December 02, 2007

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12/01/07 - Saturday Forum: A North Carolina Reader Demands Respect For The South From Presidential Candidates Romney And Thompson; etc.

A California Reader Shares Her Letter That The San Jose Mercury News Refused To Publish

From:  Kathlene Miller: (e-mail her)

Here is my unpublished letter to the vile San Jose Mercury News in response to a juvenile opinion column it ran insulting Republican presidential candidate and Congressman Tom Tancredo.

How can you tell when a newspaper's opinion page is going downhill? When it publishes columns by Joel Stein, the so-called Los Angeles Times columnist.

Stein is an entertainment/sitcom writer and wanna-be celebrity who fancies himself a humor writer. He is not a news journalist or expert on anything except celebrities. Stein’s opinions on important subjects have little substance and come across as smarmy, condescending, and shallow. Furthermore, his observations are not as humorous as he believes them to be.

I could barely get through his latest column mocking U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo on your November 27th opinion page. [Immigration Foe’s Fave Food? Mexican!” By Joel Stein, San Jose Mercury News, November 26, 2007]

Stein made no substantive points about immigration, just snarky remarks about dining and conversing with Tancredo. So what if Tancredo is anti-illegal-immigration but loves authentic Mexican food? Stein tried to make this shallow "revelation" convey a deeper point about immigration; however, he failed because he was unable to go beyond his glib generalizations to examine the facts. His article was truly dumb.

It's bad enough that the Mercury News editorials are always pro-open-borders, but you must be getting desperate if you publish Stein’s moronic "immigration" article or any other articles by him for that matter.

Please do your few remaining readers a favor and get more intellectual fare on your opinion page before everyone cancels his subscription.

Here, on the other hand is an example of a letter the Mercury News will publish, one by Guadalupe Friaz who writes about “undocumented workers,” the unfairness of “demonizing” them since they are only trying to “make a better future for their children.” [Can’t Have Cake And Eat It, Too, San Jose Mercury News, Letters, November 26,2007]

No wonder the Mercury News is losing readership. The newspaper recently had to lay off staff and cut their Sunday opinion section to just two pages. [e-mail Stephen E. Wright, Vice President and Editorial Page Editor here.]