By Dylan Lightfoot
Much is made of the effectiveness of letter writing campaigns in bending the powers that be to the will of the crusading do-rights who orchestrate them. Indeed, the possibility of affecting outcomes simply by remitting bitchy reproofs to whom it may concern must give a heady sense of agency to the grassroots. Our recent McTighe hooplah, culminating with 1,600 irate letters to Grawemeyer Hall, is a prime example of the reputed power of the epistolary barrage.
But the actual impact these efforts have on political or administrative processes is hard to get a handle on, for a couple of reasons. First, those who inaugurate them have a convenient loophole: if the thing is decided in their favor, the campaign was a success; if not, the campaign lacked sufficient rigor, or some nefarious design to thwart the peoples’ will was at play.
On the flip side, no self-respecting decision-making body will admit to being cowed by an in-box insurgency, unless it is expedient to do so. The best that can be said of letter writing campaigns is that they are a “spurious variable.”
These campaigns are really just a means of cobbling together the dispersed energies of joyless cranks and marginalized busybodies into demographics of contingent outrage, characterized not so much by any shared agenda as by a belief that raising an indignant stink is both a duty and a pleasure — though they would never admit to the pleasure of it.
Most anyone who works with the public can attest that letter campaigns are bunk. Whether they are given consideration in matters at hand is immaterial to the issue of their legitimacy; they simply aren’t genuine ground-swells of popular sentiment. A seismologist might duly register a subterranean nuclear test, but would never mistake it for a genuine earthquake. Likewise, no P.R. guy worth his salt should take a flood of plaintive e-mails for anything but static human disgust arcing out on the nearest ground.
True discontents don’t send e-mails; they stage histrionic protests or media stunts, and sometimes blow things up. People who stand at major intersections in the cold handing out fliers all day are clearly hacked off about something. But, people who go in for electronic activism because something they read on some blog twisted their panties in a knot simply have too much time on their hands.
Since neither their efficacy nor legitimacy can be posited with a straight face, the letter campaigners boast of volume instead. More letters sent means a more successful campaign; big numbers are also meant to speak to the righteousness of the cause.
Make no mistake: tens of thousands of letters could be had in support of any number of stupid ideas. Calls for the deportation of all aliens, mandatory sterilization of welfare recipients and the legalization of heroin would all yield a bumper crop of support if propagated on the Internet. Letter writers are not the conscientious masses, but rather a throng of joiners who will get behind any cause, so long as it doesn’t involve anything more strenuous or time consuming than forwarding an e-mail chain letter to some beleaguered congressman or university provost.
AM radio talk show host Mike McConnell said on a broadcast last year that many of the campaign missives he’s read were rife with mispelled names and incorrect quotes and details. On top of everything else, there is then the real possibilty that people don’t even know what the hell they are complaining about.
Dylan Lightfoot is a junior double-majoring in Psychology and Political Science, and is Opinion Editor and Web Editor for The Cardinal. E-mail him at: dlightfoot@louisvillecardinal.com
