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Right Wing Media and The Propaganda of Fascists
That premise being the right wing media. Right wing!?
Right wingers get immediately indignant at the thought of “right wing” and “media” being used in the same sentence. From their point of view, there is only the left wing lying media, and then there is the unbiased, honest reporting of the news sources with whom they agree.
Certainly in view of the fact that there are two sides yelling at and berating each other, the one side calling the other “right wing,” and the other side yelling in response “left wing,” it is fair to take the truly impartial stance, and to call the one side the way the other labels it, and to call the other side by the name its opponent gives to it. One should be grateful that they know where they stand relative to each other and want to distinguish themselves from one another, and that they are both not fighting over wanting to be called the same thing. It would be an all-the-more difficult case to judge if they both wanted to call themselves the true liberals or the true conservatives.
However there is one thing they are certainly fighting over, and that is who is reporting the truth.
Who is reporting the truth?
Television is the principal medium by which most people appear to get their news and opinion these days.
And this is especially true of the Gee Dubya Bush-supporting right wing. The left and right in America today are perhaps more polarized than ever before, and that is not at all the result of the muted, calm debate that presents fact and conclusion of both sides one usually finds in the print of all but only the most biased of newspapers. Rather it results from either the short sessions featuring biased, histrionic hosts interviewing agreeable guests, or that occasion when the viewer is to be entertained by a shouting match between both sides and, rarely, by all sides.
“Fair and Balanced” is the motto that this 24 hour cable news network likes to trumpet to its viewers. A more accurate motto however would be Fairly Unbalanced.
This horribly misnamed network—it’s the word “news” that doesn’t belong, as if that were not obvious—has set out to distinguish itself from the competition. It certainly has. Apparently thinking that those who like to watch professional wrestling and tractor pulls had no news outlet, and knowing that these people represented huge numbers to be tapped, FNC set up an operation that traded in on journalism and drove off the showroom floor with the news equivalent of a stock car crash derby.
This proud, in-your-face, media gem of the right wing features shouting matches in spades. Sort of. A real match would pit two opponents with either equal ability or debating conditions. FNC instead fixes the fight however. The mission of the network is to have the opinion representing the right to be victorious, or at least have the better chance at being victorious. One way that FNC can achieve this fix is by strait-jacketing or handcuffing the well-spoken member representing the left at this staged fight. How FNC shows do this will be described.
FNC can also maximize the chance of the right winger (that is, the person representing the FNC point of view) by dumbing-down the left wing opponent in its rigged debates. FNC might, for instance, hang out around the playground of the schools of the exceptionally challenged (the unkind, less-than-politically-correct word is “retard”), and lasso one of its students, who is then set down in the hot seat at the studio just before the spotlights are turned on him. In some cases, the designated left wing debate participant is not the real McCoy at all: it’s a pretender, or rather a right winger whose opinion is to the left of the designated winner of the debate, who is the more extreme right winger.
FNC represents the epitome of “infotainment.” This is a derogatory term for a network that calls itself news and journalism. The programming on its schedule is set to appeal and to cater to the lowest common denominator, which unfortunately is the numerically significant, commercially important, and monumentally ignorant masses.
It does not necessarily resort to lying (at least all the time) to do this however. It all depends on how one defines a lie. If one reports only the truth and reveals facts that support one’s side—pretty much principles of debating—then FNC could claim that this is what it does and it’s up to others with different views to do their homework.
Then it also depends also on how one defines “news” and “journalism” as well. Does it represent the case where reporters, journalists, and news readers knowingly report only one side, and then dismiss accusations of bias by replying that no news operation is completely free of bias and without subjectivity, so let’s all leap head-first into being thoroughly biased and outrageously subjective?
Or is it the job of a journalist to serve the truth? Credible journalists will tell you that truth is the reporting of whatever it is from all sides, and from all angles. That the truth is the reporting of all opinions, with only one correct one among the many incorrect ones. It is not the job of the news reporter or the editor to judge which is the correct one, but only to make sure they are all heard and read, and to trust the reader/viewer to make that judgment. If FNC is fulfilling that role, then it is probably in the business of journalism.
Bill O’Reilly is the host of the all-commentary, no-news, fact-free The Factor. O’Reilly needs to find a new motto for his show, because the one he’s using is definitely not working. How about “The Spin Starts Here,” or maybe “Only Spin Is Found Here”?
O’Reilly is a master in the infotainment business. Among his strengths is that he is very well-spoken and appeals to his audience with a certain folksy charm. On occasion O’Reilly is quite eloquent and very literate, and you sense that he is a man frustrated by unrealized ambition.
It is possible that O’Reilly applied for the job of being the most respected and trusted journalist in America—something reserved for the anchors of network television news like the Conkrites and Brokaws and Jennings and Rathers—but that he gave up the effort because it perhaps required as part of the dues-paying process the need to lick a lot of boot and kiss a lot of ass on the climb up to the top, and O’Reilly had too much dignity or lacked the patience to do such things.
But then if O’Reilly had so much dignity, why does it seem like he made a bargain with the dark side?
The years in the apprenticeship of tabloid, celebrity gossip reporting—O’Reilly was reporter for the tabloid TV show Inside Edition—must have taken something out of someone like O’Reilly. He must have concluded that no one ever became richer by being reputable and honest or serving with distinction. Thus O’Reilly must have figured that if he could not reach the pinnacle of respect in his trade, then he could at least reach a high point in dollars and mob popularity, the compensation for being crass.
Selling out his self-respect is not O’Reilly’s only weakness however. He naturally has all the weaknesses that come with being a right winger.
Yes, people, get over it: Bill is a right winger, despite whatever he may tell you. As many times as O’Reilly may show you evidence of an extreme right winger calling him a "Commie pinko homo-loving liberal" and of an extreme left winger writing to tell him that he makes Bush look like a Democrat, that does not mean ole Bill can claim to stake out the middle ground. Look at Dan Rather’s mail: you can bet that plenty on the right call him a traitor who gives aid and comfort to America’s enemies, but you can also find letters from the extreme left who call him a corporate lackey in service to a right-wing, Republican Party agenda.
O’Reilly has all the traits of being a right winger, particularly those that reveal him to be petty and vindictive. His stances on most of the issues would find agreement with the likes of Bush, Cheney, many in America who call themselves "conservatives." The patrons of various truck stop diners, as well as assorted members of the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, and other well-known, right wing hate groups, get up and give Mr. O standing Os for a majority of his positions.
Right wingers like O’Reilly also never forget the heroes of their past, like Mr. Hysterical Paranoia himself, Joe McCarthy. In the typical fashion of McCarthyism, O’Reilly’s most recent outrage was to call for the boycott of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and for the blacklisting of the producers and actors who were responsible for the made-for-television film about Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
Now although O’Reilly is identifiably a right winger, he does stand with the left on rare occasions. For example, O’Reilly is staunchly opposed to the death penalty, a view he shares with many members of the "extreme" left. He naturally comes by his fierce opposition to the death penalty because he is an Irish Catholic and a papist, and the Vatican’s position on the DP is clear.
Generally The Factor is all you would expect in FNC programming. It does treatments on many—too many—subjects in the news within a one hour program, and each treatment is the most superficial possible. Within a program segment, either a guest is interviewed directly by O’Reilly, or O’Reilly presides as master of ceremonies in a one-ring circus in which two or more guests are pitted against each other and then are encouraged by O’Reilly to strip and wrestle in the mud.
Naturally O’Reilly has his own opinion. And he is not only the first to get that opinion out in these program segments, but he continues to do so frequently during the segment, typically shouting down the guest who takes the opposing view. With the guest that agrees with O’Reilly’s position, O’Reilly and that guest bounce off of each other in a kissy-faced dialogue in which they make sure the main points are mentioned and reiterated without exploration of the alternatives or even acknowledgement of an opposition. When the opposition is actually present to provide a little confrontation and to dare heretically to question the settled truths pronounced by O’Reilly and the guest selected to provide affirmation for O’Reilly, the opponent’s message is side-stepped and the opponent himself will often be attacked personally. Indeed, FNC has done a great deal to make the ad hominem the chief means by which all debate issues are resolved.
The working title to this show before it aired its first hour was Hannity and Whoever We Can Find To Be A Spineless Left Winger. This is not really a joke. FNC had already signed on Sean Hannity, who was host of a virulently, hateful right wing radio program taking predictably fascist positions. Indeed, Hannity makes Rush Limbaugh, whom Hannity calls his icon, look like a left winger; Limbaugh could have been put opposite Hannity and truthfully been called the relative left winger.
But FNC did happen to find Alan Colmes, that combination of individual who would not be telegenically competitive and would be soft-spoken. The show works by Hannity and Colmes being given exactingly equal time for direct and cross examination of guests brought on for a subject that fits within the typical FNC segment. (A FNC segment is a period of time about 5-8 minutes long that represents the attention span of the typical simian FNC viewer for any given topic.)
Hannity is a rabid attack dog naturally, trying to give enough rope to the “liberal” guest to hang himself, after which Hannity interrupts the guest repeatedly in order to pull the rope. Most guests who take the predictably opposite view are wise to Hannity and the show’s concept, and they adapt quite well in responding to Hannity. As such Hannity has actually tried to turn the show into a court of law: he gives the guests a question to which he demands a “yes” or “no” response with no elaboration, and then Hannity berates and shouts down they guests if they dare do anything beyond that.
As for Colmes, a bowl of Jell-O® could beat him in a debate. Occasionally Colmes shows arched-eyebrow indignation about a right wing outrage, but the show largely depends on Colmes being Colmes, which is a liberal who rolls on his back and exposes his throat to the snarling dominance of the conservative Hannity. If the dynamic were actually to change in which Colmes ever got the good licks, he would either be replaced or the show canceled, since people who like to watch the lions feed on their political opposites would soon tune out.
The typical right winger will laugh derisively, uncontrollably, at the assertion that either MSNBC or CNN is part of the right wing media. They are called “egregiously liberal” by card-carrying, knuckle-dragging right wingers.
Perhaps this is so.
But what sort of “egregiously liberal” cable news network gives air time to a certifiable misanthrope and bigot like Michael Savage, and then has to fire Savage for Savage being what he is, what everybody knew him to be, and what everyone said would get him canned eventually (and thus they were right)? Of course, MSNBC did this because it wanted to steal FNC’s audience share and decided that journalistic standards were less important than a race to the bottom. Bottom of the money pit, that is.
As for MSNBC’s prime time line-up, the viewer gets Hardball’s Chris Matthews, mistakenly called a liberal and left winger by the Bush-bootlicking right. But when you tune in to watch Matthews, who refuses to overcome his habit of rudeness in which he never lets any of his guests finish a sentence, he is more likely to play tag team with a right winger in body slamming the left winger. After Matthews, the MSNBC viewer is treated to Joe Scarborough, a former Republican Congressmember and ardent Bush-can-do-no-wrong partisan. You get an hour of that.
As for CNN, while they do not give a right winger free rein to act customarily like the ass that all right wingers will be, CNN will debase itself to getting ratings, and has done so. The invasion of Iraq in March and April 2003 was a shocking example of flag-waving of all cable news networks: Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. Indeed the contrast between CNN, which is broadcast in the United States, and CNN International, which is broadcast everywhere else but the U.S. (but also in selected locations in the U.S. too), was quite striking. The domestic CNN operation took a decidedly uncritical look at the war and the politics that brought it about, while CNN International was clearly biased to reinforcing viewpoints that were entirely critical of the war and questioned its necessity. Firm evidence that news operations tailor their news to fit the audience, rather than tailor their news to report the complete truth.
Neither CNN in the U.S. or CNN International ever lied, of course. They just did not bother to emphasize the truths that would make their viewers have to re-think their positions. Perhaps it is entirely the case that cable news viewers have hardened positions anyway, and all cable news networks know this and do their best to balance journalistic ideals and the need to keep the attention of viewers. When CNN was the only game in town, and both right and left wingers had no choice, and CNN did not report news that reinforced the biases of viewers. Those days are long gone.
Television production operations that feature on-air preachers have been around long before pretty much anyone. 99% of the preachers were smart and stuck just to theology and kept politics out of it. In fact they dared losing tax-exempt status if they got too political. The Reverend Billy Graham, George Vandeman, the Reverend Schuler, even Jimmy Swaggart pretty much all stuck to what Jesus would do for you if you let him in.
Then along came a new breed of clergymen who thought that their narrow thinking on the absolutes ought to be the thinking of everyone. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are the names that comes up in everyone’s minds, of course. Falwell had the nerve to say most of America was behind him as the “Moral Majority.” And Pat Robertson pretty much bashed everyone—Christians too—who was not a church-going, tithe-paying Baptist. That hateful, old bastard is still bashing people in the many moments when his confused mind starts to ramble. Too the credit of a few right wingers, they look the other way when Robertson embarrasses himself with his incontinence.
Mort is no longer on the air—in fact, the chain smoker no longer breathes air, having died quite a few years ago—but he resurrected a kind of late night TV programming in which residents of trailer parks got their time on the public airwaves. He was Jerry Springer well before Springer thought about throwing chairs on the set. He was the working man’s answer to Phil Donahue and Oprah.
Of course, Mort was not so much interested in incisive political debate as he was about ad hominem and getting the blood boiling for ratings. The problem was that Mort was a bit before his time, and so local television affiliates who were scared of their own shadow tucked their tails between their legs and would drop their subscription to Downey’s syndicated show.
Mort knew this, and probably got too timid by the time his production had to fold up shop. He had to balance a show that kept running in enough cities against the appeal his insults had for the base audience. That is a tough balance to maintain.
More importantly, while Mort was slightly to the right in his politics, he was not a mean right winger. Much of the antics he did on his show was for entertainment more than it was to start a culture war between the right and the left.
Talk radio was being outrageous and earth-shattering long before television hoped to be. Because of the lower overhead in setting up a 10,000 watt AM radio station compared, and the fact that no one cares that an opinionated and/or knowledgeable radio host looks like a Ken or Barbie telegenic airhead, the radio listener is more likely to get intelligent, thoughtful discussion on any of the frequencies of the AM band than he would tuning into a cable shouting match.
But then he is also just as likely to get right wing bombast and the hysteria that an alien craft has landed and that the creatures emerging from the ship called themselves “Democrats.”
The late 1970s featured one memorable radio program that talked about many issues political and otherwise. It was broadcast late at night and into the dawn twilight, and was Mutual Broadcasting’s Larry King Show. King pretty much did was he does now on CNN. He poses his own questions to VIPs in politics and entertainment, then lets the audience take over. Of course, he did it for hours on end when he was doing radio. In one part of the old Mutual show, King did “Open Phone America” where the caller pretty much was given a short time to spout off on whatever he wanted to say (expletives deleted, of course). Some callers would ask King a personal question about his beliefs. I learned more about the United States Constitution and the meaning of America listening to Larry King and his guests and his callers than I have ever learned in other ways (a testament to how awful the public schools are in civics, by the way).
Of course, the right wingers claimed that they did not have a voice of their own up against King and the rest of the “liberal talk radio” out there. Not that King was really a flaming lefty—I think I recall him describing himself directly or indirectly as a libertarian—but with right wingers, a lefty view on one issue makes you a lefty through and through.
KFBK in Sacramento is an all-news-and-political talk radio station. They were broadcasting the King show late at night on their 50,000 watts, covering much of California, Nevada, and beyond.
They also had an obnoxious local personality on in the morning calling himself Rush Limbaugh; you were immediately struck by the odd name, but the amusement of the name soon yielded to the shock of the opinion. I used to listen to Limbaugh from time to time when he was at KFBK in the mid-1980s when I was a graduate student at a nearby university.
I did not listen to Limbaugh because he represented a counterbalance to “left wing” radio. One does not counterbalance what does not exist on the other end: there was no such thing as “left wing” radio. Rather it was that Limbaugh was brazen about the fact that his show represented extreme right wing opinion. Limbaugh did not describe it as extreme or right wing, of course. Like all right wingers do, Limbaugh said that his opinion was that of the good Christian, moral—he refrained from using the word “white”—majority of citizens out there, and that all those who opposed him were gay/lesbian, tree-hugging, Ted Kennedy-loving Democrats. The underlying tone and intention of Limbaugh was to suggest to the listener that his enemies were all pedophiles and Satan worshippers.
It was really hard to tell if Limbaugh was sincere in his political commentary, and whether the right wing agenda was not really the schtick of Limbaugh the Entertainer. Limbaugh would occassionally get a caller named “Charlie the Communist” (don’t recall if that was Limbaugh’s name for him or Charlie’s own), and he would use him for a punching bag as to all that was wrong with Democrats, liberals, socialists, pedophiles, terrorists, gun control advocates, and the National Education Association (a union of public school teachers).
Of course, Limbaugh went national, which was a shock to all Sacramentans who had more than half a brain. We figured that all of America could not be half as dumb as the inbreds of Sacramento who tuned in faithfully to Limbaugh. Boy, was we wrong [sic].
Of course, Limbaugh was a major hit, and the millions of mouth breathers out there finally felt they were represented. They could now peacefully fall asleep in front of the television, after doing the nightly six-pack of beer, and know that Limbaugh was out their defending a way of life that those with advanced university degrees ridiculed.
Of course, what is a circus if it has only one act?
And so it was not too long before not only was there a syndicated right wing show like Limbaugh’s, but that entire radio networks were formed with hundreds of affiliates to talk about the issues of importance to Redneck America twenty-four seven.
It has already been mentioned that Sean Hannity and Michael Savage pollute the radio ether with their mix of hate and bigotry.
Quite a few others have managed to stick their feet in the door and find a place in right wing lambaste. They usually exploit a personal quality to get on the air. Laura Ingraham uses the fact that she is an attractive blonde with a postgraduate education. I think men both liberal (like myself) and conservative are disarmed by her looks at first, and she uses that to get the lance in them before they have a chance to lose their erections and focus on the subject, which Laura has already won anyway, because time’s up. Don’t confuse Laura with another blonde right winger who makes frequent television appearances: Anne Coulter. The difference between Laura and Anne is that Laura has every marble (of sanity) that she was born with, whereas Anne is clearly not serious about taking the lithium her health care provider admonishes her to do.
Ask any knuckle-dragging Bush supporter if he thinks all the major daily newspapers in the nation are owned by and written for liberals, and you’ll get that ain’t-it-obvious stare of disbelief at your question.
Of course it is true that the most respected, internationally as well as nationally, newspapers are The New York Times and the Washington Post, and that their editorial slant is to the left. They also pay a corps of largely liberal columnists who are at the top of the game in political, social, and economic commentary for the op-ed page. Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Frank Rich and many others from the Times (Anthony Lewis: you are missed very much). E. J. Dionne, Richard Cohen, Michael Kinsley, and others of the Post. Of course, they also keep on the payroll the premiere guardians of right wing opinion: Bill Safire and Thomas Friedman of the Times, and George F. Will and Charles Krauthammer of the Post.
But there are a great many big city and small town newspapers that people read instead of The New York Times and the Washington Post. And these are certainly not pandering to a liberal agenda. Many newspapers are owned by large publishing groups, which often give the editors of each of the newspapers autonomy to publish opinion that is that of the editors, so long as they cultivate a readership and sell newspapers. Editors thus may publish their own opinion, but strive for a balance by publishing letters of the publication’s readers as well as of columnists taking an opposing view.
But certain publishing groups give no such editorial autonomy. They not only own the business, they also own their opinion. The editors are nothing more than the paid servants of the owning publishing groups, and the editors only function is to make sure that opinion of the owner is expressed in the best English. It’s no coincidence that it is typically the right wing publishing groups which are the ones who employ such editors who make an express promise to serve the right wing agenda in both news and opinion, or at least to look the other way in order to take a high-paying position just to fix up the English of neoconservative spew.
Should they acquire a newspaper whose previous ownership catered to a decidely liberal readership, the newspaper will immediately acquire a radical in-your-face, divisive right wing slant. Of course, one might argue that such an editorial swing is hardly something a true right winger would do: clearly canceled subscriptions by the boatloads are bad for business, and there will be a swing from profit to loss. But right wingers who own media enterprises are both principled (meaning loyal to beliefs) as well as philosophical. They figure that liberals canceling their subscriptions is a pendulum swinging the other way to right wingers starting subscriptions after years of not wanting “all the news that’s fit to print,” but rather all the news that fits preconceived notions.
What is it right wingers say? That liberals and lefties are communists and socialists, which is much like saying “pedophiles and Satan worshippers,” from the right wing point of view.
From the simplistic, black-and-white right wing perspective, the good is filled with Christians and capitalists (they no longer have to be strictly white-skinned either).
I am sure they will tell you that the 20th century Jesus would have been an investment banker rather than a carpenter. Not that carpenters do not know the value of a dollar and why it belongs with the person who worked hard for it rather than the lazy, bastard welfare cheat who gets the government to take that dollar away from the carpenter. Certainly any decent carpenter, the right wing will tell you, knows the truth of all that.
On the other hand, the bad is a motley gang of secular humanists who deplore war and hope for a one world government where civil rights are guaranteed for all the people of the planet. It’s a great deal easier for the Christian capitalist to have the upper hand in a business that pays people below-poverty-line wages as they work in unsafe, unhealthy workplaces in a nation whose corrupt leaders can be bought off, than to have the upper hand in an enterprise where a one-world government has too much oversight of elected officials to allow them to cheat on living wages and unsafe workplaces. And so it is thus easy for the right wing (and Christian) people to identify the bad.
The Wall Street Journal talks about such issues, of course, but strictly from the view that anything else but capitalism is an unspeakable evil. Government itself is seen as a “necessary evil,” of all things; to suggest there are limits to the possession, use and disposal of private property is sacrilege. When faced with the challenge that they should worship God and not mammon, they say why can they not worship both God and mammon? Prioritizing time is not difficult, and efficiency of time is a highly prized value among these right wingers.
Try to look for balance though in the editorial of the Journal. If they employ or solicit the opinions of true liberals and the political left, make sure someone is standing next to you to catch you when you faint.
The NY Post is certainly not the class of right wing thinking—assuming one allows the word “class” to be used in connection with right wing thinking. This epitome of the tabloid, gutter press is mentioned in passing because the Post is a property of the Rupert Murdoch News Corp. media holding company. Murdoch made his name and his money on yellow journalism, and so it is only fitting to name something upon which he makes his money. Of course, Murdoch also owns the Fox News Channel mentioned above, a crown jewel in his media empire. Murdoch also attempts to influence opinion globally, with his Sky News channel outreach across the planet.
Murdoch is a right winger with a vengeance. He believes in naked, down-in-the-mud-and-dirty capitalism, and insists that business be a major part of the daily news agenda. He does not, and can not, micromanage the news operations. After all, part of the capitalist system is that you hire the competent managers to do that, and that Murdoch takes responsibility for how the managers sell the product. So Murdoch finds the best henchmen to deliver his agenda, and they do it with the ferocity that he expects of them.
When looking at the Murdoch media product, whether it is the Post, Fox, Sky, or whatever, do not expect to read or view stories in which people are looking to find someone to help them deal with an injustice perpetrated against them by a business or a government that Murdoch supports. Expect to find a great deal of flag waving and stories about how this business is contributing a few of its tax-deductible dollars to a charity like the Bush-Loving Quadruplegics of America.
There is a good reason that there is a difference between a news operation that adheres to journalistic standards and one that panders to a right wing agenda.
Right wing media whines and hollers that the truth is not being reported, and then after the tantrum, proceeds to tell its viewers exactly what the truth is. As it sees it, naturally.
On the other hand, media operations that adhere to journalistic standards have as their only truth the need to report what others claim to be the truth, and to get as many sides to a view as possible on the written page or in a broadcast hour.
Right wingers matter of factly will tell you that there is a false distinction between having the news page separated from the opinion page. They will claim that reporters cannot but help to inject their bias and their political agenda into their reporting, so why make the conscious effort to keep news and opinion separate? Thus with right wing content, you are told right away that no attempt is made to stop editorializing the news, and it is up to you, the viewer or reader, to parse what is fact from a very colored way of seeing things.
And because right wing media is contemptuously and brazenly open about the fact—the one indisputable fact of right wing media—that fact and opinion are melted together into a messy, undiscernable gemisch, the viewer and reader are left wondering how they can get facts at all if much of them are left out as part of the editorializing process of writing news copy, and those things that remain in the copy, are distorted or otherwise represent distortions.
Is it not better to read news and get facts from someone who at least makes a best effort to keep opinion and bias out of news copy, than to read it from someone who all but admits proudly that he is nothing more than a propagandist?
Mavi
Gözler
American Patriot
first draft December 2003
revised and published 22 June 2004
2nd revision 6 November 2004
minor editing (meaning “major improvements”)
done for publication in
Unlikely Stories 3 February 2005
All errors in content and style are mine. Remarks, compliments, criticisms, suggestions, and even proofreader’s comments are all welcome.
