Letter To The Editor

As my boss and were discussing the finer points of my soon to be released Manufacturing Procedure covering the Turned Parts Department documentation he asked if I was excited about finally being published. To which I replied I was published all over the internet, but if that didn’t count, I just happen to have a copy of a letter to editor published in the local paper here in this file folder. Way back before blogging I needed different ways to get my words out and in 1993 most of them were used up doing the Aiken Bicycle Club newsletter, but occasionally some of them leaked out of different holes.

Editor,

After reading the recent article about how The Chronicle was not going to be running the current story line of the comic strip “For Better or Worse,” I was angered. I wanted to scream, “Homophobia!” I was going to write to tell you that if any comic strip could be trusted to handle a sensitive issue like homosexuality correctly it would be this one. I wanted to tell you to at least run it temporarily on the editorial pages like some papers do for “Doonesbury.”

But while reading the comics page I saw something that worried me even more than high school teen-agers struggling with their sexual orientation.

Charlie Brown hit a home run to win a baseball game. That lovable loser is no more. Charles Schultz must have fallen prey to pressure from special-interest groups and child psychologists. I can only wonder at what kind of force was applied to Mr. Schultz to get him to turn Charlie Brown into a hero in the ninth inning instead of his usual goat.

What’s next? No more kite tangled in trees? Will the little red-haired girl send him a valentine next year? I hope not. Charlie Brown, the failure, teaches kids a valuable lesson also: that not everyone is a champion. For every winner, there is a loser who played the game to the best of his ability, too.

Brian Bogardus

Here is a copy of the Peanuts strip to which I referred:

And here is one from the For Better or Worse series: