From the Jan 8 – Jan 14, 2004 issue

Columns

Letters to the Editor

REGRET LOSING MIN
DEAR STRANGER: After reading the "Regrets" issue [Dec 25], we believe you forgot to mention the most horrible mistake made during 2003, which was letting Min Liao leave your team of talented staff members. Her talent as a writer and right-on taste in good food are sorely missed. Frankly, Sara Dickerman does not fill her shoes. Sara's biased, horrible, and childlike taste in food is creating much unrest among local foodies. Min Liao had a love, admiration, and general respect for all food. Please, bring back Min.

Bridget Farrell

DON'T REGRET 'A.I.'
EDITORS: You have no need to apologize for Sean Nelson's review of A.I. , because in the same issue you also printed my all-time favorite movie review. I don't recall who wrote it, but it was toward the back of the issue, and writing about A.I. , she wrote, "I swear to God that movie ruined my life." Folks, that's a reviewer who knows her shit.

Sean Bailey

SHERMAN'S REGRETS
TO THE EDITOR: I don't regret Josh Feit's negative review of my trite antiwar speech because my speech was incredibly trite. But I do regret my short-lived column. It was a pathetic little thing. Let's give thanks that I stopped writing it.

Sherman Alexie

HAIRY OL' REGRETS
TO ELI SANDERS: Angry, hairy, old man indeed! I get angry when I see these ideas still around after all these years. Many of us old men (is 50 old?) in our earlier and current youth worked toward acceptance of every gay person be they old, young, hairy, or otherwise, of ethnic groups, or of different mentalities.

Please tell me the spots in which it is appropriate to be hairy? The backs of knuckles? The small of one's back? The crack of your butt? I've had fabulous sex with men with hair in these and many other places!

Tim Murphy

NADER VOTER'S REGRETS
DEAR STRANGER: I'm a proud Green voter. I voted Green in both 1996 and 2000. I'm writing in response to this:

"Dan Savage, editor of The Stranger, regrets the fact that so many supporters of Ralph Nader refuse to take responsibility for their bone-headed behavior during the 2000 presidential election. Mr. Savage further regrets that he is too busy with other commitments to personally slap every Nader supporter in Seattle across his or her fool face."

Here's a fact Dan apparently doesn't know: Gore won Washington State. All of Washington's electoral votes went to Gore. So, if Washington's Green voters had instead voted for Gore, as Dan thinks they should have, what would've been the result? Gore would have WON BY EVEN MORE VOTES in Washington? Wow.

Why doesn't Dan regret the fact that he's a political moron?

Chris Thomsen

DAN SAVAGE RESPONDS: I don't just regret the actions of dumbass Nader voters in Washington State, Chris, but dumbass Nader voters in all fifty states. I wrote that I wanted to slap Nader voters in Seattle because they're the only ones within slapping range. Still, my piece should have read, ñ

Mr. Savage further regrets that he is too busy with other commitments to personally slap every Nader supporter in the country across his or her fool face." I regret the error.

REGRETING IRAQ

DEAR EDITOR: It's fine for Dan Savage to offer a correction/clarification on his support for the Iraq war, but he shouldn't befuddle it by offering more wrongheaded assertions. Yes, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein way back when, but he is not "our creation" any more than Bashar al-Assad or the Saudi royals are. We did not install any of these regimes; they are homegrown. And yes, the Taliban regime could have its roots in the CIA-funded mujahideen, but it certainly was no U.S. puppet.

To follow Hitchens' line that we can depose these regimes because we somehow have responsibility for their existence is only to revel in the paternalistic ignorance that we can mold the world as we wish, by force, without consequences. Americans still don't know much 'bout history, and it shows.

Doug Milam

WE DON'T REGRET DYKES!
DEAR STRANGER!: Enough already with the anti-dyke slam poetry comments! I have been annoyed with plenty in your rag over the years, but I've also enjoyed it. Freedom of the press, right? [But] if your paper says one more disparaging thing about dykes or Tara Hardy or Bent or slam poetry, I am pulling my ad permanently. I will put my money to more constructive, fair-minded, and dyke-loving publications. Get with it, dudes. Get rid of the dyke-hatin' or this dyke is taking her sound elsewhere. Love and big smelly fishes,

Zan

The Rad Dyke Plumber

REGRETS LEAVING
TO THE EDITOR: I moved to Massachusetts five years ago. I was home for Christmas last weekend, and picked up a copy of The Stranger. I read every single page in joyful, unrelenting glee even though I hadn't been around to read most of the things chronicled in your "Regrets" edition. The Stranger remains my favorite paper and my weekend affair with you only makes me miss you more.

Liz Hoffman