I wanted to thank the Phoenix for running the stirring letter from Nathan Ahlers last week. Whenever I get to feeling a little down in the mouth or blue, I always turn to your Letters section for a good belly laugh at the inane ramblings and missives your readers submit. Nathan’s paranoid conspiracy-laden anti-Bush spiel had me laughing so hard it brought tears to my eyes and nearly had my latte shooting out my nose. Though it is a bit sad that he actually believes, well . . . let’s not mince words, the load of crap he wrote, the letter still brightened my day. I can hardly wait to read his next letter tying the collapse of the Big Dig tunnel to Governor Romney’s future run for White House, or better yet how the Bush government is responsible for the heart palpitations of David Ortiz and the late-season collapse of the Red Sox. Thanks again, Phoenix, for brightening an otherwise dreary Labor Day weekend!
Erik Wiltse
Nashua, NH
Last week I wrote a response to the “Bojinka” editorial. It discussed the Phoenix’s lack of investigative reporting with regard to 9/11. That letter was going to be the only one I would write. But now, you have published a new editorial, called “The JonBenet Factor: The Shame of Monopoly Media," where you again state the inaccuracy that “terrorists slammed fully loaded passenger planes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center.” Okay: a plane did not hit the Pentagon (at least not the reported one), and the WTC Seven building “fell down” but was not struck by aircraft. You fail to mention these things.
This editorial continues with ignorant comments, such as “Marx may have been wrong about economics, but he was certainly prescient about the mass media.” How convenient to simply sum up a work of art like Das Kapital in one word — “wrong.” Have you studied economics the way Marx did? The media is simply one small part of the commodity fetishism which he describes.
You also state that, “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, monopoly media vowed to eschew trivia and return to reporting essentials.” Oh, really? Did you sit and have a conversation with monopoly media about this? Was this vow ever made publicly? Or did you just make it up?
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Your hypocrisy reaches a new height when you consider the cover of the paper: get rich now. Nice job with the Horatio Alger–style promotion of capitalism. In the last paragraph you ask, “What’s to be done?” Well, I think the answer is painfully obvious: stop reporting bullshit stories and start getting the issues out in the open that Fox News ignores. You guys have a responsibility. As a citizen I demand a higher level of dedication to the truth from your paper.
Nathan Ahlers
Boston
Designated Driving
I would have enjoyed your piece on drinking more if I still drank. How about doing a piece on how sober people can “break out of your weekend routine in a serious way” by using the T around this big little city, as you call it?
Robert Hersey
Hull
Abusing abuse
The pseudo-liberal Boston Globe ran more stories on the JonBenet Ramsey case in two days than on Bernard Baran in years. Remember: the hysteria began 1983, 1984, 1985, and never ended.
David C. Boies
Washington, DC