Letters to the Editor

Re: Loose Cannon: No Laughing Matter, Direct Newsline, Oct. 29, 2007:

Read your story in DIRECT Newsline this morning. Initially, with interest. Then with growing curiosity. And finally, growing disappointment.

I will skip the “interest” part since it is so overshadowed with the other two sentiments.

I had a brief impulse to reach out to you to precipitate a meeting with you. I wanted to meet a reporter who might have never misspoken or written something ill advised. Put in proper context, with all else in your life that might cause you equal and not gratuitous anger, I lost the impulse.

I do wonder: do you know these people personally? You appear to have personal anger toward them. Appears to me that they are a righteous company who made a mistake. Ill-advised copy. And, by your reluctant admission, they also apologized for that mistake, more than once. For you to pick on specific words in their apology is truly gratuitous. IT DOES NOT SERVE YOU WELL, MR. LEVEY.

Since you took such personal offense, I wonder if you are offended or more importantly, affected by some other things around you, just this afternoon. If you are not, you are writing strictly for effect. Why would you be so gratuitously hurtful to righteous people who made a mistake and other than offending some, caused no harm to none? Only because you can.

How about some deserved outrage about thousands of women being mutilated around the world today; thousands of women and children being slaughtered around the world today; 36 wars being waged around the world; new ethnic cleansing about to commence in Kosovo; a nuclear Iran; our second most important ally in the world, Pakistan, about to explode in the largest Taliban revolution in history; oil at $92 a barrel, rather then $32; an administration that continues to prosecute a war that was commenced without clear goals or plans – U.S. lives are being lost today; a Democratic Congress that starts world controversies with allies just to alienate the Bush regime; how about Putin having started a new cold war; how about a robust economy on the precipice of a significant slide; how about 2 million children going to sleep hungry tonight in the U.S.?

No need for me to continue the list. You are a bright man and you already “got this.”

Let me confess something to you. I too am a writer. Widely read. I have let my fingers get ahead of my brain more than once in the past 30 years. And was beaten up for it once or twice. I am aware, however, that a writer without a mirror is less than just an ordinary hack.

Joseph Farnsworth

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As someone who has written or edited copy almost every day of his career, I sympathize with the Fasano staff. A forceful headline pops into a copywriter’s mind almost before he or she can even think about it. Your first thought is being effective, and in making the sale, before cool reasoning sets in.

However, with the news filled every hour with the hot, deadly terror of being anywhere near a forest fire, it is surprising that someone in the company didn’t back off.

Rather than place blame, I think we ad writers are more likely to say, “Wow! I could have made this mistake myself, but for the grace of…!”

Fred Morath
Fred Morath Direct Marketing
Natick, MA

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I can understand coming up with the thought presented by our colleagues at Fasano — I come up with stuff like that every time I read a headline in the Washington Post. But 95% of the time, it does not leave my office.

Unfortunately, I have a radio show in DC and if I’m reading headlines during the opening of my show…well, words emanate from my mouth before my brain screams “Wait!”

Verbiage happens. Bad taste is not a Cardinal sin, nor is it how we should measure people who do not exhibit it on a regular basis. Repeated bad taste, however…

Let’s move on.

Not that I have an opinion.

Mark “The Mouth” Amtower
Highland, MD
www.EpiphanyBook.com

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I have left the Irvine area for my mother’s near Fresno (north by 260 miles). I appreciated your column today. My home is not in danger, but the air outside is just awful. Can’t imagine how it is for those closer to the fire.

Regarding humor, there is no justification for those folks to put out that email. However, I agree firing them is not required. They will certainly have learned their lesson, as is the case with others. My feelings weren’t hurt. I just thought it was stupid and that it would not generate any sales. Who is going to respond to a company as callous as that ad implies?

[That said], a local talk radio station, KFI640, plays the Johnny Cash song “Ring of Fire” before each update (they also put up $100,000 to find the arsonist for the Irvine fire, aka the Santiago Fire).

Miriam Bertram
Director of National Marketing
The Mail Group