"Edgar Allen Beem is as far left as the 'lunatic fringe' of the right"?

"It is people like Beem, who intentionally crank up and provoke right-wing extremists with the kind of hate-filled trash that he writes in your paper"?

My teenage son, who was reading about some of his friends in the schoolboy sports section, came across those letters, read Beem's column, and asked me "Dad, what are they talking about?"

"Beem," I said, "writes warm and fuzzy stories about, you know, community and 'The Way Life Should Be.' Nurturing stuff. A lot of people find that kind of talk a threat to their understanding of the world and to their place in the world."

"Look what he writes here," I said. "I [Beem] always loved the idea that major storms were given girls' names. Women were powerful. Women caused the weather in the old days."

So threatening that the Forecaster prints a disclaimer [in the hard copy edition] under Beem's column, but not under that of Halsey Frank or Perry Newman. Frank and Newman write about simple, non-controversial topics like budgets, taxes and endless economic growth. The stuff by which people, species and planets live and die.