DEAR EDITOR: Thanks for mentioning that I am running for mayor ["Unknown Runs for Mayor," Josh Feit, March 29]. Unlike the other candidates, I am not a lap dog to global corporations, repressive laws, or big business. My campaign has much more to it than mysterious monoliths and solar energy. I am the only candidate you find in the street with the people partying. I look forward to this election and debating with the other candidates, who have all the money and power.
Caleb Schaber, via e-mail
RICK LEVIN: Just wanted to let you know how much I love your column [Courtside]. It's so refreshing to be able to get a non-jock/sports tabloid perspective on the Sonics. Rarely do I run into anyone who gives a shit about the Sonics, whom I feel I have an almost unhealthy obsession with. I feel all their pains, from groin pulls to various Payton-related assaults! Looking at their triumphs and tragedies from a psychological and intellectual point of view vindicates my guilty little pleasure immensely.
Sean, via e-mail
DEAR TRACI VOGEL: Thank you for your article in this week's Stranger ["Is Outrage Outdated?" Traci Vogel, March 29]! I was excited to run across an intelligent piece on feminism and postmodernism while perusing your paper. It would have been cool if you'd mentioned that Time has run the same article declaring feminism "dead" about 10 times since the 1970s. Outrage is outdated. It is not enough. As women, we have a responsibility to ourselves, our daughters, and our granddaughters to live our lives as strong, whole human beings. We have a responsibility to have high expectations for ourselves and the women around us. Irony is great as a tool, and deconstruction is the ultimate way to develop ideas, but the problem with a lot of our culture is that these are used without a firm grounding in what came before them.
Anonymous, via e-mail
EDITORS: Being decidedly beyond your core demo, I haven't read The Stranger for some time. But I found Traci Vogel's "Is Outrage Outdated?" somewhat interesting, [albeit] hard to read. Is Vogel submitting this as a post-graduate thesis? [The piece] sounded pretty clinical. Outrage exists when you have no choices; this was the position American women were in prior to, say, 1970--but most would say they are hardly in that position now. Certainly, women continue to make bad choices, but they own them nevertheless. As far as Vogel's personal sources of outrage, she needs to take a more objective look at these issues: Women make less than men in the workforce because our society affords women more choices than men, and women take society up on these choices--they either do not prepare themselves for higher-paying jobs, or they assume a different track than men because their life goals are different. I think when you compare [workforce status] between men and women, the disparity is quite minimal. And abortion "continues to be a right decided by men"? Abortion is only decided by women.
Kathy Neukirchen, via e-mail
EDITORS: Traci Vogel's "Is Outrage Outdated?" really caught my attention since I consider myself a feminist, and I wish the term didn't need a disclaimer. Unfortunately, it's not so simple these days, since there is so much confusion as to what it means when a woman chooses to label herself "feminist." Are you gay? Do you hate men? Do you not like makeup?
I think part of the problem is what Vogel was lightly tapping her fingers on: Today's active "hubs" of feminism (women's groups, teen/girl groups) are not tapped into or connected with each other. So you end up with these beacons blipping in a dark sea, separated by silence. What women need is ongoing dialogue with each other as part of their daily lives, so they don't feel alone in their ideas, anger, or concerns while living in a patriarchal society. The personal is still political. It comes down to the fact that we are all role models of our own interpretation of what feminism is. It's how you live your life on a daily basis.
Lisa Okey, Seattle
EDITORS: Traci Vogel apparently thinks women should be outraged for the reasons given in this statement: "Can we somehow unite beneath the murky, amoebic flag that is our chromosomal aesthetic, in light of the fact that we still make substantially less than men in the workplace, in light of the fact that abortion continues to be a right decided by men? Perhaps, using tools like irony, even those of us who don't call ourselves feminists can reconstruct an understanding of identity that can act as agency in a world that still, to many women, inspires outrage."
1. Women should be outraged because "abortion continues to be a right decided by men"? Please help me elect female legislators who will give only men the right to determine the outcome of a pregnancy and the right to collect child support from mothers. Would men then whine that "abortion continues to be a right decided by women"? Or would women feel oppressed because only men can decide that a pregnant woman will be either a financially burdened mother or not a mother?
2. Women should be outraged because they "still make substantially less than men in the workplace"? This close-minded, long-discredited statement is so silly as to deserve no response. "Women still make substantially less than men in the workplace"? Millions of women earn more than millions of men. Many men and women earn the same. This [is summed up] in the April 3 National Review [article] "I Am Woman, Hear Me Whine," by Patricia Hausman.
Vogel gave not a thought to this incredible female sexism [when she quoted a woman who said], "Men and women are equal, sure, but different--and I revel in those differences. I don't do Dutch. I expect a man to open doors and to offer to carry my bags." Vogel then wrote, "Among what scholars refer to as the 'Third Wave' (basically, women age 30 and under), this is a fairly common attitude." So men SHOULD make more money than women... so they can pay women's way! And they should be women's mules, and carry their bags!
[This piece is] repugnant. Vogel is outraged because of her blind, ignorant ideology.
Anonymous, via e-mail
EDITORS: Regarding Jamie Hook and Charles Mudede's attempt to review Memento ["What Am I Doing?" March 29] as "a brilliant work of classical philosophy (from Descartes to Nietzsche)"... I think my favorite part of this review is the "Epistemology" section. First, Jamie Beavis and Charles Butthead start with a Schopenhauer quotation that they include not because it has anything to do with the review, but because it's vaguely epistemological (and the authors find it amusing that it contains the word "erection").
Then they go on to talk about how the film can be viewed through a Kantian lens, where knowledge is either "a priori" or "a postori" (but not a posteriori--that would require an actual bit of knowledge and spelling ability, apparently found neither in The Stranger's writers nor their editors). Then they go on to display a grossly shallow misreading of Nietzsche in the "Ethics" section. The expression "beyond good and evil," for Nietzsche, was not a call to reject "every accepted moral construct of mainstream society" for a "nihilistic set of moral precepts" (thank you for that wonderful contradiction in terms, Charles and Jamie!) fueled by a will to power. It was a call to replace moral valuations in general with aesthetic valuations, to replace "good and evil" with "good and bad." Nietzsche saw this as a healthier outlook, as he saw the will to power as a drive to health, not nihilism.
I have one question after reading all the inappropriate name-dropping and fraudulent philosophical ego trips in "What Am I Doing?": Who do you think you're impressing or fooling with this stuff?
David Cornette, via e-mail
EDITORS: I fucking loved that fucking column ["How to Write for The Stranger," March 22]! It's the fucking funniest thing I've fucking read! I fucking put that motherfucker on my fucking binder. So all you fuckers who haven't fucking read that fucker, read it all-fucking-ready! And you fucking stupid fucks better fucking put more of that funny shit-fuck in your fucking sweet paper! That's fucking all.
