Die, Santa! Die!
BY ELIZABETH BOBRICK
(12/16/99)

As a devout atheist, I have to say that Santa Claus is not a valid secular substitute for God. If anyone can tell me how lying to their children for the first eight or so years of their lives teaches them anything about love, compassion or "being good," please do so. When a house is filled with love and compassion no symbols are needed.

My kid will be the one on the playground that tells your little one that there is no Santa Claus, no Easter Bunny, no Tooth Fairy and where babies really come from. You better watch out!

-- Dave Magaro
Pittsburgh

All parents have to face the curious (or disenchanted) child's Santa question sooner or later, and we all hope that we have a quick and plausible retort when that time comes. When my son was in kindergarten, we were shopping for Toys for Tots. I thought it was such a good idea to include him so he would learn to think of others. He asked, "Why doesn't Santa bring them anything?" I mumbled something about how some move and he doesn't know where to find them.

I better prepared for his Santa question several years later when he asked it in front of his younger sister. "Do you believe really believe in Santa, Mom? Do you really think some guy goes around giving away free stuff like that?" "Yes, I do," I said with gusto for my daughter's ears -- "and we all take a turn being him some day," I whispered in his ear.

-- Georgine Cooper

Elizabeth Bobrick fails to explain why, exactly, it is bad for a child to believe that what one gets in life is connected, however remotely, to one's choice of behavior. I don't know where she got her notions about religion, but if you believe that any major religion, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu, teaches that "no one is out there watching you," you need to do a little more studying of religion and a little less about myth. One wonders how life in Littleton, Colorado might have been different if Klebold and Harris had believed that someone was out there watching them. What has become apparent this week with the release of their video tapes is that the thing that animated them most was their fervent belief that no one out there was watching them.

-- Ken Miller

Sharps & Flats: "EP + 2"
BY CARLENE BAUER
(12/15/99)

Carlene Bauer doesn't like Mogwai -- OK, fine. I'm at a loss to understand why this should mean that those who do -- and who happened, at this show, to be primarily men -- are somehow false or insincere in their enthusiasm. If she's complaining about the sexism of the indie-rock critical establishment, her point might be stronger if two of the four indie fave artists she mentions weren't female (Cat Power and Sleater-Kinney).

Are Mogwai critical faves because they're men? Are Cat Power or Sleater-Kinney because they're not? Granted that Sleater-Kinney's press coverage has overplayed their gender -- but generally it's in order to praise the band members' strong but non-doctrinaire feminist stance.

If Bauer wants to write an essay about excessively male crowds at indie rock shows and the discomfort she and other women feel because of that fact, fine -- but don't blame a band for its audience.

-- Jeffrey Norman

Carlene Bauer is dead wrong about Mogwai. If she were to listen carefully to the sequence of albums, she might be less inclined to make the simplistic pronouncement that the band is making the same song over and over again. "Young Team" (1997) is full of distortion and violence, and operates on a clearly defined loud/quiet formula. It was a decent album. Now listen to "EP + 2." Something lovely has happened. Suddenly the songs are elegiac, softer, prettier, relying less on the punctuation of harsh guitar outbursts and more on beauty qua beauty.

Meanwhile, Bauer is wrong in claiming only indie boys like Mogwai; in fact, I was introduced to the band by a woman. Bauer should ignore the hype and listen closer.

-- Erik Kraft

It's bad enough that Carlene Bauer dismisses Mogwai's music as wank -- their performance on the closing night of this year's Glastonbury Festival was brilliant -- but it would seem to me to be grossly unfair to call them soccer thugs based on the fact that they are male, from Glasgow, and play music that she doesn't like.

-- Simon Hall

Will multinationals gobble up Ben and Jerry's?
BY KENNETH RAPOZA
(12/16/99)

As an investor I am torn: While I would like to see Ben and Jerry's become more profitable, I am also a fan of their quirky business practices. Before majority shareholders make a move, however, they may want to look at what happened when the Famous Amos label sold out.

-- A. Evonti Anderson

It's sad that so many people are leaping aboard the "save Ben and Jerry's" bandwagon. It's true that Ben and Jerry's does a number of incredibly cool things. But despite their counterculture "Cherry Garcia" credibility, Ben and Jerry's is awash in the blood of many, many animals.

Cows, even cows from bucolic Vermont, are almost always slaughtered after four or five annual milking cycles. So to produce its ice cream, Ben and Jerry's requires the slaughter of about 12 cows every day. And over 23,000 cows are impregnated each year in order to produce the milk required to supply Ben and Jerry's. A substantial number of the resultant calves are put in veal crates and slaughtered before maturity.

Ben and Jerry's noble ethics stop short where animals are concerned. Fortunately, thanks to the burgeoning soyfoods industry, milk and ice cream are obsolete in terms of ethics, health, and taste.

-- Erik Marcus
Publisher, Vegan.com

William F. Buckley: Retiring line
BY AMY REITER
(12/16/99)

I feel just awful that Amy Reiter felt "cheap and dirty" the day after. The great big secret about ideological conservatism is that it's all about laughing and having a good time with life. Bill Buckley isn't my favorite conservative in the world, but I do like the delightful old gent, and he is as quick with the bon mot as he is with the mot juste.

She ought to quit feeling guilty about having a good life. Most liberals are too concerned about matters that do not touch them to feel good about anything. A liberal will eat a steak and feel bad because the wheat that the cow ate could sustain 30 people at a subsistence level for one year; a conservative will eat the steak and enjoy it, and perhaps ask for another glass of bordeaux.

I feel her pain, though; I felt something similar when cultural arbiter/cranky old establishment liberal Walter Cronkite retired. I miss him, and my conservative friends don't understand that. Good enemies are harder to find than good friends, so they are missed more when they are gone. I only hope that Reiter can find some witty conservative crank to keep her entertained after Buckley's retirement.

-- Jim McNeely

Orphans of managed care
BY ARTHUR ALLEN
(12/15/99)

Sickle-cell disease is only the tip of the coming crisis. We see see the sickle-cell problem because of its racial implications and because we have known how to treat this fairly simple disease for 40 years; once the technology arose the crisis was inevitable.

Soon we will be able to treat a vastly greater number of diseases -- but at a price. Expensive treatments available soon or now include the cloning of body parts, gene therapy for single-gene diseases (like sickle cell), protein-based drugs for chronic diseases (arthritis) and transplant-based therapies for diabetes and cancer. But who will pay if cardiac transplant becomes routine?

For all the talk about "preventive medicine," technology will now inevitably give us the tools to treat diseases but not the economic means to use these treatments.

-- S.M. Schwartz

The emergency rooms of this country serve as the safety net for a very large number of sickle-cell patients that have nowhere else to go because of over-"managed" HMOs or lack of funds. Virtually all of those E.R.s provide excellent care for these patients, and the overwhelming majority of the time they are not reimbursed for the care. Arthur Allen's statement -- "When their regular care suffers, they end up being treated in the emergency room, and suffering unnecessary complications" -- is untrue and a slap in the face to the many nurses and physicians that take care of these patients, many times for free.

-- Joseph M. Soler, M.D., FACEP

As long as he doesn't sound gay
BY PAUL FESTA
(12/16/99)

There appears to be a bit of hypocrisy in Paul Festa's article about the race. Early in the article, Festa states, "On the brighter side, there were people, myself included, who wanted to see San Francisco elect the first gay mayor of a major American city." Then, later in his article, he says, "These volunteers, like me, were fired up not about race or sexual orientation but about economic issues that have become acute problems for anyone who doesn't own property or a pile of stock options in an overhyped Internet start-up." So, which was it?

Don't get me wrong, I think it would be wonderful to elect competent gay people to mayorships of American cities. But let's not make the same mistake that the Human Rights Campaign did with Chuck Schumer, and turn our backs on someone who has already proven for years that he is a very loyal friend to the gay community. It seems to me that the gay community would have won with either candidate.

-- Michael Mauzey

Although Tom Ammiano lost the election, his campaign has become a sharp focal point for the people of San Francisco to express their growing resentments, fears, and angers. Not only did the success of the campaign make a loud political statement, it provided an organizing center for a movement that until then had no real leaders.

The movement that Ammiano sparked may just put San Francisco back on the map as the place where radically progressive social and political action can happen -- and can get the attention of the rest of the country. Fight the good fight San Francisco, it's really just begun.

-- Richard Lovejoy

I always choose a corrupt machine politician over a rampant socialist. The machinist can be bought, and is a good politician because he stays bought. Ammiano wants to confiscate property and have me admire him for it, all under the rubric of good government. Brown will be content with his pound of flesh -- Ammiano wants my whole body and my soul too.

-- Richard D. Henkus

The bloody truth about Kosovo
BY ARIANNA HUFFINGTON
(12/15/99)

Arianna Huffington is right. The situation here in Kosovo is a mess. But as I drive around this province and see children who can now go to school, and as watch people react to my presence -- the presence of an American military officer -- without fear, I feel like we are getting somewhere. The U.N. police are not toothless, either; many of them are American law enforcers serving their country and the international community by trying to create an environment that is safe and stable.

Most people in the world aren't able to flee their circumstances and move to the United States, as Huffington did. For those that can't, I'll pick up my rifle and do all I can to help.

-- Craig A. McNeil

Arianna Huffington was a well-known and vociferous opponent of the war in Kosovo from the beginning and has continued her anti-Albanian and anti-Muslim campaign through to the present. One wonders how much her Greek, Orthodox heritage have to do with her opposition to Western intervention in Kosovo or indeed for her loud support of Serbian ethnic cleansing. Unfortunately she has never explained herself other than to apologize for Yugoslavian atrocities and plead for understanding of the Serbian mentality.

The Serbs in Kosovo are getting exactly what they deserve. Would you expect the Jews of Poland to live side by side with the people who murdered them in Auschwitz? Serbs in Kosovo are not exactly innocent victims of ethic cleansing. They watched and indeed participated in terrible acts of ethnic cleaning, revenge killings and rape. The Serbs in Kosovo and Serbia are only now beginning to pay a just price for their deeds over the past nine years.

-- Shane Hensinger