My latest letter to the Hamilton Spectator
Harry Shannon
The letter wasn’t published, but others making some similar points were. It followed a column by the Toronto Star’s public editor, Bruce Campion-Smith. (Torstar owns the Star and the Spec and the two papers print the same horoscopes.) Campion-Smith noted that the astrologer who wrote the horoscopes had – shock! – recycled her predictions, so the papers were now going to get another astrologer.
After several letters critical of horoscopes and their ‘validity’ appeared, the Spec’s editor-in-chief, Paul Berton, doubled down on publishing horoscopes. A newspaper, he wrote, doesn’t just provide information, adding “[b]ut we know there are many, many others who get joy from such features because they are a diversion from the news, which can often be grim.” This was followed by some airy-fairy, touchy-feely nonsense.
If you really want to provide people with joy, publish good news. As people like the late Hans Rosling have written, there is plenty of it, pandemic notwithstanding. See Rosling’s book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.
So here’s my letter:
Replace the horoscopes
I agree with the letter writers who criticized your publication of horoscopes. I know the Toronto Star’s public editor argued that they’re often read for entertainment. But since some people do take them seriously, they are potentially dangerous. Swapping one self-plagiarizer of fake news for another purveyor of fake news is hardly an improvement.
I just read on CNN’s website about lawyer Sidney Powell’s response to the defamation suit against her from Dominion Voting Systems. She had falsely claimed that there was fraud in the U.S. election. She now says that people shouldn’t have believed her!
Is your defence of astrology really that different, continuing to print nonsense and claiming it’s just for entertainment so we shouldn’t believe it?
Wouldn’t it be better to replace the horoscopes altogether with a daily science column?
Harry Shannon
One extra point: there’s something called the Barnum effect described by Britannica as ‘the phenomenon that occurs when individuals believe that personality descriptions apply specifically to them (more so than to other people), despite the fact that the description is actually filled with information that applies to everyone.’ We’re all susceptible, we’re all potential suckers, so forewarned is forearmed.