Inalienable Writes

Concerned citizens from sea to shining sea flood City Paper with their election opinions. (Some of them even make sense.)

by Brian Hickey

Back in the good old days, America would be in the depths of ink and paper shortages by now. Lines would be snaking around stationery stores; people would be queuing on the sidewalks outside post offices across the land with urgent missives clutched in their ruddy fists. Schools and offices might even have to close -- or at least bust into their stash of trusty No. 2 Ticonderogas.

If what's been going on at City Paper lately mirrors a national trend, this presidential election has driven an unprecedented number of citizens to take advantage of their Constitution-given right to speak out on the race. Primarily, it's taken the form of inbox-filling e-mails from supporters of U.S. Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush. People, this isn't about a couple comments here and there. It's about hundreds upon hundreds of correspondences from Alaska to Center City. While it's been a steady flood since summer's end, each of the three presidential debates brought a veritable avalanche of opinions. (For the purposes of this story, however, we stayed away from debate analysis. Otherwise, the paper would have to be, oh, 600 pages long.)

Some writers make lucid cases in support of their candidate. Others bring to mind conspiracy theorists wearing tinfoil helmets to thwart those governmental mind-control laser beams. But who are we to judge, right? This is America, and everybody has a right to express their opinion, especially when we're sitting on the cusp of what's arguably the most important vote in generations.

As our letters-to-the-editor policy dictates that we only run correspondences in response to stories that appeared in the paper, these e-mails left us facing a conundrum: How do we share them with our readers, as each letter-writer clearly wanted us to do? We quickly realized that the letters themselves were the story, and that a cover package, complete with some CP attitude, was the answer. So here goes somethin'.

-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there