Once again, I’ve had an interesting on-line “debate” in our very own “The Potomac News.” This time, the issues was global climate change. The letter to the editor (LTE) that started the debate was titled “Global warming: Another big, fat lie,” which is a fairly neutral title that gives one no hint of the general tone of the letter.
I’ve made a point of getting a Letter to the Editor (LTE) of our local newspaper published at least once each month since last summer. Over these past months my writing has evolved from simple rebutting of our local Conservative columnists to writing on original topics. Part of the change from rebutting columnists is that the newspaper has introduced commenting in their on-line version. This on-line commenting is moderated but apparently only filtered for obvious spam, as evidenced by the range of opinions that actually gets posted.
A comments thread I participated in became extremely amusing to me extremely fast today. Unfortunately, it is also a sad example of what now-a-days passes for “educated discussion” on immigration in this Virginia county of Prince William.
I’ve just had another of my continuing series of Letters to the Editor published in yesterday’s “The Potomac News. This letter was another in my recent series of taking on the anti-Hispanic-immigration crowd that is running wild here in Prince William County.
A few weeks ago I had another of my letters to the Local Newspaper “The Potomac News” published. This letter expressed my lack of sympathy towards one of our most out-spoken racists complaining about being listed in the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a “nativist.”
My letter received a direct letter to the editor rebuttal only two days later. My follow-up was never published by “The Potomac News,” so I’m publishing it here.
Last week I submitted another of my on-going series of Letters to the Editor of our local newspaper “The Potomac News.” This time, I took on a local wing-nut who is key in whipping up anti-immigration hysteria in this area. It seems that after a few years of diligently and successfully working to build his reputation as a local racist, this individual was unhappy about being labeled a “nativist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center and local newspapers.
Now that the Republican Party has settled on their candidate for President, Saint John McCain of Hanoi Hilton, we quickly see the main theme of the Republican campaign; Fear, Fear, and Fear.
In my on-going letter-writing campaign, I do believe I’m making progress in shaping the local debates.
I’ve been posting letters to the editor (LTEs) fairly regularly these past months. Most of the letters end up being published here on my family blog along with background commentary. What I don’t usually publish here, or even comment on, are e-mails I’ve been sending directly to the columnists. Normally, the columnists ignore my e-mails. On two occasions they’ve graced me with nasty replies, which I get the last word in on.
But for the first time ever, several weeks ago a writer actually published my e-mail to him as basis for an extremely mean-spirited and insulting column. The end result was getting my first-ever column published under my byline.
Here in my lovely Prince William County, we have a group of very vocal people complaining about “Illegal Immigrants.” These people complain about a lot of things in general, but immigrants are tops on their list. Our County Board of Supervisors, led by one Cory Stewart, have done what politicians in a democratically-elected government always seem to do – pander to the loudest.
McCain’s Experience Is Not What We Want
I’ve been a bit slow in re-posting my monthly Letter’s to The Editor (LTEs) for June and July. As I’ve mentioned before, last July I made it a goal to get at least one letter per month published in our local newspaper The Potomac News.
I’ve actually met that goal so far, having one letter per month published since last August, and one column under my byline. With everything else I’ve been doing these past couple of months, I’ve been a bit slow republishing them here. So here is my June LTE.
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