I am grateful for Roland VanHorn’s kind words in his letter of Oct. 20; a few rejoinders are in order, however. While I grant Jim Bailey’s overarching point, i.e., the singular inappropriateness of men of the cloth calling for an assassination, I still wonder whether the intemperate behavior of a couple of misguided small-town pastors is actually more harmful to civilized discourse and to the moral fiber of society than an international media elite which acquiesces in and winks at hateful speech directed at a sitting U.S. president they happen to disagree with.

On a different note, I am puzzled by Mr. VanHorn’s last statement: “Dr. Ippolito ... failed to extend that criticism to any form of media that calls for or glorifies killing”. I thought that “criticizing the media” is exactly what I had done in my letter.

Dan F. Ippolito

Anderson