Side Note

Oh, and BTW - I had marked this Salon article earlier for blogging, just 'cause I was amazed at the comments. Upshot: it was an "expose" by a woman who had ghost written letters to the editor for the McCain campaign. If you look at the author's notes, she's worked for both Obama and McCain this election cycle. She describes how letters are drafted by the campaign and then sent around to areas of the country, where they're circulated to volunteers who fit the facts (in this case, a woman with a son in the war) and will put them in the paper with their name on them. Commenters were appalled. Note to the naive: well, duh.

Most, if not all, parties do this. It's a little sleazy, granted, but: 1) How many people do you know that really get off their ass and write letters to the editor? 2) How many of those people are actually that good at writing? Parties don't want incoherent rants, they don't want original thought, they want spin that meshes with the party line. So they farm it out. Actual, original, coherent letters are looked on as a bonus; and the incoherent ones that don't mesh are outnumbered.