hi all,
this won’t be a question for any of the readers of this site, but i wrote a letter to my local paper that i figured i might as well share. it was prompted by the following editorial comic, from that nitwit Ed Gamble:
my letter follows:
I can understand the need to present editorial views from across a spectrum of political opinion, yet even this limit must itself have a limit if your paper means to elevate the thoughtfulness and worldly acumen of its readership. The editorial form, whether as essay or cartoon, is not a license to propagate nonsensical opinions easily contradicted by anything even approaching objective assessment. The editorial need not be a justification of some post-modern dictum concerning the ultimate subjectivity and irrelevance of all knowledge. You have a responsibility as editors to weed out the idiocy. And if we live now in a country where the dominant party is patently idiotic, well, you’ve got to decide if sanity is more important to you than keeping up an appearance of impartiality. A pathological liar no doubt also has an opinion. That doesn’t mean that opinion deserves the same outlet as a commentator operating, even if imperfectly, from sane good faith.
This letter is intended as a general comment on your lack of editorial judgement, though it has been prompted by another of Ed Gamble’s absurd editorial comics – this one showing a sober President Bush being prevented from delivering a “9/11 Wake-up Call” by an hysterical jackass in a suit screaming, “He’s Politicizing again!!” As there is no serious debate over the Bush Administration’s repeated and shameless politicization of 9/11, to run such a cartoon confers validity to a mindset of committed delusion. What good does that serve?
