Peasel Prattle: A Primer

From the What a CROCK Files

My voice in politics got its start back in 1994 when I was in a car pool with a guy named Rich Peasel who seems to have one retirement hobby of writing letters to the Editor at the Flint Journal, which get published, on average, of about once a month. His letters evoke controversy because he is unabashedly very right wing on every talking point conservatives espouse. His writings are so to extremely the right they are almost silly, so I can understand why they are published (often the Flint Journal will publish letters in response to his). He thinks he is a writer; however, he’s admitted to me he’s tried to parlay it to the Detroit Free Press and USA Today, but he hasn’t gotten too far. About the only thing I take exception to is the way he behaves (because, to put it mildly, he’s a tad hypocritical in his actions, which is my biggest complaint about most of the right wing fanatics I have come in contact with in my life.)

He was pretty well versed in his politics back in 1994, and he looked forward to doing the touché on me almost every day. However, with the advent of the internet and its “fricking Google it,” commentary, social networks and blogs, it has leveled the playing field for me a great deal. I did not have a quick wit and the “Jeopardy” type answering ability for person to person verbal exchanges back then, but today I can fairly quickly cite references and write cogent rational responses to right wing rants, such as those he exposed me to back then.


Rich at home enjoying his new flat-screen TV.

 Prior to this, I’ve taken to commenting on his letters, since the M-Live (Flint Journal) website allows me to do that. However, their posting apparatus leaves much to be desired. Even with my own html tags, a lengthy copied and pasted response from MS-Word was first displayed to me paragraphed nicely, then later it was displayed without any paragraph breaks at all, and someone posted (maybe it was Rich) that my post was “blather” because it looked pretty bad all “scrunched up" like that.

So....since I have some control on formatting on this blog, I’ve decided to add a new post label called Peasel Prattle where I will occasionally respond to his Flint Journal editorial letters, and then cite a link to my blog as a comment at the M-Live website, instead of posting a lengthy response there, and risk getting it all unformatted.

They should be a lot more fun than Bryan White’s dry, unexciting critiques. Peasel often employs one particular logic fallacy to defend his double-dealing “best of both world” (socialism/capitalism) tendencies : “I’d be stupid not to…(accept union or government benefits).” I believe it’s called “Appeal to Ignorance”, although I prefer calling it “having no shame.” This is on a personal level, however.

For his most recent letter, published October 1, he makes what Bryan would call “concrete examples” for why people will have a “magic fix” if they vote Republican come November 2. And Peasel is correct, to vote Republican would be magic, like smoke and mirrors, covering up what is still the massive pile of government debt brought on by both sides of the aisle.

Postscript:  The Flint Journal must have an website administrator who noted my comment and set the paragraphs correctly.  Now it looks like it should. Thank You!