They pulled my punch!

You good folks remember this blog entry from a few days ago:

---------------------------------------------------------------
"In God We Trust" NOT.
In a move worthy of Soviet Russia era censorship, Liberty Elementary School in Colleyville, TX has removed "In God We Trust" from the face of a U.S. nickel that appears in their yearbook. The school didn't want to offend those of different religions. What a lesson to teach the children: censorship and defacing our coins is acceptable so long as you're offended. Thomas Jefferson, the face on the nickel, owned slaves. That's offensive, isn't it? So shouldn't his face be removed from the yearbook cover as well? To be safe, the school should just have this blank, silver circle without "In God We Trust" and Jefferson's face. Somewhere out there, Joseph Stalin is rolling in his grave, wishing that Adobe Photoshop had been available back in his day.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Well, I sent that blog entry verbatim to my local newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (FWST from here on), as a Letter to the Editor (LTTE from here on). Here's how it appears in the LTTE page:

-------------------------------------------------------------
What a lesson to teach the children: Censorship and defacing our coins is acceptable so long as someone might be offended.

Thomas Jefferson, whose face is on the nickel, owned slaves. That's offensive, isn't it? So shouldn't his face be removed from the yearbook cover as well?

Josef Stalin is rolling in his grave, wishing that Adobe Photoshop had been available back in his day.

John P. Araujo, Fort Worth
--------------------------------------------------------------

See how much shorter it is? At first, I thought that it might be because of space issues (or rather, the lack of space), but if you look at some of the other letters on that page, you see that some of the LTTEs are longer than mine --so it wasn't a space issue.

What I don't like about the edited version above is that it "pulls my punch" of my original statement. I really hate it when editors do that. I take great care to not use the usual shock tactic of saying the "n word" or the "b word" or other such words, because I see that as a writing cop-out. If I want my statements to have some "punch", then I'll let my statements make the punch; I don't want the punch to come from some shortcut tactic as throwing around shock words.

I know and understand that it's not my newspaper, and the FWST is within their rights to edit as they please --but what would have been so wrong with printing my LTTE exactly as I wrote it? So folks, I'm really disappointed that the FWST felt the need to pull my punch. Or as it would be said in shock word fashion, I'm pissed.