Archive: Opinions

Hello Dan,

While I agree for the most part with the majority of your editorials, I have a problem with your “Who Cares What Meryl Streep Thinks?” editorial. I don’t particularly care about Meryl Streep, per se, but I do care about the opinions of people other than the politicians and news commentators who dominate the headlines. While Trump can get his opinions and his many twisted facts (I’ll be polite and not call them lies) covered by the press at will, it is much more difficult for others to garner the same degree of coverage.

Thus, I feel that she was justified in taking the opportunity of the award ceremony to let her feelings be known about one of Trump’s many indiscretions. It is indeed unfortunate that more “ordinary” people cannot stand in the limelight to express their feelings. But that is the nature of the beast, the people with power tend to rule the airwaves. Thank goodness that this country still has the strength of the free press to keep the politicians honest, at least to some degree. Let’s hope this will continue…

On another of your points, I strongly agree that, “Tweeting is not presidential.” His diatribes on Twitter hopefully will stop once he takes office, but all indications are that they will not. It might not be so bad if he really had put some thought into his rants, but they seem to come spontaneously and sound like the retorts of a child in the playground.

The one that stands out in my mind was not actually a tweet, but came during one of the debates with Clinton in which she said that he would be a puppet of Putin. His response was, “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet. No, you’re the puppet.” Now, does this sound like the rejoinder of a grown, supposedly intelligent, man? We can only hope that Trump will grow into his new office as the President and become someone that the world can look up to. If not, these will be very interesting and unpredictable four years for the country.

Best regards,

Richard Durst
Koefering, Germany

v13i3