The Saga of a Letter

If you follow the letters page, you should have noticed that I had a letter published on Feb. 23. The saga started on Feb. 4 when I submitted the letter, but what transpired between then and when it was published is instructive.

On Feb. 12, I observed a letter from Greg Correll of New Paltz that was worded in a way that made me suspicious that it was a MoveOn.org (e.g.) form letter. It took me about 30 seconds to find several instances of word-for-word copies of Correll's letter attributed to other people. I then sent an e-mail to John Penney showing two examples of what I found: letters in the The Desert Sun and The Republican (Which I believe is from Mass.). Penney telephoned me very soon after I sent my e-mail (which I CC:d to other editors) and told me that he was upset and was going to contact Correll and tell him he shouldn't be sending boilerplate letters.

It was then that I decided that I would rather have them publish a letter on this subject rather than the one I had sent on the 4th. So I composed the following and sent it with a note that I wanted them to retract the other letter and substitute this:

One of the many myths the left likes to repeat is that we on the right are a bunch of “mind-numbed robots” blindly following the orders of our leader, Rush Limbaugh. Another is that they are the intellectuals and we are not.

So why is it, then, that so many on the left have to go to leftist websites to get text to cut-and-paste into their letters to the editors? Can't they use their own words? If they were as smart as they would like us to believe, that shouldn't be a problem.

I refer you now to a letter from Greg Correll of New Paltz, published Feb. 12. A bit of “googling” phrases from his letter turned up at least a half-dozen letters to other papers, all attributed to other people, and almost word for word the same as Correll's.

This isn't an isolated incident. My favorite example occurred Oct. 12, 2004, following one of the presidential debates. The Journal printed a “representative sample” of letters received following the debate. Two of the letters, printed on the same page mind you, were practically identical. It didn't take much effort to find the source: a “template” posted on the Democrat National Committee's website before the debate!

If you go to Rush Limbaugh's website, you won't find any “templates” for letters to the editor - we're smart enough to compose our own.

Well, this really riled Penney up. The first thing he did was to call me up and tell me what a big problem I was creating by having him substitute one letter for another. But that wasn't his whole problem, he wanted me to know that my letter didn't stand up to my standard for truthfulness, because, he said, he receives form letters from conservatives all the time.

Now I want you to know that I'm getting pretty good at spotting these “boilerplate” letters, and I have to say I can't remember the time I've ever seen one on a conservative subject. So if Penney was telling me the truth (which I'm beginning to doubt), his staff must be much more diligent screening the right than the left, since I've spotted quite a few from ‘liberals’ and Bush-haters.

Being the nice guy that I am, I agreed to save him the terrible imposition of having to stop the presses and change letters, and waited for the letter to appear. And I waited, and waited. Then I went on vacation. When I returned, I found that he hadn't published it until just two days before my return!

Well, I learned my lesson, but Penney obviously didn't. On Feb. 28, he published a letter from Noel Staskel of Pleasant Valley. Read the letter, then click here where you will find this letter word-for-word as a suggested letter to the editor. Staskel, while apparently being adept at cut-and-paste, doesn't read too well, or at least can't follow instructions. Immediately preceding the suggested template are these words:“ Use your own words--they're always better, and some newspapers get annoyed if you copy ours.”

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