Letters To The Editor

More fun from the archives! I used to write a lot of letters to the editor when I lived in Athens. Sometimes it would be a serious response to something I'd read in the paper that I felt needed to be rebutted, sometimes it was just me blowing off steam. Once I wrote one in response to an article about the property seizures that were taking place during the height of the War on Drugs, where the police had the authority to seize your shit if they suspected it of being used for drugs, and it was virtually impossible to get your shit back even if you were found innocent. I got a bunch of phone calls on that--not from other hippies, but from farmers that lived in the area who had had their shit taken by the police! One guy talked to Bobbie for a long time about how the cops had seized his truck because they thought he was hauling bails of pot on it, and when he proved that it was hay, he still couldn't get his truck back!

Anyway, let me give you some context for this one. In the 90's, the city of Athens was building a new civic center, and they decided to put a statue of Athena in front of the center. You know, because the city is called Athens and the statue would link the city to its classical roots and all that jive. This being the bible belt, you get a lot of people upset about this. For example (you might have to click on the images to get them big enough to read):

There was actually this old, conservative racist guy who wrote a column for the paper, and his column on the subject was so much worse than that letter. I wish I'd saved it. I think he predicted that Athens would be swallowed up by an earthquake or something. And just to be logical for a second, the point she raises about what the reaction would be if the city put a statue of Jesus outside the civic center is pretty stupid, since nobody actually worships Athena anymore (or so I thought...). Anyway, here's my response:

I think that last paragraph was laying it on a little too thick, but you can't really go back and edit something like that, can you? After this, I spent the next week reading the letters every morning, because I was sure that some crazy Southern Baptist would write in with a hilarious, fuming response. Instead, I get this:

"I truly hope that you do not consider a comics company, especially Marvel, to be a sound place to look for religious validation." Like, "OK, DC I could understand, but Marvel...?"