William Marvel: Targeting Conway

About a year ago, after a long period of noticing what seemed like an ideological trend in letters to the editor in this newspaper, I resorted to the library’s files of the Sun and surveyed the editorial pages of the previous six months. The results more or less confirmed what I thought I had noticed — namely, that letters on political topics sent by people from outside the Sun’s distribution area leaned quite heavily toward the liberal side.

Focusing on letters advocating public-policy positions, I ignored those supporting political candidates. I found 43 letters submitted by strangers from other counties and states. Almost exactly three-quarters of them took unmistakably liberal or radical viewpoints. Only six, amounting to less than 14 percent, could be considered conservative. Five others could best be described as moderate or neutral, and all five came from the same guy in Londonderry.