(Editor’s note: below is a copy of a letter sent by Missoula Independent Editor Brad Tyer to Gawker.com in response to a recent item that was posted on Gawker and then linked from AAN Wire.) Dear Gawker Editor, While we were pleased to see our fine paper mentioned on Gawker.com, I can’t help but feel that our calendar entry has been misconstrued in your recent post. The calendar entry in question is for a running event — every Saturday night’s karaoke event at a local bowling alley. In trying to keep the calendar entry fresh, our calendar editor Jason Wiener has developed a running “goes together like” gag taking its cue from current national news (Missoula is not so far, far away after all), the point of which is not, as your interpretation holds, to pair peanut-butter-and-jelly likes, but precisely to point out disturbing pairings.

For instance, from this week: “Bowling and karaoke go together like an anti-Semitic tirade from a drunken Mel Gibson and making movies about Jews killing Jesus during Solid Sound Karaoke at Westside Lanes.” Or, “Bowling and karaoke go together like responding to newspaper editorials you don’t like and envelopes full of white powder during Solid Sound Karaoke at Westside Lanes,” from July 20. Or “Bowling and karaoke go together like Mark Cuban and Dan Rather at…” from June 22. You get the picture. To the extent that we have an editorial policy on such things (settle down: we don’t) it’s that bowling and karaoke don’t go particularly well together at all.

Such could have been easily ascertained, of course, with a quick email to Calendar Editor Jason Wiener (calendar@missoulanews.com) or myself (btyer@missoulanews.com), but then that would have undermined your hick-bashing hypothesis. Better to take a tip hook, line and sinker from an anonymous “ranch-handling reader” (what the hell IS that, anyway?) and enjoy your snide fix untroubled by comprehension.

Oh well. At least we got the pleasure of seeing our country humor (we come by it naturally: Jason’s from New Hampshire, I’m from Houston) fly right over the heads of the sophisticates at Gawker, and that’s no small consolation for seeing ourselves willfully misconstrued on a national stage.

We sure do hope you keep reading our little paper, though. Makes us feel all important and stuff.

Cheers,

Brad Tyer
Editor
Missoula Independent