from the left spare Horowitz and his column on the Christian right's retreat from politics. Christopher Hitchens, on the other hand, takes a beating for his recent Newsreal on Broaddrick's rape charges, bringing us full circle.
_______________ RIGHT ON! HATS OFF TO A CONDEMNED MAN BY DAVID HOROWITZ (03/01/99)
	In his recent column attacking those on the left who took issue with Christopher Hitchens for giving an affidavit to the House managers, David Horowitz writes, "Of course, Pollitt doesn't believe for a moment that Clinton is evil." What is this statement based on? Since I began writing my Nation column in l994, I have attacked President Clinton constantly: for his welfare "reform" agenda, his blaming of poverty on poor single mothers, his hypocritical advocacy of sexual abstinence to the unmarried, his signing of assorted bills that restricted abortion access, his health-care proposals, his indifference to cities, his bombing of Iraq and many other things. I wrote two columns explaining why I wasn't going to vote for him in l996 and urging Nation readers to do likewise, plus a post-election follow-up titled "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for Ralph Nader." Furthermore, since feminists are always being accused of hypocritically supporting the president against his female accusers, I should note that I wrote sympathetically of Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick. True, like most sane people, I opposed impeachment over Monica Lewinsky -- but I wrote in support of impeachment over the bombing of Iraq! Maybe David Horowitz should try reading instead of mind-reading. -- Katha Pollitt
_______________ DAVID HOROWITZ REPLIES TO KATHA POLLITT:
	Perhaps Katha Pollitt doesn't understand the force of the noun "evil." She condemns Christopher Hitchens for merely cooperating with Henry Hyde, Bob Barr and Trent Lott. Sidney Blumenthal's slavish services to Clinton get no parallel moral disapprobation. When the day comes that Pollitt condemns a "man of the left" merely for cooperating with Clinton (e.g., by passing on possibly privileged information detrimental to, say, Henry Hyde) with the same spleen evident in her condemnation of Hitchens, I'll concede that she not only disagrees with Clinton politically, but regards him as evil as well.
_______________ RIGHT ON! WALKING THE WALK BY DAVID HOROWITZ (03/15/99)
	While David Horowitz accurately reports on the Christian right's retreat from limelight confrontations, no one should assume that they've now embraced cultural pluralism. They are withdrawing because they are tired of fighting a 25-year battle they cannot win. They've finally realized that America, a pluralist nation, is never going to give 51 percent of its votes to their fundamentalist ideology. And while the Christian right has always professed to love the United States, we should note how U.S. culture has become transformed in Paul Weyrich's mind now that he cannot completely control her: Where years back he saw his wife America as an embraceable goddess of liberty and freedom, he now sees a sewer-dwelling harlot to be shunned. Such are the dangers of not seeing your wife as she really is. Weyrich would have been happy to dominate over his wife America, but she would not let him. Now he wants to terminate the relationship. What happened to trying to work things out? At this impasse, Horowitz helps us by pointing out the middle ground of pluralism. Most center-right folks I know -- and I know many -- are much more moderate than Weyrich. They won't kill a relationship just because they can't dominate it. Weyrich needs to think about how he wants to relate to America: as a partner, or as a dominator. While he is in seclusion working this out, his followers can continue to serve the country by remaining engaged in culture. -- Kip Leitner Philadelphia David Horowitz says the religious right is backing out of politics? I don't think so. Paul Weyrich may have given the "Moral Majority" its name, but Pat Robertson is now in charge, and he says he's raising $21 million to get the word out. Gary Bauer is calling Elizabeth Dole's and "Shrub's" (Molly Ivins-speak for George W. Bush) stands on abortion "weak." The right continues to have controlling interest in the platform committees of the GOP and has managed to alienate numerous groups that would seem on the surface to be "natural" GOP members, such as Hispanics and Asians. The religious right has worked its way into the GOP power structure so deeply it can't give it up. I for one hope they continue their stranglehold on the Republican Party. Their blind, "shove our morality down your throats" position continues to cost the GOP in membership and votes. -- Rich McIntosh David Horowitz rightly notes that the United States' support of President Clinton through the impeachment proceedings is not simply a sign that American morality has been flushed down Paul Weyrich's metaphorical sewer. What he misses is that Weyrich, Gary Bauer and the other right-wing ayatollahs have been in large part responsible for that support of Clinton. Given a choice between morality and immorality, Americans still seek to look past the complex issues of expediency, personal wants and societal pressures that gray their vision in order to do the right thing. But given a choice between a flawed sinner and the absolutist, threatening millionaires who make political alliances with the adulterers and crooks who pay lip service to their litmus issue, most Americans were willing to hold their noses and accept the flaws. -- Phil Ponebshek
	N E X T+P A G E+\| Christopher Hitchens: The journalist who won't go away