to the editor

Editorial page editor, Tim White, says he's tired letters larded with sleaze, slime & misinformation:

Some local letter writers are embracing the techniques of sleaze, slime and misinformation that they're seeing on the national stage, joining the army of the scurrilous. It's disheartening.

I've spent seven years as an editorial page editor and 10 years before that, when I was a managing editor, working closely with another opinion editor. And never, in the best part of two decades, have I had to reject, throw away or send back for rewrite so many letters filled with so many frauds and character assassinations.

Some writers are going to highly partisan Web sites filled with deliberately deceptive claims, copying what they find and submitting it as letters. Stuff like the anti-Kerry venom spread by the "Swift Boat Veterans," a group heavily funded by a Houston developer who has donated millions to the Republican Party. Stuff like the ads from MoveOn, the PAC funded by big-bucks Hollywood liberals, that continually distort what the Bush administration has done, especially in the Iraq war.

I have as much respect for the attacks of the Swift Boat Veterans as I have for the barrages of Whoopi Goldberg and Michael Moore. None. I am disgusted by the relentless war being waged by both the left and the right against civility and responsible debate. Are we watching as a respectable democracy degenerates into a Roman circus, where bloodshed is prized and intellect demeaned?

That's a local worry. Some of our readers are taking the low road to the mud pits, submitting slurs and misinformation as their truth. It is anything but truth. Whether from left or right, it is propaganda, Big Lies that, if repeated often enough, become an accepted version of reality.

Do yourself and your fellow readers a favor: If you want to write a letter about the presidential race, check your facts with a neutral source. Look at the candidates' actual statements, their actual voting records, their real performance. George W. Bush and John Kerry have real records, readily available, and it takes no great intellect to construct legitimate arguments for or against either one of them.

We'll be getting piles of political letters between now and Nov. 2. We won't have enough space to print all of them. The first ones to bite the dust will be the ones built on deliberate falsehoods. If there's a minor factual problem, we'll send the letter back and ask that you rewrite it. But the scurrilous diatribes will go to the wastebasket.

Let's have a good debate here. Share your own opinions, but base them on verifiable facts.