Recently I received a note in the mail sent care of The Smoky Mountain News that brought a laugh and made my day. In my 25 years of writing reviews for SMN, it ranks at the top of the acerbic list. Here’s the note, written in green ink on stationary with a manufactured header reading “From the desk of XXX.” I’ve removed my correspondent’s name for reasons that will become immediately clear. The asterisks are mine.  

Mr. Minick:

“rankle, combined wt your assinine headline, doesn’t touch the revolt: of a**hole, feel-Good writers who are so f**King stupid they do not have the intelligence to even begin to know up—from down wt regard to U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence; on top of your backward manly view of even coming close to comprehending a women’s view of the law and abortion. Try going to law school before you dribble out your s**t. Otherwise, best to…just shut up! disgusting and embarrasing you are.

XXX, J.D. 

XXX included no return address with this note, hence I shall respond here with what I hope are some helpful tips for all readers on composing a note of protest.

First, as a teacher with 20 years of teaching composition to middle-schoolers and high school students and a writer with 50 years’ experience self-editing anything intended for another’s eyes, I’ll start with the grammar and spelling. “Rankle” and “Disgusting” should be capitalized, asinine and embarrassing are misspelled, “women’s” would work more effectively as “woman’s,” and though I admire the length of that first sentence, a comma might be more effective than the semicolon after jurisprudence.

Second, when writing about a review, opinion column, or a news report, it’s best to reference the article by name. Here I must assume the writer is referring to “A Gentleman of the Old School—Sam Alito,” a review of Mollie Hemingway’s “Alito.”

Next up is word choice. The writer’s use of revolt is confusing. Perhaps XXX meant revulsion? Also, the use of manly here would work better as “male.” The obscenities in the piece confirm what my mother told me some 60 years ago, that people deploy them because of a weak vocabulary. Moreover, because of their frequent usage in today’s culture, these vulgarities have lost their power to shock.

And speaking of manly, the green ink hints that the writer is female. Perhaps, however, that suspicion may be attributed to my “manly” views.

XXX also recommends I go to law school, as she claims to have done. Unfortunately, the note’s rage, its preference for emotion over reason, and its poor organization undermine the value of a legal education. Moreover, XXX’s logic is sloppy, implying that no one without a degree in law should be commenting on law or the issue of abortion. I should add that an attorney I know well to whom I showed the note, a man has practiced law for approximately 15 years, said he’d never known a lawyer who added J.D. to his signature.  

Finally, and most importantly, this 86-word note vividly illustrates a chief cause for the divisions and broken politics of today’s culture. Snark, personal insults, and rage offend rather than convince — or in my case, sparked sad laughter rather than a willingness to listen. To enlighten others, we need tools of debate composed of reason, logic gilded by passion, rather like those arguments made daily in courtrooms around the United States.

Here I might suggest XXX read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” If she deems that American classic too antiquated and benign for our age of social media malice, an online search for “good books about influencing people” turns up other possibilities and might do the trick.

By no means am I always capable of following my own advice when discussing politics, but one trick I learned some 30 years ago was to ask questions. Os Guinness, a conservative and Christian author, was speaking at the University of North Carolina-Asheville. During the Q&A, a student asked how he might challenge some of his professor’s statements in class, opinions that went uncontested by students for fear of getting a bad grade. “Ask questions,” Guinness said, and I’m paraphrasing. “Ask sincere questions about your professor’s ideas. See if he can defend his positions.” 

This tactic, which I’ve used frequently, works well. In a society in which so many people seem to have all the answers to our nation’s problems, asking sincere questions is a great way to look for truth. We should do the same when we read news and opinions online or in the paper. If some story or piece of commentary strikes us as wrongheaded, we should become amateur journalists and ask the who, what, when, where, and why behind the reporting.

Here I’ll conclude with a personal remark to XXX, who may read this column. Your letter made me think, though not in the way you might have wished.

Thank you. 

(Jeff Minick reviews books and has written four of his own: two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust On Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning As I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” minick0301@gmail.com.)