By DEE ALEILos Alamos
In response to John Pawlak’s column entitled Children of the NRA, I would like to rebut with a few comments of my own.
First, let me say that I have no strong feelings with respect to the NRA. In that regard, I am not one of Mr. Pawlak’s moronic, placard-carrying, gun-crazed hussies who have trouble locating their own brain stem. I am neither for nor against the NRA, although I am married to someone who enjoys hunting and keeping our freezer stocked with organic, grass-fed meat.
My husband is actually a tremendously nice man, with a competitive IQ (even in Los Alamos!), and not the moronic, imbecilic or wild-eyed caricature that Mr. Pawlak likes to paint of gun users. This brings me to my point. Although Mr. Pawlak probably considers his sarcastic, acerbic comments to be witty and believes them to constitute some form of engaging literary style, and although Mr. Pawlak is most likely a very compassionate and genial man when divorced from his pen (er, keyboard), I find the tone of his columns to often be insulting, demeaning and disrespectful to anyone with whom he disagrees.
Even when I have felt that Mr. Pawlak’s points have had merit in the past, I have found myself sickened by the name-calling and jokingly petty references to others in his columns. In this column in specific, the people with whom he disagrees are called moronic (more than once), described as those who embody hatred and stupidity, those who lack a sufficient brain stem to support even a headache, brain dead, ditto-heads, nuts, etc. He likens them to Nazis, members of the KKK and Al Qaeda.
He taunts those with whom he disagrees over their rhetoric. But Mr. Pawlak is clearly a master of rhetoric himself.
Also, I daresay that at least a few people on the other side of the argument concerning gun control have greater brain power and higher IQ’s than Mr. Pawlak … despite his assertions otherwise. Perhaps they are kinder, more respectful and embrace human dignity with better aplomb as well.
I suggest that when we disagree, we do so without attacking the people themselves. I may disagree with Mr. Pawlak, but I don’t for a minute suggest he is a moron. I suggest only that he find a new, less caustic “literary style.”
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts on this matter.
