Mailbag Malaise

Mark Hyman recently ran a special two-part mailbag segment featuring responses to his ACLU/pretzel editorial in which he attacked the ACLU as being anti-Christian. If you’ll remember, this blog responded with a laundry list of dozens of cases in which the ACLU defended the rights of Christians to practice their religion.

Hyman devoted separate mailbag segments to the positive and negative responses he received. But as he is wont to do, his choice of negative comments was telling, including those involving scatological references, deleted expletives, and the suggestion the ACLU should argue for the removal of crosses from the graves of veterans.

I’m guessing that last one was actually a sarcastic remark from an anti-ACLU person that Hyman pretended was sincere. In any case, we have yet another example of Hyman using his mailbag segment (something trumpeted on the Newscentral.tv website as offering viewers a chance to participate in a dialog) to caricature those who deign to disagree with him. Even his positive viewer comments are empty and inane platitudes on Hyman's good sense, not coherent thoughts or opinions about the topic. And this is what you’re getting rather than a legitimate editorial segment in which local citizens talk about local issues.

I forwarded the list of ACLU cases included on this blog to Hyman, but somehow they didn’t get mentioned. To be fair, though, it would have taken a week’s worth of “Points” to read through that list.

And that’s The Counterpoint.