One-Two Punch

One shouldn’t shoot from the hip early in the morning, but this is when I read the Pulse I picked up yesterday, and it delivered a one-two punch that has not started my day that well. Among the letters, we see a lengthy screed denouncing a piece by the always insightful and thoughtful Joe Sullivan. [“Sullivan Decried” by Robert W. Pollock, April 14, 2011] The writer promotes a mean-spirited philosophy of every man for himself, offers a paranoid denunciation of Obama administration initiatives that are trying to save this benighted country from itself, and would reincarnate the often contemptible Andrew Jackson.

Reading on, we are baffled and rather horrified by something called the Barkley Marathons (why plural?) that seems a mutually enabling exercise of sadists and masochists. [“The Race That Eats Its Young” by Matthew Everett] I have talented and intelligent relatives who run conventional marathons, the appeal of which has always mystified me. These Barkley events go well beyond that, playing to extremes of compulsive, self-destructive behavior. Get a life, people!

Kenneth M. Moffett

Knoxville

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