You're Not From Around Here, Are Ya??

I stopped reading the local newspaper for awhile. I had to. I'd get mad. I'd get disgusted. I'd get offended. Then I'd just shake my head and have to step away from the computer. It's just ugly.

My negative and sometimes violent reaction is not necessarily because of the reporters' poor writing skills (like I should talk), but rather the commenters who post responses to the articles or blogs.

What did I do this morning? I went to local newspaper's online site and read an op/ed by one of our state representatives (who also ran and lost a campaign for federal representative). He was weighing the qualifications of the two candidates and, of course, landed on the side of the Republican candidate.

As I could have predicted, I wound up just shaking my head in disbelief. Not because of the predictable outcome of the article, but the comments that followed. One comment in particular questioned the "real" conservatism of the Republican candidate:

"How can he [the candidate] be a conservative if he went to such namby-pamby liberal arts schools like Hendrix College, Oxford (England), and Tulane University? Can Arkansas trust someone who has spent that much time in Europe and New Orleans?"

Yes, that's an actual quote. Word for word. Letter for letter.

Perhaps our candidate should take a few courses at Bob King's Cowboy School to tone down that highfalutin foreign education.