Madam, - Once again Mark Steyn insists on wading into half-truth and distortion when the facts could easily be apprehended by a small piece of research, or by paying the slightest bit of attention.
It is plainly absurd to write that Michael Moore believes the Bush Administration is the only problem in American politics, and that to remove it would reinstate the halcyon days of yore. Quite the contrary: Moore has been an active polemicist for many years now, and some of his best work was done condemning crimes that took place under the benign gaze of the Clinton, Reagan, and Bush Senior administrations.
What Moore does consistently attack are the conglomerations of power that wreak such havoc on American and world society. Witness his various campaigns against unscrupulous healthcare insurance providers, ruthless welfare programmes, trigger-happy police forces and polluting corporations, to name but a few.
I also note that none of the many shrill denunciations of Moore attacks his central, and recurring, thesis: the fundamental and widening divisions between rich and poor in America, the forces that bring about such divisions, and the wider societal chaos that they provoke.
While it was once enjoyable to watch, week in, week out, Mr Steyn impaling himself on the sharp prongs of his own mendacious silliness, lately the spectacle has become somewhat tiresome. Ranting forever about the spineless "Euroleft" and the vast, devious Muslim hordes about to overwhelm "the West" has left him rudderless, up a creek of his own deluded fabrication. He should go back to what he does best: reviewing films. - Yours, etc.,
SEAN COLEMAN, Newbrook Avenue, Donaghmede, Dublin 13.