An Alan Smithee Letter

A letter about insurance reform than I wrote to the editor of the local newspaper appeared in that publication yesterday morning. However, it did not appear in quite the way that I wrote it. I understand the fact that this newspaper reserves the right to edit letters for "accuracy, brevity, clarity, legality, and taste." They print that fact on their editorial page every day and I have had no issues with their edits of my letters in the past.

However, I have a problem with one of them this time. While there were several edits done to this particular letter as well, the problem I'm referring to is with a change made to the last prepositional phrase of the last sentence of the letter.

Here's that sentence as I originally wrote it: "This requirement shouldn't pose any greater risk for the insurance companies than that current model as the percentage of sickly people in any large group should remain relatively constant, regardless of whether they work for just one company or a thousand."

Now, here's how that last propositional phrase appeared in the newspaper: "...for a small company or a large one."

This is more than just a subtle or syntactical change - it changed the meaning and impact of what I was trying to convey. Besides, it causes that whole sentence not to many any sense. The pronoun "they" refers back to the large group of people. How could a large group of people work for a small company? If they did, that company, by definition, could not be small. That's an oxymoron like "the candidate from the independent party" or "I paid toll to drive on the freeway." As a result, my entire letter was dumbed down to a sixth-grade level.

It's too bad my name was attached to it. In the condition in which it was printed, I would rather that this letter had been attributed to Alan Smithee. For those not familiar with that common practice in Hollywood, a director of a given film will occasionally disown it and ascribe the directorship of that film to the fictitious name Alan Smithee. A director will do this, dubbing it "an Alan Smithee film" if, for some reason, that film gets edited in such a way that the final product is not something he wants his name associated with.

All of this reminds me of why I started my blog in the first place - to have to my opinions delivered unfiltered and unedited to the world.