Sirs,
The shooting last Sunday of Democratic Representative for Arizona Gabriel Giffords was an appalling crime. Yet the insinuation in your headline piece today (Monday January 10th) that this is somehow Sarah Palin's fault or the fault of the Tea Party movement is absurd; such a claim is little different from the claim that the portrayal of violence on television causes violence in real life. Yet although it may be absurd, the purpose of slipping it into the subheading and elsewhere in the report is transparently manipulative: to discredit generally conservative or libertarian criticism of big government by tenuous association with the appalling actions of an apparent lunatic. Yet any honest observer of the numerous demonstrations and events held by the Tea Party movement throughout the last year must admit that U.S. conservatives - even the hardcore constitutionalists - are simply not lunatics calling for the summary execution of politicians. To say such a thing is dishonest; to insinuate it is both devious and dishonest. Shame on you.
Yours freely,
Michael Fagan.
(Sent: Tuesday 11th January 2011. Published in the the Taipei Times, Saturday 15th January 2011).
Monday 10 January 2011
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This is the letter of yours that was finally published today, apparently. I have sent a couple of letters to them in the past. While I do think a lot of what they choose to not publish is not done for personal reasons or political intolerance, some of it is. They often print the blandest letters, with the most obvious nonsense by the same people, over and over again. You would think they'd want some variety. At least your letters are a breath of fresh air.
ReplyDelete"They often print the blandest letters, with the most obvious nonsense by the same people, over and over again."
ReplyDeleteCareful Thoth, they've printed over twenty letters from me - all of which bang on about the importance of less government, government restrictions and government incompetence... a bit um, bland, you might say!
I'm grateful for every letter they've ever published of mine.