Pinkos and anagrams

[Re: Letters, “Metro map remixed!” March 9”]: A few more Plamondon: Damn ’n’ loop, Mold on pan, Mop on land, MP and loon, Nap on mold, Plan ’n’ doom, Plan on mod.

This is so lame and so old and tired. No wonder it wasted all that valuable first page space of the Mirror. Yet again, great choice, editor of Montreal Mirror! Why not just get yourself the Anagram Genius (www.anagramgenius.com) and masturbate your way with words until Islam actually becomes a peaceful religion?

This is what the “alternative” Montreal Mirror (never mind that it’s owned by Quebecor) wastes their first page on—along with all the other, ahem, stories, like the “fact” that the evil Zionists/Americans are again persecuting the poor, peaceful Arabians/Muslims and so on etc.

But we haven’t seen any news regarding the Muslims’ inadequate, savage, barbaric reaction to the Mohamed cartoons, or the excellent news that the majority of Canadians were tired of the non-stop leftist/pinko media garbage and voted in a right-wing Prime Minister! We haven’t heard any stories like that! We haven’t heard anything from Montreal Mirror about the fact that the Palestinians actually elected a savage terrorist organization to represent themselves (what a surprise there). No, not a word about these truly and extremely important news from your pinko, morally bankrupt rag.

» Igor Gutman

Shit spelling

I have promised my friends I would stop writing letters to the editor about poor grammar. However, I never promised not to write about spelling. Your film critic, Chris Barry, refers to excrement as “pooh” (“Weekly round-up,” March 2). That spelling is reserved for the bear, Winnie—there is no “h” in caca.

» David Schulze

Innocence of youth

Regarding “Sweet 16” [Feb. 16]: Are we really promoting our teenagers’ best interests by insisting that artificial rights are more important than natural growth when it comes to their hormones?

We forget how life happens in stages, how nature, even human nature, has a pace. In our educational advocacy of instant liberation, we forget each person’s prerogative of taking his or her time—which is the opposite of any sort of cultural pressure. It’s due to the extent of these pressures that the needs and claims of youths and adults seem similar. But since those in their early teens and younger are obviously incomplete, how can they honestly be considered autonomous individuals?

Do our social engineers refuse to see that period of dependency that precedes autonomy? Or is growing up slowly a crime? Because of the ever more pervasive exploitation of sexuality, society now is allowing very little breathing room for childhood, ie. for the pure and undefiled imagination. It follows that the lower we permit the age of consent, the more we deform that first stage of life. Of course the cynics are sure to reply, “It’s inevitable, so why must we postpone forbidden fruit?” Because a recipe for life that excludes the adventure of innocence is such a shortcut that maturity is guaranteed to lack some flavour.

» L.S. Cattarini

Injustice for the poor

Kristian Gravenor’s “Minimum wage, minimum justice” story [Feb. 23] dealt only with the fact of who was eligible for legal aid and didn’t touch on how inadequate those funds are.

In the not too distant past, I found myself on the wrong side of the law. I acted on my own behalf (not without expert coaching) right up to the point of setting a date for trial. I did have a lawyer prepared and present for trial time, however. Because more than just a fact-finding mission, the crown is there to win, period, and if they think your lawyer is too inexperienced, they will try things against him that they wouldn’t dare try against a good lawyer.

My legal bill would have amounted to $5,000, legal aid would have paid the ridiculous amount of $350. Versus the unlimited resources of the Province of Quebec. At $200 an hour for a lawyer, $350 dollars pays enough to plead you guilty, which the system wants. Now if you need an investigator to get what might have really happened, instead of what the police said happened, there’s a few thousand more dollars. I won’t even get into the six witnesses who I had to send subpoenas to at $40 a shot—I think legal aid would have at least paid that.

I’m beginning to think the poor are guilty already, and legal aid is just part of the sham of justice that leads people to plead guilty because they can’t afford the fight. But at least someone was there for ’em to plead guilty, so we’re a fair society, eh?

PS. I won my case.

» Mike McManus

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