PRIDE AND PRIVILEGE
(In response to Anna Bethancourt's Oct. 12 column “Criticize, rethink, chill about ‘priv-lit’.”)
I think what Anna fails to see that the rest of the critics don’t, is that Elizabeth Gilbert did not write her novel “Eat, Pray, Love” with the intention to enlighten women, or men for that matter, on spiritual inhibition and the need to find one’s “self.”
In fact, Mrs. Gilbert has released a number of memoirs over her active writing years including accounts of her time as a bartender. Mrs. Gilbert is a writer like almost half of the people in California, and while she doesn't exactly make up stories, she rather throws herself into situations so that she is the starring character of her latest novel.
Is Mrs. Gilbert a good writer? Sure she is, or else she’d never have a career as a successful writer.
But compare her to Kate Hudson’s character in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” or John O’Hurley’s character, J. Peterman, in Seinfeld. Mrs. Gilbert is just a combination of the two.
Perhaps if writers like Mrs. Gilbert would stop writing books for the money, and started writing for shear enjoyment, for storytelling purposes, or for actual social change, then critics wouldn't have to be as harsh on authors as they were with “Eat, Pray, Love.”
David Comón
Reader
RETURN TO SENDER
(In response to Oday Shahin’s Oct. 11 column “Study abroad program sends wrong message.”)
Mr. Shahin’s use of the Apartheid comparison as a cudgel with which to impugn Israel and moreover Zionism both fails to meet historical reality and only elucidates the inherent anti-Semitic nature of the argument.
A cursory overview of even the most mundane Apartheid-era policies uncovers the deficiencies in the comparison. Apartheid-era South Africa segregated all facilities, forbade interracial marriage and sexual relations, legally ghettoized Black South Africans into so-called “Homelands,” amongst a litany of other discriminatory and segregationist policies.
Israel is a multi-ethnic state in which Jew and Arab citizens are afforded the same rights. Two Arab parties are represented in the Knesset, and since Israel’s founding there have been 63 Arab Knesset members, and arguing that the current socio-political landscape of Israel mirrors the Apartheid is disingenuous, defamatory and an insult to those who lived through the horrors of Apartheid.
One must seriously question why anti-Israeli activists constantly attempt to hijack the odious institution of Apartheid for political reasons in light of the fact that the comparison is specious. I posit that it is really a form of projection. Palestinian radicals envision a non-existent Israel devoid of Jews.
Perhaps less extremely, the two-state solution, the most probable outcome of fruitful peace negotiations, will still result in an ethnically heterogeneous Israel with a 20 percent Arab minority and an ethnically cleansed Palestine in which the approximate 500,000 Jews now residing in the West Bank, 17 percent of the population, will either be forced to leave or transfer to Israeli sovereignty.
I speculate in view of this startling possibility and keeping in mind that Apartheid comparisons are devoid of truth that readers of The State Press perhaps reassess the motives Mr. Shahin had in making his comparison and of his criticisms of Israel generally.
Max Feldhake
Undergratuate
