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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Reading between the lines of irony
Letters to the Editor | 9/9/08
Posted online at 3:11 AM EST on 9/9/08
To the Editor:
I couldn't agree more with [Amy Mandel] ("Dangerous words threaten education," Sept. 2 issue) about the importance of reading! But Michael Moore is a professional writer. His books often include incitements to read and encomiums as eloquent as yours on the necessity of it for a functioning, civilized democracy. His favorite literary device is irony. When a writer starts a book by telling you not to read it, that's ironic (writing and preparing books for publication is very hard work!). You have to think-what does he mean by that? Because he can't mean what he says.
One thing he seems to be saying in various venues-he and other concerned pundits-is that a lot of us tend to feel we've done our civic duty by reading and complaining, me among them. We have to do more than that to bring the rule of law back to this country, where it's in tatters, from the level of small-town corruption and doctors who won't give patients information on abortion to the excision of habeas corpus from the Constitutional protections of liberty to the unapologetic invasion of a sovereign country. If you share his sense of urgency, it is easier to understand his irony.
Michael Moore is on your side. In another new publication, the introduction to a collection of letters written to him from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, he blames himself for complicity in the war because he did not find the "right words," words strong enough to prevent an invasion that has incurred a million deaths and untold breakdowns. It's heartwarming for an English teacher to consider that he still believes, in 2008, that the "right words" could have that power.
-Prof. Mary Blane Campbell (JOUR)
I couldn't agree more with [Amy Mandel] ("Dangerous words threaten education," Sept. 2 issue) about the importance of reading! But Michael Moore is a professional writer. His books often include incitements to read and encomiums as eloquent as yours on the necessity of it for a functioning, civilized democracy. His favorite literary device is irony. When a writer starts a book by telling you not to read it, that's ironic (writing and preparing books for publication is very hard work!). You have to think-what does he mean by that? Because he can't mean what he says.
One thing he seems to be saying in various venues-he and other concerned pundits-is that a lot of us tend to feel we've done our civic duty by reading and complaining, me among them. We have to do more than that to bring the rule of law back to this country, where it's in tatters, from the level of small-town corruption and doctors who won't give patients information on abortion to the excision of habeas corpus from the Constitutional protections of liberty to the unapologetic invasion of a sovereign country. If you share his sense of urgency, it is easier to understand his irony.
Michael Moore is on your side. In another new publication, the introduction to a collection of letters written to him from soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, he blames himself for complicity in the war because he did not find the "right words," words strong enough to prevent an invasion that has incurred a million deaths and untold breakdowns. It's heartwarming for an English teacher to consider that he still believes, in 2008, that the "right words" could have that power.
-Prof. Mary Blane Campbell (JOUR)
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Mary Baine Campbell
posted 9/09/08 @ 8:43 PM EST
For the record, my name is Mary Baine Campbell, and I teach in the Department of English and American Literature!
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