Letter to the editor: Charen needs to use plain English

When I saw, on the Trib’s Opinion page, that someone named Mona Charen had written a piece apparently damning “cancel culture” (“Both sides need to cancel cancel culture,” Feb. 26, TribLIVE), I started to read it, hoping to find out just what cancel culture was. After completing my read of Charen’s difficult style (loaded with esoteric words that contributed heavily to the difficulty), as best I could tell “cancel culture” is a new movement espoused by liberals that flies in the face of long-held cultural norms, mostly by doing or proposing to do the exact opposite of what has long been considered “normal.”

In her piece Charen points out that giving children drugs that have been designed to effect sexual changes in adults might be harmful to those children. If such practices are going on, I would agree wholeheartedly and hope that those who are practicing this should stop or be arrested and prosecuted under existing laws that protect children.

Coined terms such as “cancel culture” often tend to help conceal wrongdoings rather than shine the light of awareness on them. And writers who wish to bring something to the attention of the general public need to do so clearly, using simple terms and plain English.

Ed Collins

West Newton