Julie McDonald-Smith’s last column (“The Right View: Hernandez trial holds a mirror to society”) is yet another example of how she regularly shortchanges and confounds her readers. In summarizing the reasons for Hernandez’s bad choices, she, interestingly enough, departs from right-wing orthodoxy by suggesting that societal and environmental factors are to blame. Her litany of specific factors is curious, however: “Family life is no longer revered as it once was … we’ve told fathers they don’t matter, that the state can raise their children instead.”

Aside from the obvious conservative trope lamenting the loss of the good-old days, what is she talking about? Perhaps the answer is found in the note at the end of her column where she responds to a claim that her preceding column was similar to a previous “report” authored by another person on another website. She explains those similarities by her use of “Maine GOP websites and fact sheets.” So her factual assertions are really disguised opinions originating from an aggregation of partisan talking points. In other words, she doesn’t know what she is talking about.

Kevin McCarthy
Falmouth