Columns

Letters to the Editor

SHERMAN ALEXIE: I don't think my eating a burger would win any friends to the peace movement [Reservations, April 17]. I do know that it contributes to deforestation, global warming, water pollution, poor health, and that issue which seems so insignificant to you--needless animal suffering. I am not the only one who feels as passionately about vegetarianism/veganism as about pacifism. Indeed, for many, the two go hand in hand. There are even conservatives who feel this way, and whose books have made waves outside of the normal liberal circles. I suggest you talk to a few vegetarians-for-peace about their deep love for and commitment to animals before you go railing your mouth off on a subject you obviously know very little about.

Or go eat a burger. Maybe it'll help. I suspect it's not selling out our beliefs that will help, however, but the attitude of love and respect we take toward others.

Jennifer L. Howell, via e-mail

SHERMAN ALEXIE: Being a vegetarian is extremely political. The meat industry is huge and lucrative. It is based on oppression, fear, and exploitation. Not all liberals eat meat; not all conservatives eat meat. The protester's sign reading "Vegetarians for Peace" made me smile because it was a voice of compassion, and finding the strength to care is mighty.

A strong parallel exists between the imprisonment of political hostages and the imprisonment of nonhumans born into a system of fear and oppression. I hope that "veggies" continue to speak out; it would be nice to end the war against innocent animals someday. You missed the point.

Megan K., via e-mail

EDITOR: There's a new American sing-along in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's demise. The refrain goes something like this: "Regardless of your position on the Iraq war, it is now time for all Americans to come together and celebrate--celebrate!--the liberation of the Iraqi people." You hear it sung most frequently among neoliberal apologists. But closet warmongers like Dan Savage take it one step further ["Protest Props," April 17].

Savage delights in ridiculing antiwar activists who "wheat-paste pictures" of Iraqi women and children while real live flesh-and-blood Iraqi exiles living in Seattle are dancing in the streets. One should not forget that American Iraqis are by definition a self-selecting group. Consider for a moment another exile group: Cuban exiles. It's unlikely that you will find much, if any, common ground between the Cuban people and Cuban exiles in downtown Miami. Equating the Iraqi people with exiled Iraqis celebrating in downtown Seattle seems tenuous at best.

With snarling lips, Savage mocks the protesters' message: "War kills the innocent." "Look at these people!" "These are the innocent victims! Look at them!"

Well, yes. Look at them. They are the innocent victims. Does Savage genuinely believe that this war is about freedom for the Iraqi people? "Free markets" is more like it.

I find little (if anything) to celebrate. This war was based on a lie, and perpetuating a bunch of little white lies to make us all feel better about it won't change that fact.

Karen Q., via e-mail

STRANGER: Josh Feit's little hissy fit about French ulterior motives regarding the war in Iraq lacks common sense ["Les Hyprocrites," April 17]. If the French had really wanted to cynically protect their self-interests, they would have supported a U.S.-sponsored second resolution in the UN, sat on the sidelines during the war (à la Spain and Italy), then asked for their fair share of the postwar goodies. Oil supply and arms contracts made with Saddam could simply be renegotiated with the new Iraqi government. Since the French didn't do that we are forced to confront the notion that the French meant what they said: that war with Iraq would be a bad idea--costly in terms of lives and money, with no guarantees of a safer world.

Shawn Ringwood, via e-mail

CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE: I enjoyed your review of the Lydia Davis onstage interview, but you got one thing wrong: The entire audience disliked the interview [Nightstand, April 17]. Did you not see large groups of people nearly killing themselves as they tried to escape, staggering over uneven stands in the dark to get to the exit? Did you not look around you and see people rolling their eyes and squirming in their seats? Did you not hear the audience erupt into applause when Stadler admitted he had asked a bad question? Did you not hear Lydia Davis say that she should learn to be a politician so she could answer something totally unrelated to his questions?

I've been to dozens of readings in Seattle, probably 100 at least, and that's the closest I've seen a literary audience come to an insurrection against the onstage interviewer. I've never seen audience members rudely leave in the middle of an interview like that before, and I would have joined them if I'd been brave enough to risk breaking my ankle. This went beyond the "consternation" you mentioned.

J. D., via e-mail

DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: Due to a technical glitch, the credit for last week's "New York Cartoonist Mugged" comic was incomplete. The comic was created by Robert Sikoryak, and is an excerpt from Rosetta #2, which will be out this fall.