(This is another Not A Candidate Diary)
So, yesterday my lo-cal newspaper ran Jonah Goldberg's recent column in which he celebrated the use of torture in the war on terror.
As I am wont to do, I decided to write a letter in response. Our lo-cal paper is still family-owned, which is great. That the family makes Goldberg look liberal is, in my opinion, not. Their regular op-ed columnists are Goldberg, falafel-man, Michael Reagan, and a few other wingnuts. I once wrote to them pleading that if they were going to run that kind of stuff, at least carry George Will. So much for the liberal media. Anyway . . .
Nevertheless, I was unprepared for what followed my letter. About an hour after I had sent the letter, I received a call from the guy who edits the opinion section [he's also the son of the owner of the paper]. He spent 10 minutes on the phone haranguing me about being a leftist, about spewing "Nancy Pelosi talking points," and about making assertions without evidence.
Eh? More below the fold.
First, some background. I am not a media-unsavy person here in this smallish (50k people in town, about 100k surrounding) town. I write book reviews for this same paper that appear about every other week; I was briefly the restaurant reviewer; I have reviewed video games for them. I've done one or two guest opinion pieces for them. I have been on the local television midday show doing cooking segments a few times. I've sometimes appear on the local PBS version of MacNeil-Lehrer--I'll be on next week to talk about the history of superdelegates and the Cuba situation. I've met the editor in question to lobby for a couple of editorials in favor of projects. The general editor of the paper is a good friend--our wives hang out; our kids play together all the time. It's a small town.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote a letter to the editor that they did not at first publish. This was strange, because they don't get many letters and so usually publish everything they receive. Many of the letters they do publish are barely coherent rants against them damn libruls. So, I sent mine again. The paper published it. The letter was long on rhetoric, short on absolute facts, and read like this:
The other day I began to notice a pattern to the news. "Single family home sales worst in 25 years." "Income gap between rich and poor worst since 1920s." "Local economy worst since 1991." "Job growth lowest in 18 years." "Stocks have worst quarter since 1987." "Oil prices highest since 1990." "Food prices increase at highest rate since 1990." "Wholesale prices highest gain since 1973." "Military re-enlistment at lowest rate since late 1960s." And on and on.
Notice the pattern? Many economic, social, and military indicators are at their worst levels since some other Republican was president. Do we really want those people in charge any more?
Employment growth by presidential administration , shows that four of the top five periods of growth saw a Democratic president, while five of the bottom five periods of growth came during a Republican presidency. Through 2007, median family income has barely caught back up to where it was during the Clinton administration. Middle class families struggle to make ends meet, and more people at higher incomes have to resort to food banks for their meals. All a legacy of Republican rule. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress block virtually every effort by Democrats to pass legislation for fix Bush’s messes.
Why is it that the man who ignored intelligence services’ warnings, was Commander-in-Chief during the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, and either ignored or lied about Saddam’s WMDs is somehow seen as a good protector of America? Why is it that the president who got us into an unjust war in Iraq, distracted us from the real terrorists, and created an incubator for more terrorism thereby making the world much less is seen as a good caretaker of America?
Come November, we can change this.
In fact, that letter was a concatenation of a diary I did here on Kos.
Then came Goldberg's column. I'm not going to quote it here, because I find it offensive. But basically it was a justification of torture. I decided to write another letter.
It read like this:
It would take more 300 words to debunk the lies in Jonah Goldberg’s torture-justification column. The FBI asserts that no valuable information come from anyone we tortured; many within the CIA concur. Others note that the information was already known through other sources The Bush administration cannot point to a single plot thwarted through torture. Goldberg doesn’t try.
Reports from the FBI state that one of the men, Abu Zubaydah, was mentally ill and willing to say anything to his torturers. That’s where this Republican administration has taken us. Torturing the mentally ill. From him they received the nickname of one of bin Laden’s drivers. Other CIA agents and the U.S. military correctly note that torture almost never yields coherent information.
That the torture lasted "less than five minutes" doesn’t excuse it. In fact, rationalizing it in this fashion shows that we understand it to be a tool of evil. If we can justify torture, what’s the difference between five minutes or five hours? The defense given to the House of Representatives by Bush’s torture apologist Steven Bradbury that something isn’t torture if it "doesn’t cause severe pain" and "doesn’t last long" is morally repulsive and un-American.
It’s sickening that this administration has brought the moral standards of our country to the point that we even entertain debate about whether torture is acceptable. We used to prosecute people for waterboarding. Now we have a pro-torture lobby.
The Bush administration clearly answers the question of whether or not America is a Christian nation. When people ask "What Would Jesus Do?" the answer isn’t "waterboard." The idea of a City upon a Hill has been destroyed.
John McCain? He promises four more years of the same, and 100 more years in Iraq. Wow.
Can we change things? Yes we can.
The style of the letter was somewhat deliberate. The paper's audience is mostly conservative Christians. It is more effective to attack the Republican machine than to smear all Republicans. It's important to create rhetorical divisions by not setting things up as Democrats versus Republicans, but to instead set it up as Republicans versus morality, versus common sense, etc.
Anyway, the phone call was something of a surprise. He left a message; I returned his call. "Hi [x]!" I said, using his first name. He proceeded to rip into me, saying that they couldn't print my letter because it contained false information. I didn't have the letter in front of me but racked my brains to try to figure out what I had said. He then lit into me about leftist talking points, Nancy Pelosi, me lying in my letter, that I'm disparaging a respected columnist like Goldberg, etc. He said it was fine if I wanted to attack Bush because he's a public figure, but Goldberg yadda yadda yadda. He noted that Goldberg had cited actual CIA agents in his column.
My first response was that there is a 300 word limit to letters and that I couldn't cite all my sources in a single letter. He argued that Goldberg had said that the torture thwarted dozens of attacks. I countered that the administration has not cited a single specific instance of an attack stopped through torture. Back and forth we went. By the end of it he had started yelling and, to be honest, I was yelling back. He finished with "well, that's your opinion" and hanging up on me while I said "Yes, it is" and didn't get to finish with "that's why it's an opinion page."
I also noted in a later e-mail that accuracy didn't seem to be an overarching standard for letter writers. I also offered to write a full op-ed column--which I've done before--in which I'd have more room to debunk Goldberg's lies. Or, I'd re-write my letter.
FURRFU!
I spent a couple of hours mellowing out [homebrew helped].
OK, Kossaks, where to go from here? Re-write the letter? Let it slide? What say you? I understand that the guy's an idiot. But despite the great number of conservatives in this town, there is a vast "middle" that can be pushed in many directions.
Is this worth fighting?
UPDATE:
This e-mail this morning from the guy:
"Andrew, I can take criticism, that's part of my job. I don't have a problem with your view, just your accuracy on this subject. Which letter do you intend to run? "