Just wrote to the paper

It has been on my mind for a while, and earlier this afternoon I sent the following to the Wall Street Journal:

Anti-Frank conspiracy?

I'm wondering if there is some kind of unorganized conspiracy of silence among Wall Street Journal readers against the paper's new columnist, Thomas Frank? Every week Mr. Frank takes great care to pen what to most readers of the Journal must be a pretty provocative essay, and while I haven't done a systematic search, I can't remember reading one letter in response to a Frank column, positive or negative. The idea to invite Mr. Frank to write I weekly column was an excellent one. Being confronted with ideas that directly challenge one's own convictions is one of the better ways to become more clear about these convictions (and sometimes even adjust them). It's one of the main reasons I myself subscribe to the Journal. Reader letters about left-of-center positions are my favorite part of the paper, and yet, very few readers seem to want to engage Mr. Frank's arguments. Is he so strange that people don't know what to do with him? Or does he instead make us so uncomfortable that we've decided--individually, yet also collectively--to ignore his columns in the hopes that he'll just go away? What's going on?