Letters

Bitter Sweet Search

Let’s see some ID: The Sweet Girls’ exhibit [“Sugar and Spice,” by Lauren Kern, August 30] may be pretty familiar to those of us who were in our twenties during the ’90s. We were constantly being referred to in the media and were the most vital marketing target, at least until we cleared age 25. That coupled with the art world’s focus on identity politics made for a near-perfect time to constantly reinvent and focus on our own identities. This is something that people in their teens and twenties need to do anyway, but we just felt like rock stars doing it.

Well, now the identity movement has made its way to the sales racks at Target, printed on poorly made pink T-shirts claiming the words “porn star,” “sweet,” “sex kitty,” etc. What’s a youngsta to do?

Here’s an idea that also comes from the ’90s’ nod to punk rock: Be a fan of others and expand those influences to people outside your own movement (e.g., Le Tigre’s giddy fan song “Hot Topic,” where they call out their favorite artists, from Yoko Ono to James Baldwin to Sleater-Kinney). I don’t think anyone asked the question, “Who do the Sweet Girls think they are?” Who the Sweet Girls thought they were was all we heard, and that’s just not enough anymore.

Barbara Mason
Houston

Pen and the Press

A cause for convicts: I appreciate the depth of your story and all that you talked about [“Prose and Cons,” by John Suval, August 23]. I hope it starts a spark in others’ lives and makes them question the $3 billion industry called the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It’s a money market for someone, and the inmates don’t see it. I feel that the inmates should have the right to read a publication that concerns them and forces the employees of the state to examine what they are doing to these inmates.

I hope the cause continues to show that our inmates are humans with families and friends who love them and support them. Thanks for your article. I know my family and I have enjoyed it immensely. Keep up the great work on reporting the truth, even if it does hurt someone’s feelings.

John A. Short
Columbus, Ohio

Coleman’s Lantern

Lay off Garnet: Good Lord, what planet are you guys from? I was dismayed by how unaware you seem to be of Representative Coleman’s enormous contribution to sound health and social policy in Texas [The Insider, “Don’t Mess with Garnet,” by Tim Fleck, August 16]. There is no one in the legislature today who has fought and achieved more than he has for low-income Texans.

The suggestion that Representative Coleman is in any way remarkable for his “emotional problems” with “pent-up anger” is simply laughable in the context of our legislature. Under the granite dome, elected officials with easygoing personalities who do not argue “in a raised voice with aides” (or with lobbyists, advocates or even some constituents) are scarcer than hens’ teeth.

The only difference is that most of them, unlike Garnet Coleman, do not have a publicly shared clinical diagnosis. He and I have disagreed at times — including recent times — and the representative has always treated me with respect, even when our disagreement was fairly heated. And, unlike your sources, I am willing to sign my name to this letter!

Anne Dunkelberg
Austin

Strawberry Fields Forever

Gen-X vex: I have enjoyed the sarcasm in your column for quite a while, but “Apple Scruffs” pissed me off [News Hostage, by Richard Connelly, August 16]. You certainly seem intelligent enough to realize that all your readers are not 18- to 24-year-old buzz-cut, tattooed, mentally dozing, hat-on-backward jackasses. If you feel that Ken Hoffman’s passion for the Beatles is an “obsession,” okay, that’s your opinion. The fact that McCartney was planning some impromptu performances seems to be a story that your paper should have reported first.

I’m a 47-year-old cop, and anything about the Beatles is welcome news. Get with me in 39 years, and we’ll see if Generation X (still working at McDonald’s) gives a shit about the 300 to 400 current bands whose names are numbers! (Blink 182, matchbox twenty, BR5-49, and on and on ad nauseam.)

I strongly doubt that these tattooed numbnuts will be making any noise in 39 months! Honestly, I appreciate much of the new music. My wife is a midday jock on the alternative rock station in Houston. But lay off the Beatles. Their legend speaks (sounds) for itself. Just ask some of the kids.

Bernie Palmer
Houston

Good to Go

Samaritan shunned: Jim Kennedy has been my father-in-law for nearly ten years now [“Blurred Vision,” by Jennifer Mathieu, August 16]. He is one of the most selfless, most decent and kindest human beings I’ve ever had the privilege to know. He constantly goes well out of his way to help people. After Allison, he helped rescue stranded citizens and then put up the strangers in his home for weeks while they regrouped. Over the years he has done countless other things to help people. He exemplifies a Christlike life like no one else I have ever known.

In trying to ensure that the Youth Vision funds were used appropriately, he was acting extremely responsibly. Shame on the First Baptist Church Heights for treating someone — a person who embodies a Christian lifestyle that any good church would revere — as if he did the slightest thing wrong. He didn’t!

Bianca Kennedy
Houston

Chad Chicanery

Beware of voting fraud: Richard Connelly’s article about Houston’s new e-voting system [“Punched Out,” August 9] casually mentions that “they’ve apparently got all the security measures that could ever be necessary.”

In testimony before an ad hoc committee, I and two other computer security researchers described a number of ways in which a motivated adversary could abuse systems like the Hart InterCivic machines to alter the outcome of an election, leaving behind no evidence of tampering. In any system where the only record of a vote cast is stored digitally within the machine, the voter must trust that all the software in the machine is bug-free and that it hasn’t been modified by a third party.

This is no laughing matter; this year’s early votes (26 percent of the votes cast in Houston) will be cast exclusively using the Hart system. There will be no way to perform a meaningful recount; allegations of fraud will be neither substantiable nor disprovable.

Dan Wallach
Houston