Riffing On Girves: Thoughts on Choices, Advocacy And Balance

Below is another great letter written by Dave Girves (see Buster's Links) which the Dispatch will never publish.  Dave is commenting on a thoroughly moronic letter sent in by some nitwit named Palmer.  Palmer's opinions were laughably ignorant, and Dave's response was perfect.  Yet the imbecilic rant was printed and the intelligent reply was not.  It's not right, not fair.  (But, hey Dave, we live on in eternity out here in web-world!)  Anyhow, it got me thinkin'.

There's not a media outlet in the world -- radio, TV, newspaper, or internet -- that can literally share all the news, all the information.  Every hour of every day, they make choices about what gets space and time and coverage, and what does not. 

Palmer's letter was just plain stupid and full of pseudo-religious bigotry.  The Dispatch didn't have to print it, they chose to, and gave it a big top-of-the-page spot, complete with a "thumbs up-thumbs down" cartoon.  (The thumbs wore wedding rings.)

Earlier that same week, the Douchepatch ran a big front page article about a local shop that rents machine guns for "parties".  (If I'm ever invited to an Uzi party, I think I'll pass.)  Such a story is obviously not news, but it is a decision.  Coming as it did so soon after the frightful Sandy Hook rampage, the Dispatch editors took a raft of well-deserved shit for their inexplicably tasteless decision.

There was enough negative response that the editor Ben Marrison wrote a smarmy column yesterday to explain that the purpose of the gun party article was merely to "inform, not advocate."  Bullshit, Ben!  Your choice of what to inform us about (and what not to) becomes its own sort of advocacy.  That you don't literally advise us to rent a machine gun is beside the point.

The choices and the methods reveal the viewpoint, despite Marrison's protests.  It's like a Fox News piece on global warming.  Ninety-nine percent of the scientific community agrees that global warming is a fact, and has man-made causes.  But there is that crack-pot one percent of faux-scientists for hire that will argue the opposite.  Fox News will give them equal time and treat them with equal seriousness, and tell us it's fair and balanced.

It's not.

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Letters to the Editor

Columbus Dispatch,

Matt Palmer, (“Let’s protect traditional marriage to protect society”, January 5^th), worries that allowing “so-called same-sex marriage” will quickly lead to marriages of three or more people and marriages among family members. He neglected to mention the imminent danger of marriages between people and farm animals.

He notes that the “relationships (of same-sex couples) do not fulfill the definition of true marriage.” The term ‘true marriage’ reminded me of the term ‘legitimate rape.’

Marriage, he says, has traditionally been procreative. I have to ask what his view is of married couples who choose not to have children, or same-sex couples who adopt children that the rest of society refuses to care for.

And I would remind him that traditionally, 50 years ago, black people in the south rode in the back of the bus and 100 years before that slavery was traditionally considered normal. Today a black man is our President . . . and women have the right to vote. Little by little, our society is improving.

Mr. Palmer needs to either join the rest of us in the 21^st century, or cite one example of how that gay couple at the end of the street has hurt society.

Dave Girves