Last week after a copy-editor gave a satire I wrote a headline that contained a misspelled word, I learned there is more than one way to answer this question.
You're an idiot, many State Press readers wrote. You are a disgrace to the newspaper and to your school, others said. My favorite email was from the gentleman who lamented how ASU is no longer is a "teacher's college." He ended by saying to me, "Good luck finding a job in the real world."
All this because a headline I didn't write misspelled a simple word.
What struck me most about the emails other than their brittle nastiness was the irony of them all. Forget the volatile subject matter of the column — it took something as banal as a spelling flub to incite debate.
Of course, my guess is that the scores of readers who flooded my email inbox with "learn how to spell" emails were irked for a much more profound reason than they were willing to admit. Most probably didn't agree with my critique on Bush but instead of articulating their objections in this way, used "seperated" as a quick and easy entrance of attack to discredit and dismiss the satire's message. Of course, we all see the problem with this. We're allowing for the trade-off of thoughtful, mature discussion over a difficult issue for petty squabbling about spelling.
Over in Washington, our politicians make similar trade-offs, and we have to look no further than the Iraq War debate to see petty argumentation on display. Last week, in anticipation of General Petraeus' status report on the troop escalation in Iraq, Moveon.org placed an advertisement in the New York Times that stated, "General Petraeus or General Betray Us? Cooking the books for the White House."
To many, this statement was out-and-out sacrilege. John McCain called it a "McCarthyite attack on an American patriot" and the White House spokesman Tony Snow, "a boorish, childish, unworthy attack."
Why were Republicans and some Democrats so ticked-off? Up until that ad, politicians and media, regardless of political leaning, had more or less handled Petraeus with kid gloves, and nary was his name mentioned without customary gushing about how good and true Petraeus was. And did we mention that he holds a PhD from Princeton?
Such sycophantic, uncritical attention on a public figure as important as a war-general is not healthy. Although Petraeus may well be nonpartisan and an all-and-out good guy, he is a soldier, first and foremost, and his allegiance lies with the war in which he believes and the Commander-in-Chief for whom he fights.
But Washington didn't want to talk about this. Petraeus is its Arthurian knight who will win the war and to hell with anybody who says otherwise. More unfortunately still, Moveon.org wasn't capable of voicing their objections to Petraeus in a thoughtful, mature manner.
Moveon.org turned to Republicans and called them all idiots. Republicans turned to Moveon.org and called it the same. And lost in the middle is a valid debate about whether or not the administration has pulled the wool over our eyes again.
So if we can agree that it usually isn't helpful to political discourse if we call each other idiots, I have just one more question.: What if you really are an idiot?
I crashed my bicycle into the backside of a car and flew head first into the rear window, making it about halfway through the glass before my body stopped.
Dangling in the shattered window, I pondered what one usually ponders after experiencing a sudden brush with death.
The meaning of life. The realization I no longer had front teeth.
Then another thought occurred to me, much more troubling than the ones before: What would the people who had called me an idiot for allegedly misspelling a word think of me now? The car I ran into was parked.
Reach the reporter at: reservis@asu.edu.
