Something I wrote yesterday about liberal media bias prompted the below letter — and I have a follow-up, as they say in the press corps:

Dear Jay,
I had a small breakthrough recently with my conservative mother who would never dream of voting Republican. [It’s interesting already.] We were discussing the over-the-top smears against Rush Limbaugh in the media when he was part of a group trying to buy the St. Louis Rams.
The breakthrough occurred when I pointed out that I wasn’t concerned about Rush. He can take care of himself. I was concerned about the effect on African Americans who were led to believe that a leader of conservatism, with 20 million listeners, was a racist. She actually sat back and thought about it for a moment.

I’m reminded of something I wrote about more than once many years ago. A Maryland Republican named Ellen Sauerbrey ran against the incumbent governor, Parris Glendening. The Glendening campaign, directed by Bob Shrum, viciously smeared Sauerbrey as a racist. It cost her the election. This was one of the most disgusting, wicked campaigns in my memory.

Afterward, Sauerbrey said something like this: “It’s one thing if you lie about a person’s view of tax policy or agricultural subsidies or something. That’s not very nice, but then the election happens, and everybody goes on. Not much harm done. If you lie about a person’s racial views, there’s a lingering effect. The lie corrodes society. It makes race relations worse. It makes it harder for society to heal, after all these years, all these decades.”

Exactly. When you smear good people like Limbaugh and Sauerbrey, you don’t merely hurt them, which is probably your intention. You harm the place in which all of us live.