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Come out and show your face
One of the legacies of political advertising AND newspaper commentary has been a requirement to identify yourself. If you wanted to produce a political handbill attacking a particular opponent, you were required to say who you were somewhere on that handbill. If you wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper for publication, you had to identify yourself. In fact, I went through that process myself several years back when I was living in Arkansas. I submitted a letter to the Arkansas Gazette, one of two state-wide newspapers at the time covering Arkansas. The stated requirements on the editorial page for letters to the editor included your name, address, and telephone number. A couple of days after I mailed my letter I received a call from the newspaper confirming my name, address, and phone number and that it was me, in fact, who had written the letter. All letters received by the paper that didn't include contact information were immediately discarded.
The Internet has changed all of that and I believe we're worse off for it. Blogs and comments posted on web sites include only a person's email "name" which usually bears no resemblance to the actual person at all, allowing people to write the most scurrilous things imaginable without having to stand up and take credit for it. This newspaper used to have a "sound off" section where people could make calls anonymously and say whatever they wanted to say without being identified. Rightfully so, that particular section was ultimately cancelled. Curiously however, you must sign your name to any letter submitted to the paper for print publication but on the paper's Web page, people are allowed to comment without identifying themselves. Consequently, there are far more comments on the newspaper's web page than in the printed edition.
Those of us who write columns, whether it be for the McCook Gazette, the New York Times or Newsweek magazine, are required to identify ourselves. So when I write a column everyone knows who wrote it. But when it comes to commenting on that column on the Web page, the rules change. You know who I am but I don't know who you are. Consequently you can take shots at me or what I write that you might not take if you were required to identify yourself the way I am and the rest of the column writers are.
It doesn't take much of a person to attack someone's thoughts, attitudes or perceptions anonymously. That's the kind of thing we used to do in junior high school. I mentioned once that I don't respond to and usually don't even read the comments made about me and my column on the Web page just because of that. I'm not going to have a conversation or a debate with a ghost and that's exactly what you are when you refuse to identify yourself.
Dick Trail and I are on opposite ends of the political spectrum but the same logic applies to his columns as well. Unsigned criticisms are cheap shots no matter who they're addressed to and should not be allowed.
A few years ago, this newspaper published a critical letter of me and my column from a person identifying herself as Wanda Wantsall from a small town in northwest Kansas. I happen to know a person who lives in that small town and he told me that no one by that name lives there.
It's an unfair double standard for you to know who the column writer is but the column writer doesn't know who you are. So whenever you choose to criticize a particular column without identifying yourself, it's easy and even required by us to pay you no mind.