Annuity

We at the Daily News are proud of our letters page. Many of our readers are as scrappy and opinionated as we are, and we are proud of the fact that the page shows that. Our letters pages embody our mission as "the People Paper," and we publish about 2,000 letters a year. We see the pages as a town square where everyone has a right to speak. And we make sure that people without e-mail and Internet access have as much speech as those who do.

In fact, that's why newspapers are so important. That the Ellie Light letter got so much attention in a world where so much online commentary is anonymous speaks to the power of newspapers. Our brand of democracy requires only 75 cents to enter, not a computer or Internet access. We believe the conversation on our pages are richer because of it.

This wasn't the first time a paper used the scandal as a chance to brag about its own popularity: the Los Angeles Times spun that same yarn on Monday.

The growing consensus in the media is that the little people should be happy for a chance to speak at all. And when this process is corrupted by deception? According to the News, you should look for some cheese to go with that whine:

THE BOTTOM line: Having your say is a precious privilege we have in this society. Ellie Light took advantage of this privilege, while taking advantage of the newspapers in question. We'll continue to verify basic facts, but we'll also continue to rely on the good faith of our readers. If a few readers of less-than-good faith get through, to us, it's a price worth paying.

So you see, these professional editors get paid to act more like bystanders and less like security guards. The privilege of getting published is such a "precious" thing that anyone can do it. Free speech is so sacred, so special, so important, that common liars are granted access without anyone caring.

Perhaps this lackadaisical approach to editing, coupled with the arrogant assumption that they're doing the public a favor, has something to do with the News's struggling profits, which forced the owner into bankruptcy protection less than a year ago.

Only in the liberal media can a newspaper exist on life support while lecturing others about "a price worth paying."

Meanwhile, the Cleveland Plain Dealer has been handsomely rewarded for providing honest coverage of the scandal. The article that broke the story earned more than half a million hits in just three days and resulted in the paper claiming ownership of an internet wildfire.

But no matter. The News is content to pay a more noble price of printing bogus spam letters as a service to society.

As to an explanation for why Light's letter was chosen, it offered exactly eight words: "it was short and made its points well."

Too bad the News didn't feel that way when dealing with George Bush. When the Philadelphia Inquirer sought to hire a Bush attorney in May 2009, the News complained about free speech being so freely available:

Will Bunch of the rival Philadelphia Daily News wrote, "It's not about muzzling John Yoo from expressing his far-out-of-the-mainstream opinion in the many venues that are available to him, but whether a major American newspaper should give Yoo, his actions, and the notion of torture advocacy its implied endorsement by handing him a megaphone."

Criticizing a newspaper for "handing him a megaphone" sounds a lot like muzzling, but hey, that was a Bush supporter. Ellie Light was a brilliant defender of Democrats who kinda sorta lied about her identity - an "implied endorsement" of her was just fine.

Not to be outdone, the Lebanon Daily News, just a few miles west in Lebanon, PA, also published an angry screed against its own critics that began with - wait for it - congratulating itself on printing letters from the little people:

Space in any newspaper is always at a premium, and we try to provide as much as possible for the people's voices, particularly on the editorial page. So when Light responded to our inquiry and said she was from Cornwall, that was good enough for us, and we rolled with it.

We usually have to write a variation of this editorial at least once a year. The titillating idea of "gotcha" is too much to pass up for some folks. Fine. We have a liberal - and we mean in the sense of what we allow, not the political leaning - policy on what's allowed on our editorial page. We always have. We welcome conventional views, opposing views, third-party views (especially those, frankly), alternate views and even the occasional skewed view. We provide a significant chunk of real estate for one to bring one's message. Most news papers don't allow upwards of 400 words for letters. We do.

How kind of these papers to welcome a variety of opinions from the very readers who patronize them. It's almost like they're starting to realize normal citizens pay their salaries.

In the middle of a hard recession that's caused newspaper profits to plummet, perhaps it would be wise of these editors to humbly apologize for making a mistake. Instead, readers are given snarky rants about "gotcha" scandals and warnings to be thankful for a paper that prints any letters at all.

If predictions about the future hold true, the newspaper industry might eventually find itself completely out of business...and Ellie Light will be remembered as a big reason why.

"I will not call them gays any more, these are sodomites. And I ask you please, in the media, stop misusing the word gay, which means happy people. These are not happy people."

It's when the pastor starts showing the photos of men covered in feces fisting each other, that you realize this is no ordinary press conference. On January 15th, addressing a crowded room of local and foreign journalists, controversial "pro family" pastor Martin Ssempa , sitting beside a solemn-looking Muslim Sheikh in front of posters saying "Barack Obama Back Off" and "Africans Unite Against Sodomy", begins his lengthy invective.

Ssempa called the conference to announce his plan to mobilize more than one million people to march on February 17th in Kampala to show the world just how strong support is for the proposed 'Anti-Homosexuality Bill'. "We want to give a postcard that he [President Museveni] can send to his friend Barack Obama," he says. However Ssempa, clearly relishing the media's spotlight, takes the opportunity to begin a lengthy digression on his deep-seated feelings about homosexuality, pedophilia and the "broken" West's decadent influence. Most of what he says might be laughable if his influence wasn't so far-reaching and the message so deeply offensive. As he repeatedly boasts, 95% of Ugandans are against homosexuality, "this is democracy at work."

A highly charismatic and flamboyant man, Ssempa seems less to speak than to gesticulate wildly, gleefully exhorting the audience of the ills implicit in homosexuality. At one point, he even dramatically decides to break for prayer, calling on the god "who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah" to communicate to the media that Uganda will not perish in the same way. "God you know this bill has to pass," he prays with his eyes towards the heavens. "In Jesus' name, amen." Most of the journalists in the room, whether by force of habit or true faith, instantly mumble back, "amen".

Ssempa is no stranger to controversy, having over recent years, burned condoms in the name of Jesus and arranged for the publication of prominent homosexuals' names in cooperative local newspapers. His abstinence-based HIV/AIDS work was supported by the Bush White House and he has close ties with the born again First Lady, Janet Museveni. His latest work though, with MP David Bahati who privately introduced the bill, has thrust him into the forefront of the debate.

A captivating speaker and natural performer, (he was once the East African breakdancing champion), Ssempa clearly knows how to work a crowd. When a reporter asks why he is persecuting adults engaging in consensual acts in the privacy of their own bedroom, he quickly takes out his laptop to expose just what these acts are.

A pornographic slideshow of black and white photographs of men engaging in scatological fetishism is revealed. "I want to show you from their website", he proclaims, a devious smile forming. "I've taken the time to research what homosexuals do in the privacy of their bedroom. It is inhuman, it is animalistic, and it cannot be right. I want to show you these pictures." The audience lurches forward, leering at the pictures and groaning in disgust. Ssempa, enthusiastically goes on:

I want to say homosexuals eat each other's poop. Homosexuals stick their hands into their rectum. Homosexuals stick all sorts of deviant sexual things into their rectum. I want to show you this is from their website. So the first picture that I want to show you, you can see this man has just eaten the other person's poo poo and is rubbing it on his mouth, and I'm going to ask that we print for each of you a photocopy of this story so you get it fully.

Then, of course, they are grabbing each other's gentials, that is level number one, touching each other, grabbing each other. Then number three, now they are licking eachother's anus and are licking poop. And they call poo poo, chocolate. You see it is a change of words. I want you to see, Sheikh please forgive me but I want these people to see, they say a picture is worth one thousand words. This is a man eating the other person's poo poo, can you see that one? Please from BBC, I want you to tell them, we know what they do.

This coming from a man of god, a community and church leader, and yet also the co-author of a bill which makes touching another person "with the intention to commit homosexuality" an offense punishable by life in prison. He concludes, "After they have eaten poo poo, then he puts his hand inside the other man's rectum. You can see it. That is called fisting. FISTING! Practiced by 65% of all homosexuals. It is deviant! As if that is not enough, he puts it all the way," he pauses for effect and then excitedly grunts, "iiiiiin!" The audience erupts in laughter.

There is something distinctly un-Christian about Ssempa's lengthy tirade, whether it is the pronounced lack of compassion or the clever way he manipulates the argument. No he isn't victimizing, he is standing up for the real victims here: the minors and handicapped insidiously recruited by homosexuals. He criticizes rights groups for their betrayal of the "boy child" who is being molested and raped by men in Uganda without adequate protection. He accuses those who've accused him and his bill of fascistic and undemocratic aims as being "non-ideological" and "undemocratic" themselves, seeking to quash any discourse and stifle the debate.

Ssempa easily shores up support by turning the argument into one of African communal pride versus neo-colonial attempts to destroy it. He calls homosexuality a direct assault on the traditional African family in spite of (or perhaps to overcompensate for) the seldom-mentioned fact that he met his white wife in the United States. He frames the argument as the new clash of civilizations: "For us, as Africans, we are a community, our value system is 'I am because we are'. For the western people, the Europeans, they say 'I am because I am'."

He vigorously castigates America and European countries as "failed states" for "putting the export of sodomy as their number one priority" and seems especially emboldened by Uganda's recent oil discovery, dismissing Western aid as little more than a pittance. "If the changing of our laws to receive sodomy is the price we have to pay to receive mosquito nets and malaria nets, then we'd rather die in dignity."

According to Ssempa, America is bankrupt, deeply in debt to China and soon to be completely dependent on African oil. The U.S. can't afford to set preconditions now that Uganda sits on two billion barrels of crude. Uganda has entered a new era, the past Ssempa terms "B.U.O - before Uganda got oil"; now the country will sit alongside Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Ssempa laughs and goes on to wax lyrically about the inherent evils of "anal licking" while every day his draconian bill inches closer to being passed. After dismissing one reporter's query over possible cessation of aid to Uganda, he exclaims to a rapt audience, "I care deeply about white people telling us what to do. We really find that annoying. I want to say we are a superpower!"