The cover of your February 27 issue is so absurd and irresponsible it defies logic. Who decided that it was responsible to put that gesture on the cover? I am a store owner, and I am a big supporter of the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. But I am also a big supporter of common sense and logic. So let’s make something clear: I give your newspaper a place in my store free of charge. I have absolutely nothing to gain from it. Nothing. Only you do. Do you realize that my customers and their children come into my store? Multiply that by thousands — nice message you are sending. You put us in a position and customers complain. All copies of that issue conveniently found their way into the trash. And if you continue to send issues that would be offensive to my customers and parents, I will send you a bill for disposal services. Thanks, but no thanks!
Anonymous
Allston
As a person who used to love the Phoenix for its outrageous but literate and high-minded presentation of a counterculture, I am increasingly disdainful of the new direction the paper has taken. But the explicit, gratuitous, and graphic use of “the finger” on your cover has gone too far and only contributes to your decline as a thoughtful, alternative press.
Talk radio has succeeded in contributing to an increasingly rude, thoughtless, vitriolic society, and now you too are pandering to this audience. Isn’t it ironic that Bank Of America has blanketed this city with posters of Boston as the “city of higher learning,” but we are increasingly operating at the gutter level?
“The finger” is already a repulsive sign of hostility and anger. It is crude and insulting. To have it used so outrageously on your cover only induces younger people to embrace it.
So yes, you may have caught the attention of new readers with this graphic, but you have made me more cynical about where your paper is heading. This new “makeover” is leaning toward sleaze and tabloid fare.
Pat Murphy
Boston
American tragedy
Your January 27 editorial calling average Americans “brain-dead” because of lack of outcry over Judge (now Justice) Alito is way off the mark. Leftists are so eaten up with the superiority of their ideology that they think people who countenance our current oppressive government are simply ignorant or intellectually lazy. You assume everyone is either progressive already, or ready to become so once enlightened.
But the sad truth is that a great many Americans, even nominally intelligent ones, prefer living in a garrison state and favor a fascist president who spends wantonly and spies on all of us. Witness the broad support on the Boston.com news message boards for warrantless seizure of library records and computers, warrantless wiretaps, and prisoner torture.
Liberals were brain-dead for rejecting libertarian-leaning moderate conservatives from the national political mainstream in the last decade, leaving a vacuum in the Republican Party quickly occupied by fundamentalist thugs. Compared to W, was Newt really so awful?
Christopher Burian
Waltham
Spreading the word
I very rarely respond to articles I’ve read in newspapers or magazines, but I felt I should let you know how much I appreciated your well-researched, informative, and balanced article “About Last Night” (January 20). While other pieces about “date-rape drugs” aim to incite fear, presenting their use as pandemic and focusing largely on the tragedy of the victims, I’m glad you focused on telling statistics, as well as on awareness and prevention. I think your article will help to increase awareness, and may help women who have been drugged and raped to identify their experiences as such and to seek help. Thank you very much.
Jesse Kirdahy-Scalia
Arlington
