Gary Kamiya says: But getting a lot of letters is not necessarily a good sign: It sometimes just means that you pushed an obvious button. After reading the article, I scrolled down to see what the reader response was to his article and I was surprised.

My personal, informal tracking of “hot button” issues in recent history on Salon shows that The readers strike back hasn’t drawn as many responses as the Guiliani-announcement-for-President. And it has had less than half of the numbers that resulted from the Colorblind article about Barack Obama's “blackness”.

Nevertheless, it’s thought-provoking and strikes a special chord with me because I’m a long-time letter-to-the-editor writer. I've written dozens over the years, and have had a good "publication" record. I regularly hear from people that they like to read my letters, or mention when I've had a slow period. I've even gotten both fan and hate mail! (You know, the stuff with stamps, delivered to you in your mailbox.)

I'm in a good environment because, unlike most mid-sized-city and large dailies, ours has a incredible opinion section, including a wide variety of columnists and local "experts," and letters from readers. Today there were a dozen letters, which is pretty typical more or less.

Being a frequent contributor to the latter I, too, have noticed the lack of civility that permeates the letters of a lot of writers. This wasn't the case in years past where an unwritten code seemed to exist even when writers disagreed.

By way of example, one of those unwritten codes involved the use of writers' names. If it was a columnist, he or she was fair game. You could say Why don't you drop Ann Coulter? She's a nutcase..." or George Will is such a supercilious snob that he makes me ill... or I can't believe you print the liberal trash written by Molly Ivins. But a letterwriter never, never trashed another letterwriter by name. The unwritten code said you could refer to another writer with phrases like In answer to the writer who supports George Bush's surge... Today it's not uncommon to see letters like Why doesn't Mary Jones stop spewing her left-wing vomit and understand that to not support the surge is to support cut and run policies of liberal cowards.

Nowadays, however, lots of writers have abandoned this code in favor of name-calling by name to the point that some writers have dropped out of the public discourse. (And, yes, some did tend to be thin skinned.)

As to the Internet, I’m shocked at the depth bloggers go to insult others who don’t agree with them. Not to mention the language, of course. When is this taking First Amendment rights too far? And while I’m talking about language, I wonder if some of them realize there's a spelling/grammar checker on their keyboards. If they don't, they need to find it. And if they do, they need to use it!

But most importantly, I believe, is the problem of writers going off on unrelated or peripheral issues. It happens, too, in the letters-to-the-editor venue. For instance, starting in early December, spurred on by the inevitable "reason for the season" letter, the letters moved into ugly attacks on atheists and agnostics, then to asking others to pray for their redemption (and the A and As responding with a "no thank you" en masse) to attacks on the editorial staff for allowing the argument to continue unfettered. Several writers left licking their wounds vowing never to enter into any discussion again!

But back to letters from Salon readers. The fact is that the rest of us don't care if you want to contradict each other, or call each other names. Do it somewhere else. Most of us, I think, want to see what readers think of the issue or the content of the article. To offer differing viewpoints, and to correct errors (like there definitely WERE more than 100,000 people at Saturday's peace march!).

In short, thanks for writing this much-needed reminder about public discourse and how journalists (and other writers) feel about what their readers think.

...but why doesn't Congress not only cut off all future funding of troops in Iraq (and in Kuwait...waiting) and freeze all already-appropriated funding. Yep. Cut it all off---now! Except for money to transport the troops back to safety in Europe or the U.S.

No more screwing around. No more concern about how "they'll accuse us of not supporting the troops."

Support them by forcing them back home because there will be no money to feed or house them, or pay for their armaments. Only provide the carefully-controlled funds to allow for transportation to get them out of there.

Frankly, I think this would be would be no less harsh than Bush/Cheney sending them with little or no equipment and protection. To the eventual death of many of them.

I want them to quit playing games and DO IT!

...BARACK! AND HERE'S ONE MORE VOICE FOR EVERYONE FREEZING OUT FOX NEWS.