PAMELA ROTH, San Clemente
The day a newspaper decides it must flag and not print “inflammatory” or “insensitive” letters to the editor is the day we need a new newspaper.
Newspapers used to be a bastion of free speech. Once you start to not publish letters because it could offend someone, you get into very scary territory. All fascist countries and regimes start out censoring distasteful speech. You aren’t the taste committee.
I was born a New York Jew, in a Long Island suburb, that was approximately 95% Jewish. We were taught about the Holocaust at a very young age. And your apology about publishing someone’s viewpoint about stickers and Nazism—with a vow to censor such opinions in the future—is much more frightening than a letter to the editor comparing stickers to Nazi identifying badges.
In fact, that person writing the letter might have been Jewish.
Do you have no journalistic standards? Your job isn’t to be “sensitive” to everyone’s emotions. Everyone is sensitive about something.
So, be a newspaper. Print our letters to the editor. It’s not your place to judge whether a letter writer’s stance is “justifiable.” We’re adults. Leave censorship to North Korea and the Taliban, please. Thank you.
