Any other thoughts?
So, the solution you propose in your editorial on Correctional Service of Canada’s withholding of the Ashley Smith files is ... to ask a Conservative cabinet minister to prod the CSC into handing over the documents (Prison Service Is Out Of Control – May 3)? Good luck with that.
Tom Murphy, London, Ont.
'Spill' just doesn't cut it
The BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico should not be referred to as a “spill” (The Painful Fallout Of A ‘Massive’ Spill – May 3). A “spill” occurs if someone accidentally tips a bucket of water onto the floor. What is happening in the gulf is more like someone turning the bathtub faucet on full force … and then leaving for an extended vacation. Moreover, the bathtub is in the penthouse suite and the flood will affect the residents below. This is an overwhelming catastrophe, not a mere “spill.”
Jean Gibbens, Guelph, Ont.
Same drama, new script
A letter-writer (This Greek Tragedy – May 3) asks: “How far will Greece have to go to appease Germany’s demand for fiscal accountability?” I am curious: What would your correspondent say if Germany demanded nothing – and gave Greece nothing?
Stan Szpakowicz, Ottawa
Pretentious tripe
I am very grateful to Margaret Wente for her excellent article (‘It’s A Landscape Of Death In The Humanities’ – Focus, May 1) about my views on education. However, the text may have left the dismaying impression that I called all of York University (where I lectured in 2002) a “backwater.” As the proud product of a small upstate New York university, I would never use that term for an entire academic institution (except Harvard).
The York coterie whom I did indeed call “shallow” were snide, simpering postmodernists, a parasitic infestation of servile acolytes of a sterile ideology that continues to plague many Anglo-American universities. Most Canadians are far too sensible to pay any mind to that pretentious tripe.
Camille Paglia, professor of Humanities and Media Studies, University of the Arts, Philadelphia
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What is it with these ultraconservative American speakers? Camille Paglia, like Ann Coulter, relies on basic bullying to make a point. How two-year-old is that? I attended the Living Literacies Conference held in 2002 at York University at which an eclectic panorama of academics, journalists and social advocates presented diverse perspectives on literacy. Speakers ranged from elite academics such as Gayatri Spivak and George Steiner – who seriously outclass Prof. Paglia in the research world – to social commentators, including the late Susan Sontag, to the wrongly imprisoned literacy advocate, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Prof. Paglia was an appalling speaker, who just taunted the audience. This latest rampage again demonstrates that she is basically just an intolerant loudmouth.
Heather Lotherington, professor, Multilingual Education, York University
Ask Odysseus’s wife
What Naomi Wolf (The Great Escapism – May 3) refers to as the male escapist fantasy is neither new nor unique to Hollywood. What about The Odyssey and The Iliad, the tales of the knights of the Round Table, the great Norse sagas, and the rest of epic literature in which men leave home in the company of other men to have adventures. American men have not “created and consumed fantasies of setting out with their male friends for parts unknown.” These stories are as old as storytelling itself. There are no new stories, only different ways of retelling the old ones. Just ask Penelope.
M. Milstein, West Vancouver
At sea on naval history
Your editorial urging the return of the designation “Royal” to the Canadian Navy is, at best, nostalgia, but does nothing to advance Canada’s naval forces into the 21st century (Ready, Aye, Ready – May 1).
