JOAN VENNOCHI’S defense of Howie Carr against the attacks of an anonymous blogger is pitiful (“Howie Carr’s mysterious liberal foil,’’ Oct. 4). It is based on the irrational idea that propaganda is OK as long as the propagandist signs his name to it. She also assumes that simply signing one’s name assumes accountability for one’s words, however irresponsible those words may be.
Carr clearly went over the line by insinuating, based solely on his difference of opinion on ideological matters, that Judge Thomas E. Connolly was connected to “most of the worst pedophiles in the archdiocese.’’ Carr’s worthless “owning’’ of his opinion is, more often than not, veiled in the same morass of disclaiming that all the talking heads on radio and cable TV use: It’s entertainment, and I’m an entertainer.
It’s the quality of an argument that matters, not who wrote or spewed it. Carr’s “rantings’’ in this case have no value. And by defending his platform, Vennochi ensures that this environment of misinformation used by Carr and others is perpetuated.
As for the blogger, who goes by “Ernie Boch III,’’ and urges a boycott of Carr’s show and its advertisers: Who cares who he or she is if what the blogger writes is based on facts and reason?
And another thing: America has a proud tradition of writers, such as Benjamin Franklin, who write very logical and convincing arguments under pseudonyms.
Francis X. Chenette
Quincy 
