Randy Cassingham's Blog

I ran a letter from Mark in Australia in last week's issue as "the last word on the racism debate". Mark said "It often astounds me that people with such poor comprehension of written English" completely miss the point of some of my articles. I responded "Even if you consider that True readers are far above average in intelligence, as I do, it's very clear that I have astoundingly good job security!"

"Rev. Prophiet" in Kentucky writes, "I have to compliment you on your ability to keep your superiority complex well hidden. I always consider it a stroke of genius when you find someone else (like Mark from Aus.) to insult your readers for you so that you can maintain your illusion of moral superiority. [Also,] I have noticed that you chose not to reply to my last email."

It does always astonish me when someone gets insulted when I express my opinion that the vast majority of my readers are "far above average in intelligence", but clearly there are always exceptions -- which was Mark's point in the first place. And while I wish I were able to give a thoughtful, detailed reply to everyone who writes to me, that is certainly impossible; I get hundreds of e-mails every day (not even counting the 200 or so daily notifications I get that indicate the health of various functions on my servers and such, not counting the hundreds of spams that my filters catch, and, alas, not counting the huge number the filters don't catch). I do at least glance at all the mail, and hope I get the meat out of most of them. Considering, as I mentioned recently, that True is pretty much a one-man show, it's rather amazing that I can still do that.

As for my "moral superiority" complex, I'm not the one calling myself a prophet or demanding replies to whiny e-mail, now, am I? It's my belief that there's far more power in stating an opinion and letting others judge its worth than expecting people to follow me because of a made-up name or honorific. That I have well over 121,000 readers in 200 countries that stick with me, reading what I have to say week after week with the strong admonition to think for themselves about what I report on -- and that a significant and growing fraction of them pay their hard-earned money to get more of my writing by upgrading to Premium status -- says a lot about that approach. I would certainly rather stand up and proudly state my name and opinion and let others ponder it than take potshots at others using a pompous pen name hidden behind a Yahoo Mail account.

Now, is that the sort of reply you were looking for, "Rev."?

No surprise: the "Rev." didn't write back.