IDIOT LETTER OF THE WEEK


the people write. we laugh.

This week's entry, from Tuesday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, comes from the happy little world of Joe Orosz in Murrysville:

I have been following the story about Rick Santorum and Penn Hills School District. It is about a family man, a man who travels extensively to do his job. He is exceptional at his job, by the way. This family man sacrifices greatly by being away from his family for large portions of his time. He and his wife decided to do something about that and in the process saved their school district and the state of Pennsylvania more than $80,000 by home schooling, so he could spend more time with his wife and children.

When the paperwork to home school got higher and higher, he took advantage of the Pennsylvania charter school system by applying and getting approval from his school district to enroll five of his children in a cyber school. Just to be a good family man.

And how was he treated by your paper. He was trashed and accused of doing something unethical or immoral. How about including all the facts, instead of presenting half-truth trash stories? I encourage everyone to go to Sen. Rick Santorum's Web site and read the facts.

I, too, would encourage you to visit Senator Santorum's site to read the facts. If there were any. Or the simple explanation. If there were any.

But Mr. Orosz, whose sky must always glow some rabid shade of Republican Red (as opposed to, say, Democratic Blue or, my personal favorite, Logical Lime) has already pretty much covered it. And happily accepted it. Senator Santorum, crusader for the Pennsylvania tax payer, is allowed to siphon over $100,000 of Penn Hills taxpayer money to educate his children, who actually live in Virginia, because he's a good family man who wants to spend more time with his kids and doesn't want to be bothered with home-schooling paperwork.

I was convinced, even as someone who's proudly never voted for the guy, that Santorum could do better. That he would have something, anything, no matter how tortured or convoluted, to at least make a run at an explanation. I was wrong. Santorum's arrogance and sanctimony I've always understood. His popularity in his party I've always understood. His popularity in this state I have not. And probably never will.

It's tempting, of course, to make a broad, sweeping statement about the sorry state of the Republican electorate. But then I'd be making the same mistake that many of my colleagues on the left made in the wake of the presidential election. Certainly, as Joe Orosz's ignorance and gullibility -- I was going to say stupidity, but I wanted, on this holiday weekend, to be charitable -- clearly demonstrate, a whole lot of conservative supporters have a real and ugly aversion to careful, critical thinking. But they hardly hold the corner on that dubious market.

Because a whole lot of liberal supporters don't exactly set the world ablaze with their intellect either. Though my colleagues on the left are loathe to admit it, there are hordes of stone-stupid people who blindly and uncritically touched a screen or punched a tab or pulled a lever for John Kerry. And he needed them just as much as George Bush needed his own mentally challenged minions.

Let's face it: there are just as many Joe Oroszes in East Liberty as there are in Murrysville. Just as many in Massachusetts as in Texas. Just as many in the cities as in the suburbs. And, yeah, that's pretty depressing.

But at least there's a bright side: as long as they keep writing letters, we'll always have something to entertain us on Saturdays.

Posted: Sat - November 27, 2004 at 12:00 PM          

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