Subject: The Real End of the Road
Re: "Ballot Box: Geography of Shame"
From: Ender
Date: Thu Feb 22  4:25 p.m. PT

Mr. Weisberg forgot to mention the one place that takes all comers no matter how heinous the crime: Hell. The revised last sentence of his article should read: "At which point, the next port of call is generally Caracas, Venezuela, or Zug, Switzerland, but these are all just way stations on the road to Hell."

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Subject: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Coke

Re: "Moneybox: Harry Potter and His Marketers' Tone"

From: Zeitguy

Date: Wed Feb 21  7:49 a.m. PT

Potter, unlike Coca-Cola, is the Real Thing, a perceptive human in touch with the several numinous and phenomenal levels of post-industrial experience who is also capable of making kids feel OK about themselves at these different levels. That is subversive of the basic psychology of marketing any useless product. You have to make the kids feel inadequate and then give them a lifeline through the product back to social acceptance. Harry Potter tells the kids they are OK without buying anything (except more Harry Potter books—there is no perfection in this life). If the film handlers or Coke marketeers "win" they succeed in making the kids feel they need cokepotterabilia to be OK. Which is a repressive schema completely counter to the Potter paradigm.

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Subject: The Importance of Prayer

Re: "Bush Unveils Faith-Based Missile Defense"

From: Tom R.

Date: Wed Feb 21  1:29 p.m. PT

We all need to write Congress to support a prayer based program for Civil Defense as a component for the Faith-Based Missile Defense System, because that is the only defense we have today against any present or future ballistic missile threat. I wonder if the government will install automatic bell ringers in all steeples, prerecorded calls to prayer in all minarets, and direct the radio listening audience to the locally available "Hour of Power" in event of a reported launch from a submarine just off shore, which will only allow a 3-5 minute prayer effort to avert national disaster?

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Subject: Un-American Activity

Re: "Sports Nut: Cricket—It's Wicket Awesome"

From: Siddharth Chandramouli

Date: Mon Feb 19  9:33 a.m. PT