BE AFRAID
DEAR EDITOR: I just wanted to write in and congratulate Neal Pollack on an excellent article ["Church and State," June 10]. More pieces should be written about how we should all be terrified to our very marrow that thin-minded fundies have their sweaty, bejeweled fingers thrust deep into the American pie. If anyone wants to be TRULY terrified, they should watch TBN for five minutes and try to wrap their minds around the fact that the white-trash cowboys with fake hair sitting on gilded thrones in a studio somewhere are making up history as they go along and praying to Jay-zus that everyone but them gets "the AIDS."
Back to Pollack's article: I think it was excellently written, and has a refreshing dry irony. Specifically, this line made me snarf cola: "Writers for alternative newspapers on the West Coast generally aren't prone to making hyperbolic, paranoid statements, but I'll smash the mold...."
I laughed so hard I almost fell off my barstool.
Julian DiMarco
FEIT AGAINST PEACE
TO THE EDITOR: Not only is the Department of Peace a VERY sane idea, it is sorely needed, too, as evidenced by the hate-filled ramblings of Josh Feit [Five to Four, June 3]. In his fury to smear Dennis Kucinich, the only candidate for president who had the guts to vote against the illegal Bush war on the people of Iraq, he failed to mention exactly what it is that he finds so "kooky" about peace; does it gall him that we could encourage each other not to resort to war, an activity that has never advanced the human race?
After resorting to further gross embellishments ("moronic," "asinine"), Feit, who spews rather than writes, still could not give us a single reason not to support the creation of a Department of Peace other than that it wouldn't appeal to Republicans. Oh, that's a real novel idea, imitate the Republicans; isn't that line of thinking the sole reason that the Democratic Leadership Council has lost all three branches of the government and made milquetoast out of the once-principled Democratic Party?
Jeremy Smithson
SAVAGE IS A WHORE
TO THE STRANGER: Dan Savage should stop being a prostitute for the Seattle Monorail Project ["Burning Up the Track," June 3] and get an Intra-Anal Cranialectomy. While a monorail COULD be something that would help commuters in the Pungent Sound-Off Area, the one being proposed would not. The Seattle Monorail Project is designed to be a FOR-PROFIT operation. It is designed to take AWAY riders from one of the best transit systems in the country. It does not provide for parking at the stations. For billions of dollars, its average time savings is less than the time it takes to order a double-tall nonfat decaf why-bother vanilla iced latte/mocha/Americano.
Dan Savage, rather than addressing the problems brought up by the numerous Seattle Monroail Project opponents, chooses to attack them even to the point of accusing them of arson. I guess when you back something stupid, you have to fall back on "the best defense is a good offense." Dan Savage doesn't need to do that... he's already offensive.
Bruce Tiebout
NO GUTS, NO RAPID TRANSIT SYSTEM
TO THE EDITOR: I wanted to write this last week after reading Dan Savage's great article on the new monorail and saw his small plug for my hometown of Chicago and how things get done (gee, people are still wondering why Boeing left?!). Now I've read Josh Feit's article ["Off Track," June 10] and just got madder that people continue to fight this issue. The people want it, the city needs it, and the anti-monorail folks can't seem to come up with any legit reasons why it shouldn't be built. Chicago is known as the city with "big shoulders." If the monorail doesn't get built, Seattle should go by the title of city with "no guts."
Dan Tanna
BLACK FICTION
STRANGER: Re: "Another Planet," by Charles Mudede, June 10. Being an artist who operates along the lines of "Afrofuturism" (or whatever), it's not hard to understand Charles Mudede's desire to see more speculative fiction in black literature. But here's something I had to learn from those of us in the black community who don't really bother with Afrofuturist works (save the occasional Kool Keith or OutKast album):
A great number of us are too involved with the realities of being black in America (or Seattle, for that matter) to stop and daydream about the future. The only future a lot of us can envision is one in which equality, respect, and fair treatment rule the land--after that mission is accomplished, then we can start talking about cyborgs and time travel. As far as what our authors write is concerned, the money and prestige and acceptance they want lives in that small shelf on the top floor of Borders, between E. Lynn Harris and Iyanla Vanzant. That's the reality the Afrofuturist faces--there are only a few of us, and there will be for quite some time.
Mars Nova
RYAN'S NONSENSE
DEAR STRANGER: I thought I was losing my mind during Reagan week. Then I read Adrian Ryan's brilliantly cracked reminiscence ["Ronald Reagan: An American Remembers and Mourns," June 10]. Thank you to Mr. Ryan for writing such exquisite nonsense.
Emily White
Emily White is the former editor of the Stranger
