Betty Schaffer: Letter writer adds to verbal ‘meltdown’

Published: 06-25-2017 9:54 PM

Letter writer adds to verbal ‘meltdown’

There is a saying that if you point a finger at someone there are three fingers pointing back at yourself.

If you read the letter writer’s comments (“Screeching meltdowns on opinion page,” June 21) about what he termed the “screeching and howling” by the authors of columns in the Gazette, you can then ask “What is he screeching and howling about?”

It seems that he doesn’t like the language used to criticize the current state of affairs and questions the intelligence of professors, authors, mayors, lawyers, and reverends with quite a fluent flow of words himself which included accusing someone with “a toxic head full of ‘the sky is falling notions’ ” of attempting “a “mass assassination of conservative/libertarians.”

I can agree with the writer that the verbal “meltdown” is real. He has added to it.

Since he admits to reading the Gazette opinion page, I will quote his own words back to him. He says, “A responsible intellectual does not distort the opponent’s position beyond recognition and then attack the distortion in snark-filled prose.”

Betty Schaffer

Easthampton

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