There is absolutely no reason to ever use the word “a**holes” in print in Wednesday Journal. See Ken Trainor’s opinion piece “No Kings, but maybe one billionaire” [Viewpoints, Oct. 15]. My father was the editor of a small-town newspaper and would have abhorred this language. English provides plenty of alternatives that convey the message and are suitable for print. If anyone thinks, “they go low, we can go lower,” is a winning and persuasive strategy, they are wrong. Doing so denigrates the newspaper, makes the writer look uneducated and insults the reader. The Journal’s Viewpoints editor desperately needs an editor.
Curtis Helwig
River Forest