To the Editor:
Last week (Aug. 11 edition), you ran a letter concerning Jefferson Davis. That letter, which presented an implied contextual defense of slavery, segregation, and other deprivations of civil rights, was a bizarre aggregation of rhetoric and false-fact.
You have essentially exclusive control over the stories, letters, and editorials that you run. That is your right. You seek to influence, and you do influence, the views of thousands who live, work, and visit here. That is likewise your right. You often decline to run letters to the editor that manifest disagreement with your editorial policies. You are entitled to so refuse.
But your exercise of those rights seems to be peculiarly divorced from the historical and present-day facts of our city. You should commit yourselves to the serious reconsideration of how you should use the power that you have as the oldest press outlet in town. Your choice to run that letter was not an accident; that letter did not leap on to your pages on its own. You made a decision. That decision reflects poorly on you, and does a great disservice to the city.
Mark C. Williams
Alexandria
Editor’s note: The Gazette Packet frequently publishes letters with which it disagrees.