I wrote an email today.

Senator McCaskill,

Before writing to you today using the form your office has so graciously provided, I had to select a "subject" from a list of thirty-nine issue areas. No doubt, all thirty-nine of these issue areas are important to your constituents, and each of them represents an aspect of "the people's business."

Not a single one of these thirty-nine subject headings applied to the message I am writing to you today. I am writing to you today to express my puzzlement at your "Yea" vote for the Sense of the Senate Resolution regarding Moveon.org's advertisement in the New York Times. Still, I had to select a "subject" header in order for you to receive this email, so I picked "Telecommunications." I suppose that subject heading could be remotely related, as the issue involves a website and a newspaper.

But the very fact that, among the thirty-nine categories of subjects, I could not find a single one that adequately fit the reason I was writing to you attests to my puzzlement with regard to your "Yea" vote in the Moveon.org resolution. Instead of tending to these thirty-nine issues your email form so helpfully categorizes, you and your Senate colleagues decided to tackle the issue of whether a newspaper ad was in poor taste.

By your "Yea" vote, I guess it's safe to assume that you believe the advertisement was in poor taste. That's your opinion. We all are entitled to have one. (As for my opinion, I'm really not much of a media critic, so I guess I don't really have an opinion on this matter. I guess I'm not Senate material.)

At the same time, your "Yea" vote on this matter ratified the Senate's excursion into this new issue-area of media criticism. Even if you thought the ad was in poor taste, you could have voted "Nay," but with the explanation that you believed the issue-area of advertising media criticism was best left to people other than the world's most powerful deliberative body. You also could have made a similar point by abstention.

I suppose then, by your unqualified "Yea" vote in this matter, you not only believe that the newspaper ad was in poor taste, you also believe that media criticism is a worthy use of the Senate's time. I would think that the Senate had better uses for its time (hey, don't you folks have some appropriations bills involving war and domestic spending and whatnot?). I'm puzzled, but, then again, maybe this issue of media criticism really is that important. What do I know? I'm just your constituent.

If media criticism is, in fact, a new and important issue you and your colleagues wish to tackle, I respectfully suggest that your staff includes it among the other subject headings to choose on your email form. (If you went with the subject heading "Media Criticism," it would go right in between "Labor" and "Medicare.")

Respectfully,

F. Matthew Frederick

St. Louis