STRANGER: Thanks for ruining Halloween! For weeks, my coworker and I have been talking about our FABULOUS ideas for Halloween costumes. He was going to be JENNA BUSH'S LIVER, I was going to be an ABU GHRAIB PRISONER, and my boyfriend was going to be LYNDIE ENGLAND. After reading "2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes" [Oct 28] (and pissing ourselves with laughter), we decided that this is the LAST time that we let you telepathically steal our ideas. All of our friends read The Stranger, so we're forced to wear last-minute "plan B" costumes: a tired Groucho Marx outfit and a bedsheet-turned-ghost. Thanks a lot, jerks!
Victor Hanson-Smith
UNREAL PUBLICATION
DEAR EDITORIAL STAFF: I saw your "costumes" on your website.
I know you probably did it for the shock value, but it simply shows why you're a hole in the wall publication with virtually no educated readership and why this rag will never be anything more than a thing to do for yourselves and your employees who don't want to get real jobs and are not good enough to work for a "real" publication" with true journalistic integrity.
Pat Custer
FUN STOPS AT TORTURE
STRANGER: Look, I'm all for funny costumes and poking fun at the current political agenda, but the "fun" stops at torture. There's just NOTHING funny or remotely humorous about this topic. How dare anyone put together a costume depicting the horrors of Abu Ghraib? Can you imagine any of our own soldiers being treated in such a fashion and then having the opposition mock us? It's unacceptable. It's disgusting. Please take this off your website. What's next? A concentration camp costume with a matching SS soldier outfit?
Natasha Billawala
HILARITY STARTS AT TORTURE
EDITOR: I just saw the cover of your Halloween issue. It's hilarious, poignant, and deeply disturbing--all at the same time. Nice work!
Jon M. Ravenscoft
WORKING CLASS HERO
FUCK YOU for demonizing Lyndie England, a member of the working class, a woman who was sent to fight America's war, who was in over her head (as were the others), and responded poorly to an incredibly stressful situation, all while you sipped your fucking lattes in Seattle.
Gib Smith
BLAME THE PARENTS
TO THE EDITOR: I'm not sure which is more disgusting, the idea of dressing children up as Iraqi prisoners, terrorists, and pawns, or the fact that these kids' parents allowed their children to be models for this. It's sick to make light of these kinds of things and to use kids as the models.
Eric Boller
DEFENDEING ISRAEL
DEAR STRANGER: Nancy Updike's excellent article on the Israeli draft ["An Army of One and All," Oct 21] fails to mention one crucial difference between them and us. Israel continues to struggle for its existence, and draftees really are "fighting for their country."
Here in the U.S., ever since WWII we have fought nothing but a series of losing battles to prop up unpopular puppet governments friendly to the U.S. --Korea, Vietnam, El Salvador, Iraq, etc. The euphemisms "serving our country" and "defending America" haven't applied to military service here since 1945. Even after 9/11 our troops have not gone to the real source of the attacks--Saudi Arabia.
Robert Carlberg
HELL NO, NOT ALL GO
EDITOR: I was recently talking to an acquaintance with dual American-Israeli citizenship. He is an Arab whose family has been Christian for hundreds of years. He grew up and went to college with a Jewish neighbor in Israel. When visiting his home near Galilee, he and his Jewish friend got together. His friend said that he was still in the Israeli army but had recently handed in his rifle and announced he would no longer serve in the occupied territories. He told his Arab friend that he was not able to dehumanize the Palestinians whose land was being confiscated, who he was supposed to shoot if they protested. He saw his Arab friends' faces in the faces of the Palestinian strangers, some children, who were being shot. The Israeli said he thought he might get six months in jail for refusing to serve, but it was possible he might get a much longer prison sentence. He didn't care because he felt free knowing that, as an Israeli soldier in the occupied territories, he would have had to act as a war criminal.
Jo Ann Oliver
PLEASE NO SAVAGE
STRANGER: The mincing mea culpa of Dan Savage as to his silliness concerning the Iraq war, calls out for his removal as editor and sex-advice columnist at your rag. After all, it is one thing to be ignorant, despite the warnings of those who knew better, of American interventionist policies. It is quite another to be ignorant of such a basic maneuver as fisting. To wit: those who plunge it in up to the elbow may not necessarily be doing same for the benefit and mutual enjoyment of the Fistee, despite protestations to the contrary. Substitute USA and Iraq for Fistor and Fistee and even the few "lefty" ignoramuses such as Savage will know what the rest of us have known all along. "Please no, Jesus" indeed!!
