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Los Angeles, California I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day" for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic. This Month
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Re: Re: An Open Letter To The American Public
by
Anonymous
I think the problem is that we do know what he meant, and it seems insulting to those of us who have family and friends in the military. The military is not a place for drop outs and morons. For example, my younger brother graduated from the Naval Academy with a degree in aeronautical engineering, and he served in Iraq. Not only can he tie his own shoes without referring to a diagram, he's actually a freakin' rocket scientist.
People who don't know anyone in the military, or who disdain the military in general, seem to think it's filled with meatheads and bullet sponges. They seem to think it's like the locker room of a high school football team. But people who know people in the military know that it's filled with intellectual and intellectually curious people. My father got his master's while in the Air Force. My roommate from law school is now in the military JAG corps.
People who know people in the military also know that you have to meet certain academic requirements before you can gain admittance. Say what you want, but that's not true at Blockbuster or on the line at Chevy. (And you'll notice that he didn't refer to the employees of Blockbuster or Chevy or 7-11 or McDonald's.)
Which brings me to the worst part about Kerry's statement. He suggests that "getting stuck in Iraq" is the worst possible punishment for poor behavior. True, I'd have preferred for my younger brother to avoid that duty. But those that go to Iraq consider it an honor and a service. And it demeans that service when politicians to suggest that it's just the crap duty for the dregs of our society.
I doubt Kerry meant to demean anyone. But he did, and you shouldn't get a pass without apologizing when you make insensitive remarks.
Just my two cents.
-- Comish
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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again. — Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives. — John Stuart Mill We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget. — G.K. Chesterton We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy. — August Van Zorn There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way. — Stephen King Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town. — Ask the Dust, John Fante |
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