Speaking of Katherine Kersten...

the Strib's Reader's Representative wrote a column about the reaction of the Strib's readership to her hiring. It seems that she gets plenty of hate mail from those nice, tolerant, diversity-loving liberals who find a conservative metro columnist to be not included in their definitions of "diversity". Are the letters expressing disappointment at their own failure to respect diversity? Nope. They are demanding that Kersten be fired. How disillusioning... .


I wonder about the folks complaining about her, sometimes. Here's a letter from Sunday's Strib about Kersten's 11/04 column about the latest group of local anti-war protesters (no link available yet):

With her Nov. 4 column, "Students should take another look at antiwar rally", Katherine Kersten once again fails to recognize the role of educated citizens in a democracy.

She appears to be a proponent of totalitarian government - her way or no way. She defines patriotism as unthinking fealty. Perhaps her homework should be to read what life is like for all people under totalitarian regimes.

I am proud of our children who believe in causes and civilly act on them. Perhaps there is hope for a future flourishing democratic United States.

I can't really express how silly this letter is. First, here's a link to Kersten's column. See if you can find where she equates patriotism with support for totalitarianism. Hint: she doesn't unless one equates totalitarian with the Bush administration, which marks the letter's author as having Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS). Kersten was describing (and disapproving of ) the organization organizing the march. That is her right under the Constitution establishing this republic, after all. Nor was she saying the students didn't have the right to protest. She just was asking those who supported the march to examine the motives of the organizers. The letter writer obviously equates criticism with censorship or being unpatriotic or some other nonsense.

Of course there could be a simpler explanation. The letter writer simply didn't bother to actually read Kersten's column before bitching about it. Thus the Strib shouldn't have bothered to publish her letter, either.