Arrogance

Matthew Hoy
By Matthew Hoy on November 17, 2003

Shop at Amazon.comI'm reading Bernard Goldberg's new book, "Arrogance" and it's a good read. Goldberg spends the first few chapters outlining how the mainstream media responded to his first book "Bias" and to him personally.

Goldberg refers to a piece attacking him in USA Today by the newspaper's founder Al Neuharth. Neuharth's short, 300 word column took numerous shots at Goldberg, so USA Today's editors offered Goldberg an opportunity to respond in "2-3 sentences."

Through an intermediary I told the editors what they could do with their offer, which was translated into something like "Mr. Goldberg graciously declines your invitation to respond."

My publisher, Al Regnery, however, did write a letter to the editor that read, "USA Today gave Mr. Goldberg the opportunity to respond in 2-3 sentences, but Al Neuharth gets 300 words? And there's no liberal bias?...

As I'm reading this, I think that Goldberg missed an opportunity. One of the most memorable assignments from my English class my senior year at Helix High School was to write a grammatically correct sentence of more than 100 words -- a la William Faulkner.

The proper use of dashes, semicolons and parentheticals can easily result in a more than 300 words in two to three sentences. (For the record, I think my sentence contained about 130 words.)

Yes, the resulting sentences are unwieldy, but a point can be made.

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