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• Thursday, June 7, 2007 10:46 AM

  Another Perplexing Diatribe

  I'm a little perplexed at the idea of a "progressive" organ allowing a person, who is arguably as racist as Louis Farrakhan or Ernst Zundel, a platform upon which to spout "regressive" dogma.

  There are two points here that bear examination: First, and as usual, there is no verifiable scientific data to corroborate Ms. Dickerson's assertions. Her perspectives, clearly falling into the realm of a belief system as opposed to serious human study, define her articles as opinions, and not objective reports. That brings me to the second point which is: If we have standards that allow us to define the suitability of readers' polemics to the public discourse, why don't we have standards that would allow us to define the suitability of writers' contributions to the public discourse. If I, or any other reader, were to send a letter to the editor with the same kind of claptrap bled from the poison pen of Ms. Dickerson, the note would be edited beyond recognition, or ignored altogether. We would be regarded as anti-social radicals or self-serving fools. But she, consistently, is allowed to vent "mental adventures" cloaked in a veneer of hypothesized fact.

  I submit that if Salon is going to selectively ignore it's progressive responsibility to present material that is of social value then it should, in all fairness, hire a polemicist from an alternate social perspective to provide counterpoint to Ms. Dickerson's opinions. Ann Coulter would be a nice choice. You could have the two of them going at each other hammer-and-tongs, as an object lesson in what happens when you allow ego and supposition to override the common good and enlightenment. Or were you just happy to see a large number of letters being written in response to her perplexing diatribes?

  ejb

  —jebldmm Read jebldmm's other letters
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