I am such an awful meanie!
At least that's what a few letter-writers seem to think. Well, more that I'm hideously biased and worship the devil.
I've said before that I have my personal leanings (which aren't solely in one direction), but those have nothing to do with how I do my job. If I printed only the opinions I agreed with, there would be very little on the page. I'm far more concerned with truth, which is why Stephanie and I check statements of fact.
As for me worshiping the devil, I dismantled my shrine years ago. All those candles? Bad idea when you have a crazy cat whose tail could easily act as a fuse. Besides, if I were to build a shrine of some sort, it would more likely be to one of the women called the Goddess of Truth such as Ma'at, Athena, Aletheia, or Veritas.
I'm kind of attached to that truth thing.
Complaints of bias usually happens when a letter has been rejected, and no explanation other than "That Brenda Looper is one biased witch" satisfies the letter-writer. But let's take a look at a few reasons a letter might be rejected.
• You've called another reader stupid, idiotic, imbecilic, moronic, etc.; or insulted said reader's mama, intelligence, wardrobe, choice of music, et al. Didn't your mama teach you better than that? Play nice or I'll sic my mama on you.
• You've convicted someone in print. Calling someone who has not been convicted a criminal doesn't fly; lawsuits certainly could.
• You've said something that's not true. A lot of the tales out there, especially about politicians, are often out of context, altered, or completely made up ... sometimes highly entertaining, but still false. The fact that so many Onion stories have been taken as truth shows just how talented its writers are at satire. Unfortunately, it's also spawned a lot of imitators who aren't so good and don't make it clear that the stories they peddle are false. Add to that people who question nothing that confirms their worldview, and you have a volatile situation.
If just because I get cranky about that stuff.
• You've used language inappropriate for a family newspaper, including things such as bodily functions that won't pass the breakfast test. A past letter we received about Bobby Petrino had such an "inventive" excuse for profanity that I stuck it on my bulletin board: "Sorry 'bout the f-bomb. It just came out that way."
I might have believed it had the letter not been printed from a computer and mailed. That indicates a bit of thought going into it ... but not enough to delete the word in question.
There are other reasons a letter might be rejected, some of which are related to timing, but a bias against conservatives isn't one of them, despite what a certain letter-writer believes, as his recent critical letters over the past month about Hillary Clinton haven't been printed. Suffice it to say that at least two of the above conditions were present in the letters.
That doesn't mean I don't print letters critical of Hillary and other liberals; if it did, he might have a case. So, yep, I decided to count positive and negative letters about her, using the search terms "Hillary Clinton," "letters," and "editorial" (the section they're listed under in the archives).
What can I say? I'm a research nut.
Just for laughs, I decided to search the past two months, and it turned out I needed to go back that far just to find positive letters about our Hillary; two on the same day, June 15, one written by a Republican. The vast majority of the 14 letters about Hillary were negative--10 letters (including some by Democrats) in which she was all but called the devil ... though I might have missed that. The other two letters were neither positive nor negative.
This isn't the first time I've been prompted to do a letter count because of an accusation of bias. The last one (coincidentally, requested by the same reader) was of Democratic and Republican letters in the two months leading up to the midterm elections, and even I was surprised by the near-even counts.
So why do some people still insist that there's a wild imbalance? For some, even one positive thing about someone they hate is too much, especially if that hatred is a bit obsessive.
It's true that Hillary is probably the least likable of the Clintons, but that doesn't explain the absolute blind hatred some people have for her and anyone else named Clinton (or Obama ... or Trump ... OK, that one I get). Many of her "scandals" thus seem overblown. However, she still has a lot to explain ... and she's not exactly big on that.
I could always be wrong, though, and there could be good reasons for the Hating-Hillary obsession other than her bunker mentality and not-warm personality ... perhaps she likes kicking flag-waving puppies ...
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Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com.
Editorial on 08/05/2015