Mail Bag

I hardly ever get letters in response to my columns, either because my writing is dispassionate, or because I'm always right: I'll leave it to you to decide. But anyway, I have been getting letters in the past few weeks, which is exciting because I like the idea of a discussion with readers, but I feel as though the challenges have been pretty shoddy, and I should take some time to respond.

First, there is this letter, written in response to my column describing the NYU College Dems' trip to Pittsburgh (which obviously swung PA in Kerry's favor). A few problems with this one:
1.) In paragraph 3, it's clear that he doesn't know what "status quo" means. "Status quo" is not tantamount to any current or future Bush policy.
2.) In paragraph 4, he states, "The Democrats are trying to get support from voters who oppose the war, and want the billions wasted on it spent on improving our lives here at home. Kerry doesn't have anything to offer those people, so the whole idea of change is narrowed down to exchanging Bush for Kerry." This just confuses me. Is his first sentence not a description of what it was Kerry was offering people?
3.) He concludes by writing that Nader was "polling best" among Arab-Americans and those making less than $15,000. Does "polling best" mean he got 2% instead of 0.5?

Second, there is this letter, written in response to my column about the success of the youth turnout, and how the facts differ from the media myth saying it never materialized. I won't go into specifics, but I'll just say that by his logic, any increase in youth turnout short of full parity with the electorate at large is nothing to be happy about. In short, a 10% increase in turnout meant nothing to him, because it wasn't 20%.

Third, there is this letter, written in response to my column about the way language is twisted in discussions of the Middle East conflict. Again, a few problems:
1.) He claims that I "would be surprised" if I knew many Israelis themselves, including prominent leaders, called the presence in the West Bank an "occupation." I'm not surprised: I did indeed know that, that's why in no part of my column did I say it was only used only by Israel's opponents. In fact, I note the term is common, and a theme that runs throughout the column is that these terms have come into use by those who are neutral, or even well-meaning.
2.) He says he suspects Prof. Mitchell's use of "occupation" was intentional. I agree and I thought so at the time I wrote it, but I didn't care to make the column about Prof. Mitchell, the idea was bigger than a refutation of him: more sensible letter-writers took care of that.
3.) He refutes my characterization of the term "intifada" with the infallible authority of a Google search. I hope he doesn't do all of his translation with Google, or else he must have a hell of a time with his Spanish homework. Anyway, he says he found a direct translation of intifada as "shaking off," and this is why in my column I said the term intifada implies peaceful civilian overthrow of an oppressor, an implication formed through a combination of that direct translation, along with the way the term intifada is used in Palestinian discourse.
He goes on to say the term was popularized in 1987, which is an attempt to refute my claim that it has been twisted to meet the ends of the post-2000 terrorist attacks. But lo and behold, the most recent attacks are the second intifada. Care to guess when the first one started?...If you said anything other than 1987, we're not friends anymore. Much like the infamous refutations of Jan Messerschmidt, this is a critique that only serves to prove my point.