Is ravioli a sandwich? Probably not. Am I published in well respected online newspaper arguing the opposite? Yes, and the reason why involves espionage, social justice and the entire concept of human ethics and values.

First things first, let me introduce you to the Durango Herald. The Herald was first published in 1880, and provides Durango, Colorado and the surrounding area with their fill of daily local news. Given that it is published over 1400 miles away from where I live, I don’t really care about most of the Durango Herald; I do, however, care immensely about it’s “Letters to the Editor” section.

Think about the “Letters to the Editor” section as Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises after Bane releases all of the prisoners from Blackgate Penitentiary, it’s absolute anarchy. The Herald just hides the fact that it’s a lawless wasteland a little bit better.

I first became aware of the Herald’s “Letters to the Editor” section when I was writing a research paper about how journalists should ethically report on hate speech. One of my real world examples was this letter sent to, and published by, the Herald in March of 2010. Essentially, a Catholic school in Colorado denied entry to the child of two lesbian parents, and a reader wrote into the Durango Herald defending the decision, and shooting off some pretty offensive rhetoric in the process.

Despite it being a really interesting case in regards to journalism ethics, my interest was purely educational… momentarily.

My research on the case in 2010 lead me to a newer letter, published in May of this year. The letter, written by some guy named Michael W. Jarvis, is titled “LGBT community is a danger to others.” I’ll link to it here, but I’m warning you, it’s pretty horrible to read. The writer says some absolutely vile things about the LGBTQ community, before closing out with the line “May God drain the LGBT cesspool.” Yeah… I wasn’t exaggerating how shocking it is.

I was officially invested. Why was it published? The 2010 letter probably should not have been published due to it’s offensive nature, but at least it provided a viewpoint to an event relevant to the Durango Herald’s readers. Jarvis’ letter not only didn’t pertain to any news occurring in the Durango area, but it was also extremely offensive.

I had to find answers.

My first course of action was to look at the Durango Herald’s guidelines for publishing letters… Tell me if you spot anything fishy here.

Do you see it? In all bold letters, “We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity and to eliminate libelous or tasteless material.” So, the Herald claims they will remove tasteless material, which is very interesting given the fact that they published one of the most tasteless things I’ve ever read.

I sent an email to Robert Meyerowitz, the Herald’s Editorial page editor, asking to clarify what they meant by “tasteless material.” Meyerowitz’s response was swift and concise.

“The letters we thought were tasteless are the ones you didn’t see.”

I had to dig deeper, so I devised a plan. I was going to write a letter in to the Herald; a letter so pointless that they couldn’t possibly publish it. That was the catch, my letter was pointless but so was Jarvis’. When they inevitably ignored my letter I could write about their hypocrisy, and BOOM! I’m a real journalist.

First, I needed an alias; partly because I believed my plan would be more credible if it came from someone within the area of the Herald’s readership, but mostly because it was fun. So after some extensive research (Looking up the most popular names in Utah), Oliver Watson of Salt Lake City, the same place Jarvis is from, was born.

I sat in my room for the next several hours, meticulously crafting a letter that was impressively dumb, but written with enough conviction that it might just come from someone who believes the words they’re typing. I even vaguely proposed a media conspiracy against ravioli’s sandwichood, and in the process, nearly convinced myself of it.

A week or so later and it’s Christmas morning. I was spending time with my family, and just about the last thing on my mind was the double life I had gotten myself mixed up in. That afternoon, in the middle of the Christmas festivities, I received the best gift of all…

THE HERALD PUBLISHED MY F***ING LETTER.

Needless to say, I was stunned. How was I supposed to sit at Christmas dinner and respectfully eat roast beef while my words were on the World Wide Web accusing the mainstream media of a sandwich conspiracy.

So you may be asking, what next? What was the end-game to this insanely stupid thing that you did? To answer that question, I don’t really know.

As stated previously, I was fully anticipating my letter not being published. They would turn my pointless letter down despite publishing an equally pointless, but substantially more hateful letter a few months earlier. After that I could go on a long spiel about homophobia, ethics, and the world as whole.

But they posted my letter. While this outcome is objectively hilarious, it makes me feel a lot less like a journalistic vigilante than I originally set out to be.

So I guess the moral of the story is that the Durango Herald will post damn near anything on their “Letters to the Editor” section. Do with that information what you will.