ANGRY WAMU EMPLOYEE
TO JOSH FEIT: I know that many WaMu employees (myself included) were deeply offended by WaMu's abuse of its company e-mail system and the contents of that message [CounterIntel, Oct 14]. On behalf of myself and my colleagues, thank you for exposing WaMu's true colors when it comes to the best interests of the city to which WaMu owes its existence. Keep up the good work and best of luck on October 22!

Name Withheld

ANGRY WAMU CUSTOMER
GREETINGS: I just read your article on WaMu and would just like to thank you for it. I've got a WaMu account, I try to be a pretty conscious human, and it sounds like they're acting selfishly. I even might try and make it down there on Friday to close my account too.

Shawn

JOSH FEIT RESPONDS: To protest Washington Mutual's hefty financial backing of the anti-monorail campaign (they've contributed $85,000), I'll be closing my WaMu account this Friday, October 22 at noon. Monorail fans should join me at WaMu's 1201 Third Avenue downtown branch and help take this local Fortune 500 company to task for trying to obstruct rapid mass transit in Seattle. City Council President and public transit warrior Jan Drago has already announced that she's yanking her WaMu account as well.

BUILD THE MONORAIL: VOTE NO ON 1-83!
TO JOSH FEIT: I just read your article "Weapons of Mass Obstruction" regarding I-83 [Sept 30]. It is THE BEST pro-monorail article I have read! You managed to cover every aspect of the issue. If we could only include your article within the ballot description of I-83 or in the voter-information package, I'd feel better about the odds of I-83 failing. Unfortunately, I'm afraid many people will be uninformed of the situation and vote with the hope of eliminating the monorail car-tab tax. That said, articles like yours are what is needed to sways voters back to the NO side.

Charles Waterman

BRING BACK SAVAGE'S HIPHOP COLUMN!
DEAR EDITOR: Please, please, PLEASE! Tell me that we have not returned to Charles Mudede as the default hiphop columnist for The Stranger! Although, Mr. Mudede is a quite competent and even eloquent writer at times, he just doesn't cut it when it comes to hiphop. I do enjoy his writing in other arenas, but his treatment of hiphop is lacking. I have been greatly enjoying the refreshingly wide, varied, interesting, and informative (not to mention friggin' hilarious) column penned by Larry Mizell Jr. He keeps his tongue in cheek, he's to the point, and he pays dues to local news as well as big names in the game. Make sure this man shows up in The Stranger again!

Sarah Steele

SEATTLE MAG HACK UNLEASHES WIT!
SIR, MADAM, WHATEVER: I am the unnamed author of the lines "I stumbled into a Caffe Ladro and ordered a double-tall" etc. quoted by David Schmader in "City of Gloss" [Oct 7]. I cannot tell you how excited I was to be honored by his criticism. It doesn't matter that the piece was about Seattle's obsessive love of "neighborhood." Context? Who cares? I've labored as a freelance writer for, um, about a year and a half, and I NEVER thought I'd ever get recognition from The Stranger, the leading, er, the second leading alternative, uh, cocksure, uh, no, wait a minute, that's a loaded word. Well, I'm just tickled to death! My kids and wife gave me high-fives, we all went to my mother's place for ice cream with my sister, and I later went to a dinner party with some friends. All on the same day! But, I guess that kind of stuff doesn't happen in David's world. But heckadoodle, thanks Davey!

Joe Follansbee

OUR DULLEST

LETTER EVER!
TO THE EDITOR: Even some mainstream media has better glossed Derrida's complex life and philosophy than Sandeep Kaushik. ["The Truth Problem," Oct 14]. His superficial take on deconstruction is worthy of the trashy U.S. media coverage of which he is so critical.

Some "facts" that might interest Kaushik: Derrida's adolescence in Algeria and the ravages of French colonialism there had a lasting impact on his work. It was European anti-Semitism that drove him to philosophical reflections on being Jewish. He wrote persistently on the issue of oppression against non-European migrants. Kaushik might see these as "objective" facts, but, as good deconstructionists know, they too are inscribed within the textual fabric of the world.

It's ironic that Kaushik leaves out these details. This "founding violence," to use deconstruction-speak, lets Kaushik get away with his liberal hysterics over Bush's lies. So France-bashing isn't just for conservatives anymore--although, really, what's so French about a rebel intellectual who repeatedly criticized his "own" government's politics?

"The truth problem" led Derrida to insist that justice is a never-ending pursuit. Kaushik might consider undocumented immigrants and racial communities in the U.S. caught in the war on terrorism's crossfire, or the so-called insurgents in Iraq we don't really see in the media. Derrida taught us to read these difficult signifiers and supply other interpretations: an utterly important task, given that they escape both liberals and conservatives today.

Jeffrey Chiu