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This letter writer should
get her own Gold Medal
of TheColumnists.com
This is about a wily woman who hit a "letters to the editor" daily double recently.
Her letter to the editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday, Aug. 12 read:
"John Edwards’ statement that “being 99 percent honest is no longer enough” speaks volumes about his bastardized notions of honesty ("Before Edwards’ confession, rumors had already hurt him,” Aug 10). Being 99 percent honest should never be enough. That one percent of dishonesty could represent the most devastating lie of all.”
The letter was signed by Elisha Hoffman Abrams of Philadelphia.
On the same day the same letter by Elisha Hoffman Abrams appeared almost word for word in The New York Times. She was identified as from New York.
“I sent the letter to both papers on Saturday,” Ms. Abrams told me on the phone. “I had an idea it might be printed because both papers called me to check about the letter. I was in New York when I e-mailed the letter to The Times and told them that when they asked me where I sent it from. I was back home in Philadelphia by Tuesday.”
She opened The Times first on Tuesday morning and when she saw the letter, she said, “Wow. That was the icing on the cake, because it was The Times. I then thought no way that it would be in The Inquirer, too, and then I saw it there and I said, ‘Gosh.’ ”
She called her mother and father, she got e-mails from friends and people she hadn’t heard from in a long time because her e-mail address (elisha.abrams@att.net) was printed along with The Inquirer letter. And she was delighted that I spotted her triumph and called her.
Abrams is 39, a lawyer who provides legal representation in Philadelphia for seniors in such areas as elder care and law, credit problems and wills.
“I am on the bleeding heart side,” she said. She is an unabashed liberal in support of Barack Obama.
She was moved to write the letters, she said, because she was so upset with Edwards. “Not for what he did, but how he handled it. You can’t tell just mostly the truth. Yet our world will accept something like that.”
She found the editing by the papers interesting.
Where The Inquirer wrote, “Edwards’ statement…” The Times added an extra “s” and made it read, “Edwards’s statement…”
The Times, ever proper, deleted “bastardized notions…” which she admitted was a veiled reference by her to the question of whether Edwards fathered a child in his affair.
Abrams lives in Philadelphia’s Center City, attended Pennsylvania U. and then Doshisha U. in Tokyo as a part of an exchange program. She received her law degree from Temple U.
She said “I love to write.” She wrote a consumer column for awhile in the free Metro papers that appear in Philadelphia, New York and Boston. She had two letters printed in The Inquirer shortly after 9-11 and a letter to The Legal Intelligencer protesting the change of name by Temple Law School to the Beasley School of Law because somebody gave a bundle of money to the school.
She reads several papers daily: The Inquirer, Times, Legal Intelligencer--and The Wall Street Journal. And she writes letters to the editor.
“I also sent the letter to The
Wall Street Journal,” she said. “When I opened
the Journal, I was hoping for a trifecta.”
©2008 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The logos of The New York Times and The Philadelphia
Inquirer are from their respective online editions. This column
first posted Aug. 18, 2008.
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