THREE CHEERS FOR ALEXANDER HAMILTON!

TO THE EDITOR: Three cheers for Katia Dunn [“A 700-Word Essay on Alexander
Hamilton,” March 21]!! While her exuberance may have caused her to overstate
a trivial fact (i.e. that he wasn’t technically President), the fact remains
he was too good and humble to take on the showboat/figurehead role.

And when push came to shove, Hamilton stood up to Aaron Burr in a duel. LIKE A MAN. Not cowering behind hundreds of freezing, starving foot soldiers, as did G.W.!! It’s little wonder why Alex appears on the “sawbuck,” while Georgie Porgie smirks away on the lowly one dollar bill: Because Alexander “the Great” was TEN TIMES the man that Dubya the First was!

Three cheers for Katia!! And three cheers for Alexander Hamilton!!

Doug Mark

THREE BOOS FOR ALEXANDER HAMILTON!

TO THE EDITOR: Alexander Hamilton, “the man who should have been president?”
Give me a break. Hamilton was among the most monarchistic of the founding fathers.
He advocated that the Senate and President must be wealthy landowners to be
APPOINTED FOR LIFE, and his general political philosophy was that the wealthy
should be given “a distinct permanent share of the government.” For an idiot,
George Washington did pretty well in becoming one of the New World’s richest
men in the pre-war colonial period. If that’s stupidity, poor Katia must rank
below a flatworm in the brain department.

Rob Trautmann

THREE BOOS FOR HUMPY AND THREE MORE BOOS FOR HUMPY!

TO THE MERCURY: Give a sister a break. So Katia screwed up and said
Hamilton was President? Big deal! Sure, maybe she should’ve done some fact checking
but is it not also the responsibility of editor Wm. Steven “Hump me!” Humphrey
to catch such mistakes?

If so, shouldn’t Mr. Humpty write his own essay on “The Man Who Should’ve Been President”? In any case, there should be some form of public punishment for Hump-me. Perhaps an issue where he doesn’t discuss monkeys, poop, or gravy? Or maybe an issue where he simply ACTS like an editor and doesn’t fucking cuss or reprimand his excellent writers when he makes more mistakes than they do?

Mikki Veatch

TWO CHEERS FOR KATIA’S PICTURE, ONE BOO FOR “DETAILS”

DEAR KATIA: Loved your picture and 700-word essay, and I agree Alexander Hamilton’s
economic genius was ahead of his time BUT. He was shot by the Vice-President
under Thomas Jefferson when he died in July 1804, not in battle, and was probably
age 51 when he died. Though admittedly, record keeping in 18th Century America
was more concerned with money–which probably explains Alexander’s prowess with
Martha (?) and the first national bank.

That guy attended to the details. We all can take heed from that.

Wesley Ellis

TWO BOOS FOR HUMPY AND ONE BOO FOR KATIA!

TO WM.™ STEVEN HUMPHREY: It seems interesting that on the page opposite to
that moron Katia’s essay on Alexander Hamilton, you made a mistake a hundred,
no, a thousand times worse: You called Oompa-Loompas “Singing blue midgets with
bad hair cuts” [I Love Television™, March 21]. What fucked up version of Willy
Wonka and the Chocolate Factory have you been watching? Anyone with half-a-brain
knows that Oompa-Loompas are orange. I expect that kind of crap from a shit-head
like Katia, but not from the most well respected television critic in the world.

Jeff Rader

THREE BOOS FOR CLINIC, AND ONE CHEER FOR ALEXANDER HAMILTON!

TO THE MERCURY: I went to see Clinic at Berbati’s, and it was an absolute
JOKE [Music, March 21]!! While their stage presence was everything it was hyped
up to be, the length of their set was absolute shit! At least Celine Dion will
get her skanky ass on stage and play for a good hour and a half! Clinic did
seven or eight songs at best!! So they are from Liverpool? Who cares?! If you
can’t rock like an American band then don’t come back to Portland and screw
us out of $12!

Thanks for the crap recommendation, and god bless Katia Dunn, who did an excellent article on Alexander Hamilton.

J. Conan Mochnick

CONGRATULATIONS go to J. Conan Mochnick for winning the Mercury
“Letter of the Week” and two passes to the Laurelhurst Theater! Do you have
an opinion that has nothing to do with Alexander Hamilton? Send it to the address
above!