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In his public speaking engagements, Randy Cohen sometimes paraphrases a certain ethics 101 exercise this way: A train is racing toward a switching point. On one track is George W. Bush. On the other is Donald Trump. Isn't there something you can do so that it will hit them both?

That's sort of how I feel when it comes to a debate between Tom Friedman and a vice president of General Motors. Here's the story from GM's corporate blog [via] — and who'da thunk a time would come when corporate blogs would actually be entertaining and useful. Basically, GM tried to respond to a Friedman column calling GM "the most dangerous company in the world," only to be told that it could not use the word "rubbish." "It's not the tone we use in Letters," the Times's junior letters editor explained. (GM published its entire e-mail exchange with the paper). GM refused to change "rubbish" to either "We beg to differ" or "Not so" — somewhat persuasively arguing that it was only trying to match the tone set by Friedman — and so the letter was never published.

Not surprisingly, considering that you have an audience of people who read GM's corporate blog, commenters tend to blame the Times' liberal agenda (although I'm with the guy who points out that GM isn't exactly dependent on letters to the editor to spread its "message": "We don't care if there is a gas shortage. Just keep buying our ridiculously oversized gas guzzlers so we won't go out of business to more efficient automakers.") If that's true, the Times doesn't want you to get too liberal either, as I found out a few years back. After the jump, a brief essay I wrote back in 1999 (originally for The Nation and McSweeney's) about my own conflict with the NYT letters editors, in which I was edited for both sarcasm and theology.

Oh, and if you read that exchange with GM, you'll see the fruits of the policy that the Times instituted in response to my more recent conflict with them.

I AM UNFIT.

Ah, The New York Times letters page. A forum for the free exchange of any and all ideas that do not unduly disturb the editors of the New York Times letters page.

A letter with my signature appears in today's Times, but it's not exactly the letter I wrote. The changes were not for length or clarity. Rather, the editors felt that readers might "misunderstand" my point, even after I assured them that I meant to say precisely what they were afraid people might think I was saying.

Here is my original letter, followed by the one that was published. See if you can spot the subtle differences.

To the Editor:

Parents who want to prevent children from reading Harry Potter should take a similar look at another popular fantasy book. Among the horrors it describes are drunkenness, rape, incest, cannibalism and the wholesale slaughter of infants. And talk about sorcery - the entire affair is presided over by an all-powerful magical being. Of course, some people might object to banning the Bible, but don't we owe it to the kids?

To the Editor:

Parents who want to prevent children from reading Harry Potter should take a similar look at another popular book. Among the horrors it describes are drunkenness, rape, incest, cannibalism and the slaughter of infants. Of course, some people might object to banning the Bible.

Posted by Daniel Radosh

4:56 PM