Byline: Keith Monroe
Since we're trying to teach manners around our house, I have to keep much of the mail addressed to the editorial page hidden in my briefcase. It is reading unfit for children and unpleasant for adults.
Most letters are perfectly presentable, I hasten to add. They express views on questions of interest to the public with candor, concision, vigor and even wit. Sometimes they agree with editorial positions we've taken. Sometimes they disagree or raise entirely new topics. Either way, we welcome them and run them in the paper enthusiastically, space permitting.
Letters to the editor are a vital part of the public dialogue an editorial page encourages. Peter Calamai, the urbane editorial page editor of the Ottawa Citizen, goes so far as to argue that the editorial page is the last outpost of the Age of Reason. A place where rational discourse, enlightened debate, a vigorous but civilized exchange of views is believed in.
But that belief is regularly dampened by the tsunamis of name-calling, waves of vitriol and tides of spleen that flood our mailbox.
We are living in increasingly raw times. Incivility flourishes, and public discourse often resembles a drive-by shooting. Democratic government can look like mud wrestling. Consider the examples people encounter of the proper way to conduct an exchange of views.
On TV, you win a debate by hitting Geraldo in the face with a chair or screaming louder than the other guest on ``Crossfire.''
Talk radio thrives on the put-down, the sneer, the slur and the hang up.
On the Internet, anonymous or pseudonymous antagonists flame each other with the kind of fighting words that would lead to a duel if delivered in person.
It's therefore little wonder that some of our correspondents don't score points with the finesse of Oxford debaters. Letters we receive are often unprintable because they aren't intended for print. They are intended to wound, to gouge, to maim.
I'm not talking about the incoherent letters of crazies, scrawled with crayon or typed ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS that shriek about plots by aliens overheard on dental work. Those are simply sad.
I'm talking about correspondents who are coherent enough but whose verbal resources are too slim to permit sustained debate. They are simply furious, outraged, disgusted, aggrieved and speak in letters to strangers the way they might in a locker room. Their teachers failed to instruct them in the art of persuasion, their mothers failed to wash their mouths out with soap.
Here's a typical e-mail. That's the zippy new electronic technology that permits people to behave boorishly at the speed of light. And no envelopes to open!
``Your editorial in tonight's edition of The Pilot regarding the Virginia Beach Redevelopment and Housing Authority was Pathetic. Even after Tuesday's elections you still don't get it. Blaming the city council for public rejection of this flawed policy due to lack of education is liberal thinking at its worst. We said &%(CT)* YOU and we're saying it again, &%(CT)* YOU!''
The inevitable reaction to such a screed, I fear, is not: ``Well reasoned, Mr. Buckley.'' It's: ``Nice mouth, Blutto.'' This fellow may oppose liberals, but his prose is anything but conservative.
Or consider this fax, spelling faithfully transcribed. ``I take personal exception of your statement of NH a suburb of MASS? Being a Proud New Hampshirite, I know we from N.H. ALWAYS DO OUR OWN THING - so stay in VA where you obviously belong and quit commenting on states where you are an IDIOT.''
This is the kind of elevated discourse we've learned to expect from such Granite-state stylists as Daniel Webster and Robert Frost.
But my recent round-file favorite is a letter that included clippings saved up for several years. After railing about biased editorial cartoons, the lies we print, a long-ago column by former editor Cole Campbell, ``the sexual pervert Clinton,'' The Pilot's ``monopoly on slimy people,'' the author concluded with an ad hominem parting shot:
``P.S. Has anyone reminded you of how much you look like a Walrus, teeth sticking out of mouth and beard?''
No, sir, I can't say anyone has. Unfortunately, you didn't enclose a photo with your work so I am unable to tell you what form of life you resemble.
It's possible that reprinting the kinds of letters not to send to the editor is a tactical error. It may only encourage further attempts at epistolary assault and battery, but that isn't the intent. The message is: Keep those cards and letters coming in. But if you expect to be read or printed, keep a civil quill in your hand. Goo goo ga joob.
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