‘I Applaud the Women With Courage to Step Forward’

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/07/insider/i-applaud-the-women-with-courage-to-step-forward.html

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Here are the top 10 comments of the week on our digital platforms, as selected by our readers and the journalists who moderate nearly every comment. Some comments were edited for length and clarity.

1. My husband and I were among those in a theater in the Mandalay Bay who were kept there on lockdown for hours while the shooter performed his act of carnage 32 floors above us. The memory of crouching down on the floor between the seats in a darkened theater will stay with me forever. And we are among the fortunate ones. I will be the first to tell you that the hopes and prayers and social media support from my family and friends made me feel better. But they will do nothing to prevent further massacres.

I beg our congressmen and women to put their selfishness aside and try to come to some sort of compromise to prevent the further proliferation of guns and future mass murders.

— Gail Koornick in Roswell, Georgia, responding to an Op-Ed by Steve Israel, a former Democratic representative from Long Island, about the shooting deaths of nearly 60 people in Las Vegas.

2. I spent yesterday at the gun range with two engineering students. We were shooting Russian, Finnish, German, and American military arms. After roughly 1,000 rounds our body count was zero. We drove to lunch at a crowed eatery with the guns and ammo in the truck. I even had my concealed carry weapon on my hip. Body count still zero. We drove home past several schools, theaters, churches, parks and the courthouse next to the post office. Body count still zero.

We arrived at my home, unpacked all the gear and began the arduous task of cleaning the hardware. Body count still zero. I put the hardware back in the safe, walking past my small children and my wife. Body count still zero. I do this every weekend, just like millions of Americans across this country.

If you won’t blame every Muslim for the vile acts of a handful of Muslims, why would you blame all lawful gun owners for the vile acts of a handful of lunatics?

— Georgi in New York.

3. Weinstein’s statement about the ’60s and ’70s is correct, as far as it goes.

Such behavior was certainly considered rude, even caddish and the decent men I knew wouldn’t do it.

However, it was not then considered sexual harassment; it certainly was not regarded as anything that you could lose your job over, or be prosecuted over. It was widely regarded as a matter of internal restraint on the man’s part and a matter of lack of internal restraint on the part of the occasional woman who would slap a man in the face.

That said, that was then, this is now. And it’s been “now” for a couple decades. It’s long past time for Harvey to have gotten with The Program. He certainly should know that the ’60s and ’70s aren’t going to excuse anything now.

— Wine Country Dude in Napa Valley, reacting to an investigation by The New York Times that found previously undisclosed allegations of sexual harassment by the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

4. That’s the trick to getting away with it, you pick out the most vulnerable, the ones who have the most to lose. Others you treat well so you always have cover. It still goes on and not just in Hollywood. Success rules. Quiet settlements and life goes on. Thankfully, the rules are changing. And I applaud the women with the courage to step forward, it’s not easy since the first defense is they’re lying.

— Kathy in Oxford

5. Growing up in a remote part of New Zealand, I somehow got hold of Tom Petty’s first album. For a scared and lonely 13-year-old girl, music had become my escape. But “American Girl” was like some kind of magic code filled with yearning and desire and loss. How could he know how I felt? There were other girls in the world like me?

That song was and still is mysterious and powerful. It stopped my soul from dying.

— Sully in New Zealand, reacting to the death of the musician Tom Petty.

We asked New York Times readers to share a song or a set of lyrics by Tom Petty that resonated with them. A selection of the responses was published here.

6. Wonderful to see the prize given to an author widely read outside his country. “The Remains of the Day” still moves me years after having read it.

— Dennis Muzza, on The Times’s Facebook page, reacting to an article about the British author Kazuo Ishiguro winning this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.

7. I’m from Puerto Rico and I live on the island. We embraced Hurricane Maria, we prepared, as always, because we know we live on an island, in the middle of hurricane routes. We saved many lives, but now we are here without food, water and electricity and although we did not expect much of Mr. Trump, , this was the most humiliating thing we ever witnessed as human beings, but most of all, as American citizens.

We deserve respect, we deserve better. We are not begging for help, we want the help we deserve as fellow Americans.

— León Torres-De Neisha, on Facebook, reacting to an article about President Trump tossing rolls of paper towels to islanders at a church in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

8. I was here in Barcelona and I saw with my own eyes. It was disgusting the force the police used. Never in my life would I imagine that riot police would beat senseless an old granny trying to vote, whether it was legal or not, or shoot indiscriminately into a crowd with rubber bullets because they were gathering to vote. Just plain awful.

Now we live under constant police presence and the looming threat that these stormtroopers will be unleashed again on peacefully protesting citizenry. Some people and politicians (and monarchs) are really showing their true colors and it is really not pretty to look at. Now all we can do is wait and hope that cooler heads prevail.

— Viscabarca in Barcelona, reacting to an article about voters in Spain taking part in an independence referendum that had been declared illegal by Spain’s constitutional court.

9. Most Spaniards are not against freedom of independence if they wish so. But we will not tolerate to have our rights taken away from us. We have a constitution. If it needs to be amended, let’s do it from the parliament.

Catalan parties have been present in the parliament since its inception, have been willing part on governments from both sides of the aisle and have been an integral part on the stability of the country.

Ignoring the laws that govern us all and even their local constitution, just crosses a line no state is willing to accept or the country would simply disappear in utter chaos. The King did his duty, and I am a republican at heart, but in moments like this I am behind defending the constitution that brought democracy, freedom and stability to my country for 40 years. I have no desire to see this peace broken.

— Enrique Cano in Bilbao, Spain.

10. It’s about as funny as seeing men get paid millions to throw a ball around.

— Tanya Logan, on Facebook, reacting to an article about Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton saying, “It’s funny to hear a female talk about routes.”