LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF THE YEAR: I don't normally quote from letter-writers here, since the authors aren't professional journalists and all, but this one's just too great to pass up. It's from the Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure section, in response to a profile the week before of the actress Frances McDormand that had insulted her alma mater:
"As a 1981 graduate of Bethany College (from which McDormand graduated in 1979), I am familiar, and quite comfortable with Bethany's relative obscurity. But I also know for a fact that the New York Times is perfectly capable of condescension toward most any institution located outside its island home except, of course, for Harvard. Why should a liberal-arts college in the northern pandhandle of West Virginia be excluded?"
-Peter Jensen, Timonium, MD