Please Write Responsibly

Thought you might enjoy this letter to the editor of the Arkansas Traveler. I doubt it will be printed (it turns out it exceeded the wordcount). Enjoy.

Dear Editor,

Shame on you and your staff. You have taken what should be a quality student paper and turned it into nothing more than a shameless rag of propaganda. It is unfortunate that as a student I have no choice but to fund such a machine.

Let me direct your attention first to the visit of Carl Rove, the president's political advisor. One would think that the visit of a man of his position to Fayetteville, Arkansas would be the news story, whether you like him or not. Instead, how are we told of his visit? The front page screamed that he was met with protestors, accompanied by a large picture of two old people carrying three large signs. The article mentioned very little of the substance of his appearance, but seemed to relish in the notion that a few people were unhappy that he chose to come here to campaign for candidates that agree with his ideas.

Contrast that with Monday, October 23. Judge Wendell Griffen of the Arkansas Court of Appeals appears in a church on Sunday, to lecture about how evil Bush is, how much he loves his country, and how bothered he is that people of morals actually wish to promote those morals. It is, of course, his right to promote his morals (although people of morals shouldn't promote their morals politically?), but it would sure help if he would have incorporated a few actual truths into his ramblings (he must have forgotten that a large number of Iraqi dissidents and Kurds had been begging for the US to help get rid of Saddam Hussein for years). But in this instance, the substance of his irresponsible sermon is hailed on the front page of our school paper as a priceless lesson on the need for our nation to be more neighborly (the Good Samaritan was not in the process of battling terrorists who had just blown his right arm off). Interestingly, this appeared directly over an article about the rights of journalists and biases in the media. I wonder where these biases are born.

And then the Opinion page, of course, contains nothing more than further anti-war, Bush hating (or very strongly misliking) bluther, with more misguided references to the number of soldiers killed contrasted against the highly speculative high numbers of Iraqi casualties and more "just tell us the truth, Bush" commentaries. (Maybe you just can't handle the truth?) Interesting, what with the elections so close.

Freedom of speech is great. But please try to be a little more responsible with my fees.