Letters to the Editor

One of my favorite pastimes is making myself angry. I can accomplish this in many ways, but my rage-inducer of choice is reading letters to the editor. Morons across America take their time writing meaningless questions or sending their worthless opinions to newspapers and magazines. I am giving these people the benefit of the doubt in assuming they no longer actually physically send these letters through regular mail. If someone out there still does, WOW. You instantly move to the top of the "uneducated loners with lots of free time" pyramid. Congratulations, Walt Whitman. Now climb back onto your pony and leave us 21st century folk alone.

A typical letter to the sports page of the News and Observer here in Raleigh reads, "Dear editor, I am tired of your constant coverage of Wolfpack athletics. My team (ECU, Duke, UNC) played a great game over the weekend, yet you covered NC State's game on the front page. And they lost. Please stop your pro-State bias, and give the more worthy teams in the area more coverage", signed Edward McIdiot. Thanks for the letter, Mr. McIdiot. You do realize, however, that the News and Observer is a Raleigh newspaper, and NC State is in Raleigh, right? If you want to read about UNC, why not pick up the Chapel Hill News? There would be a catastrophic uprising if the Chapel Hill News actually covered State athletics, so why do you expect NC State's home city to ignore them to cover every school within a hundred miles? This type of letter drives me insane. Anyone who actually thinks Raleigh's paper should spend more time on Duke, Appy State, UNC, and ECU than on NC State should be imprisoned for life without parole. Each of these colleges is in a city with their own newspaper. READ THAT ONE, and leave me alone.

There was a recent letter which stated, "I have been a News and Observer subscriber for 35 years, and I have NEVER been more ashamed. The picture on the front of the sports page of Russell Wilson getting sacked, which led to his concussion, was low-brow. This is not an image I want my children to see, not to mention, the young QB himself. You should be embarrassed for publishing that, and I will now cancel my subscription". Great, sir-go ahead. I'm sure they really care about you. What was so offensive about that picture? You've watched football before, right? Would you have preferred a crisp action photo of you and your buddies playing shuffleboard at the nursing home?

The second type of letter to the editor which fills my rage meter can often be found in Parade magazine. Every week, Americans continue to astound me with their questions about washed up actors and actresses. "Dear Parade, my husband and I disagreed on what Sophia Lauren has been up to in the past 10 years. Please clear this up for us". Ummm, hey-have you heard of the internet? In the time it took you to write this letter, mail it, and have Parade publish it, you and your husband could have found your answer on wikipedia within seconds, then wrote and published a 600 page biography of Sophia Lauren. I hope you were still alive when Parade got around to publishing your answer. Every single one of the questions posed to Parade can be answered in 3 seconds via the internet, yet people still send these letters. Why?