'Divisive rhetoric', and so on.

'Divisive rhetoric', and so on.

A Pennsylvania newspaper has apologized for printing a Memorial Day letter to the editor that called for a "regime change" and the execution of President Obama. [...] "The Daily Item apologizes for our failure to catch and remove the inappropriate paragraphs in the letter directed at President Obama," the editorial said. "We will strive to do better in the future." [...]

In the editorial apologizing for the letter, the Sunbury Daily Item notes that their "readers and critics have reacted in force, as they should have." Many of those critics no doubt were directed to the paper by Daily Kos user sfinx , whose story on the letter resulted in a flood of complaints to the paper.

The paper's explanation for how the letter slipped through the usual vetting process is, perhaps, instructive:



The straight forward reason the letter headlined “What is a Ramadi?” appeared is no bells went off when the editor handling the letter read it and placed it on the opinion page. Nearly a decade of provocative and divisive rhetoric may have inured us to language that calls the president of the United States “the coward-in-chief” and the disrespectful use of the president’s first name. Both those elements are common to corners of the mediascape, having been uttered by commentators and candidates for president.

Hmm.