The “Iconoclast” is hurting.  The Crawford, Texas small town newspaper came out in support of John Kerry despite being published in the home town of G.W. Bush. The publisher of the Iconoclast, W. Leon Smith, judged John Kerry the better candidate and said so in a headline: “Kerry Will Restore American Dignity”. For his stand, Mr. Smith has received a lot of hate-mail and subscribers have taken away their ads and this punishment sits well with most of the readers of the Iconoclast who will most likely not read it anymore. But what is pointed up is that literacy is alive and well in Crawford, Texas.

The hate-mail received by Mr. Smith was not printed but one could expect that it was not particularly literate.  But writers of hate-mail can very well be very literate people who express themselves by bashing ideas and people they oppose.  It was the volume of the hate-mail that was impressive down there in that little town. It is comforting to note in both the New York Times and the Miami Herald this morning that the reportage of this news stressed the hate-mail aspect of the event.

Another look at what happened down there is that we might expect people who write such letters and e-mails are also the kind of people who stick pins in voodoo dolls of Kerry.  I am not sure if it was the position of simply endorsing Kerry over Bush that created the inundation of mail of the hate variety.  I suspect that it was restoring AMERICAN DIGNITY that reached out and bruised the sensibilities of readers who had come to expect only rubber stamping of Bush hoopla and me-tooism in those environs.

Writers of the hate-mail do not ask Mr. Bush to clarify his stands that are criticized so harshly by the Kerry counter attack.  They want him to be left alone and not badgered by an opponent who is illuminating weak or sore spots on their candidate.  The writers of hate-mail do not clarify anything – they just want to stifle or completely suppress issues brought up by the Iconoclast.

Iconoclast is a good name.  It suggests breaking idols that are worshipped by the ignorant but one would suppose that the ignorant would also be ignorant of how to write. Unfortunately for this small home-town newspaper, the writers of the hate-mail also worship at the feet of Mr. Bush whose idol is being prepared in the workshops where such objects are created – as we speak.

One would hope that the “debate” tonight might shed helpful illumination on why Mr. Smith put his project in jeopardy.  I feel, however, that no matter how badly Mr. Bush performs, the faithful will not notice.