I've had this one sitting around in my "Documents" folder for a really long time, but for some reason, I never posted it. No time like the present.
If you look at the "letters to the editor" section of any newspaper, you'll notice that most of the incredibly asinine and ignorant letters are from liberals. On the rare occasion that there is a letter from a conservative, it often seems pretty intelligent, but is surrounded by leftist drivel that drowns it out. This got me thinking...
Why does it seem like there are so many liberal idiots on the opinion pages, and so few conservative ones? I've got several theories that could explain it, and I'm wondering what everyone else thinks. First, my theories (I haven't yet decided which of these makes the most sense):
- There are about equal numbers of liberal and conservative letters, but the media selects mostly liberal ones to create the illusion that Bush is the most unpopular president ever.
- There actually are more liberal letters, and most of them really are as dumb as the ones that get printed, so the papers can either publish the idiotic liberal letters or the intelligent conservative ones.
- There are many intelligent liberal letters along with the dumb ones, but media elitism forces the papers to select only the dumbest and least rational. This way, it looks like the Unwashed Masses™ are rebelling against the Bush Regime™, while the editors and columnists maintain their monopoly on what they consider to be rational and intelligent criticism.
- The editors are so blinded by ideology that they consider something like "This administration is bigoted, murderous, criminal, and profoundly un-American" to be intelligent and rational criticism, so in their minds, the letters they print are the best of the bunch.
- There are lots of idiotic conservative letters, but the editors are so afraid of views other than their own that they don't even feel comfortable publishing the most pathetic criticism of their philosophy.
- There are both idiotic and intelligent conservative letters, but when the editors see that a letter doesn't agree with their biases, they dismiss the writer as a dittohead regardless of the letter's contents.
I'd like to hear other theories and thoughts.
Posted by CD on July 8, 2004 06:00 PMI think a fair number of the editors probably are liberal. At least that is the impression I get in my neck of the woods. So they tend only to publish what they agree with. Of course I'll say that over several years, I'm beginning to sense a change in that imbalance.
Also, I've always questioned that maybe the conservatives just didn't have the time or desire to fire a letter off to a liberal leaning paper. To busy trying to actually do something constructive with their lives. You know what I mean?
Posted by: Hal at July 8, 2004 10:42 PMI like the statement above, that conservatives are trying to do something constructive and don't have the desire to rant to the local paper.
Posted by: Katherine at July 9, 2004 02:39 PMI was thinking about the "conservatives don't have the time to write letters" theory as well, but then I remembered that I'm a conservative, and I spend half my day in front of a computer ranting about left-wing idiots, so who knows?
Posted by: CD at July 9, 2004 07:56 PMI'll go with the "conservatives are too busy living to waste time bitching" theory. The period in my life when I had time to write conservative rants to newspapers was in college.
Posted by: Harvey at July 15, 2004 04:58 PMIts not that most of the Editors of newspapers are liberal or even conservative for that matter. It has to do with what the editors of that particular newspaper feel they can add to, prove a point to, or defend against certain letters. Many times you'll find that they do not necesarily agree with the liberal letters and many times not agree with the conservative letters as well. It all has to do with public opinion and whether or not what the editors say will make people want to unsubscribe if they say the wrong thing.
Posted by: Tim Hawley at September 7, 2004 03:56 PM