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Letters
Ill-conceived
argument
To the Editor:
I know you don’t get many letters, and you have a responsibility to give expression to all sides of an issue. But I would rather see white space on the editorial page than to see such ill-conceived writing as the letter, (Feb. 28) from Nol Putnam.
Mr. Putnam says he “wonders to himself’ about the flags and ribbons, but what does he wonder, I wonder. He never says! Presumably, he feels that support for our troops, which by implication he shares, should not be openly expressed. His meaning is difficult to fathom, the chore made more difficult by such errors as the lack of a question mark for the rhetorical question at the end of the paragraph.
The first “sentence” of his second paragraph is not a sentence at all, lacking as it does any verb to give it meaning.
Mr. Putnam wonders if there was any debate outside the administration. This man must live in a cave! Doesn’t he remember the debate in Congress, on TV, and in the newspapers?
What does anethesia have to do with military terminology? Why and in what way are cowboys inadequate? Finally, how can he support our troops if they are breaking a commandment that, by his quotation, Mr. Putnam implies is valid and absolute?
I do not mean to imply that the uneducated have no right to express their views, but surely an editor edits! I think there is no Nol Putnam. I think you created this letter, tongue-in-check, as an example of fuzzy thinking and bad grammar.
BILL FITZSIMONS
Flint Hill
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