Dear Charlotte Observer: How Am I Going to Explain This Stupid Open Letter about Cam Newton to My Dog?

Dear Charlotte Observer:

This is my dog. She’s a good dog, likes sniffing stuff and running after balls and squirrels sometimes. She also likes bright screens, like televisions and computers. I work from home, so naturally she is often exposed to some of the things I read on the computer. One of those things was a letter you published from a Tennessee mother who took her nine-year-old daughter to the Panthers-Titans game last Sunday. In it, she used her child as a stand-in for her own saltiness about Cam Newton’s celebratory dancing.

How am I supposed to explain to my dog that kids generally don’t say things like Cam Newton was acting “like a spoiled brat”?

My daughter sensed the change immediately – and started asking questions. Won’t he get in trouble for doing that? Is he trying to make people mad? Do you think he knows he looks like a spoiled brat?

How am I supposed to explain to my dog—look at her up there, so innocent and impressionable—what a truly bad idea it was to publish this moral grandstanding by a nine-year-old proxy? How am I supposed to explain to my dog that somehow a parent—whose only job with respect to her child is to educate, inform, and shape her into a good and intelligent contributor to society—could not be bothered to discuss the heinousness of Cam Newton’s dancing and instead “redirected her attention to the cheerleaders and mascot”?

How am I supposed to explain to my dog that there is no way in hell that a nine-year-old said, “I guess he doesn’t have kids or a Mom at home watching the game,” after watching Cam Newton dance for, like, ten seconds? How is my dog supposed to reckon your decision to publish this passive-aggressive trash one day after posting a smart, level-headed discussion on why people seem to have a problem with Cam Newton and not, say, J.J. Watt?

You’re supposed to be a source of information and knowledge for your readers. Is this what your editors and publishers instilled in you, Charlotte Observer?