Boilerplate, schmoilerplate

Published 7:00 am Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Iconoclast to the last, the late Frank Zappa is said to have once admonished his children, “whenever you read something, ask who paid for it.”

Frank’s sage words echoed around the recesses of the editorial noggin this week, as the public relations effort to promote a NASCAR track in South Kitsap revved up and charged out of the pit. Not that it didn’t begin innocuously enough. Thursday afternoon, as we were assembling the Letters page for this edition of the newspaper, we received by email a submission from a prominent former Bainbridge elected official who shall remain nameless (but whose name is neither Dwight nor Alice, if that narrows it down). “I Back The Track” proclaimed the subject line, and in 120 words, the author lauded motor sports as “one of the fastest growing sporting attractions in the country,” one that would bring a veritable bonanza of tourism dollars and jobs to the local and state economy.

Well okay, we thought, fair enough. It’s interesting to see who from the island might be coming out in favor of the track, and this is certainly a respected name. We’ll run this.

That was at 3:19 p.m. To our surprise, at 3:34 p.m., we received another letter promoting the track – again under the subject line “I Back The Track,” and followed by the same 120 words of what were by now obviously pre-digested “talking points” – signed by a Mr. Matayoshi of Shelton. At 4:13 p.m., the letter appeared again, this time attributed to a Ms. Robinson of Bremerton. Just one minute later, it showed up credited to a Mr. Cronquist of Shelton. On Friday morning, it turned up four times, its authorship alternately attributed to Mr. Leinbach and Mr. Armintrout of Seattle, Ms. Reuter of Seabeck and Ms. Kizziah of Bremerton.

And, as is the fate of all such “boilerplate” letters of dubious original authorship, into the trash they went; we only mention them here as a caution to readers trying to gauge the level of community support that’s actual – as opposed to orchestrated – for the racetrack proposal.

Outbreaks of “form” correspondence are a periodic nuisance, and we weed them out as a matter of course. Back in 2002, backers of a new Kitsap County charter were caught ghostwriting generic letters for folks apparently too lazy or dull to articulate their own views, and the charter effort itself was discredited. You’d think someone would learn. Whereas a good letters page is an organic and spontaneous reflection of community sentiment, boilerplate submissions are the Cheez-Whiz of opinion – processed, canned and lacking nutritional value for the mind. We don’t run them.

You’ll be reading a lot about the NASCAR track in the coming months, as promoters try to ratchet $166 million out of the Legislature. And we’ll be glad to run letters pro and con, as long as they reflect original thought and don’t come perfumed with the smarm of some public relations firm.

Whenever you read one that’s “pro,” you really should ask who paid for it – even if you already have a pretty good idea of the answer.