Flight into danger
It’s a good thing the accused airline bomber wasn’t heading for Toronto (No Evidence Detroit Flight Incident Part Of Larger Plot – online, Dec. 27). If so, the immediate reaction from the city’s good citizens would have been that, like the Toronto 18, he was obviously an inept amateur, not worthy of much fuss. After all, no one died. Then, like that Toronto grocery-store owner, those who subdued the accused bomber would have been arrested and charged with assault and forcible confinement. The accused bomber would have been invited to testify against his assailants and given a slap on the wrist. After all, no one died.
Ken West, Toronto
Decoding The Globe
Newspaper journalism, at its best, provides us with “the first draft of history.” That’s why Doug Saunders’s essay Ten Years That Shook, Rattled, Rolled And Helped Repair The World (Focus, Dec. 26) was most welcome. Both the essay and your splendid special edition make a powerful statement in defence of Canadian print journalism.
Paul W. Bennett, Halifax
............
What on earth were you trying to do with your Saturday front page? Commit suicide? The blank page sent the message, “Put down the paper and go to the Internet!” Oh well, I’m an old fogey and don’t have much time left to enjoy my morning paper anyway.
Bernard Etkin, Toronto
............
Can’t you guys count? I thought we settled that 2000 was the last year of the 20th century. (Try counting out $20 in pennies. Is the final penny the 1,999th or the 2,000th?) The first year of the first decade of the 21st century was 2001 and the final year of the first decade will be 2010. Not 2009!
Jack A. Carr, Toronto
The Merry Christmas thing
Rex Murphy asks why anyone who isn’t Christian would be offended at being wished Merry Christmas (Christmas Has Its Crown Again – Dec. 26), then proceeds to dismiss such persons as “adolescent outraging of the bourgeoisie.” Is he kidding? This reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons when Bart insists that “Christmas is a time when people of all faiths come together to worship Jesus Christ.”
Notwithstanding universal ideals of peace and goodwill for all, Christmas was, is and always will be a Christian holiday. To be wished Merry Christmas is to be presumed a member of Christianity. I’m not surprised that Rex doesn’t get it. But to assume all others are like you and then take umbrage that others who are dissimilar prefer not to be so categorized is an exercise in willful effrontery. Nevertheless, Happy Holidays, Rex.
Marc Sheckter, Saskatoon
............
We Christmas deniers take umbrage not so much at the singing of Silent Night once a year as its repetition six times a day from Thanksgiving to Christmas everywhere from ring tones to the local hardware store. “Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men” is a sentiment that, while unnatural in fact, is laudable in theory, and quickly becomes vacuous by constant lip service. One objects not to wishing and being wished a Merry Christmas (or a Happy Hanukkah, for that matter) but to exchanging the salutation for a month and a half.
What may seem like political correctness is the reaction to the grinding tedium and poor taste of the festive season. (Red and green in the same context are a fashion faux pas regardless of the spiritual beliefs of the wearer.)
John Seigner, Calgary
............
