Letters: Buzz Bissinger's fuzzy motivations for writing column about Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown

IGREW up in Havertown, and was home visiting when I read the Feb. 21 column by Buzz Bissinger on Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown. It was one of the most tasteless and insensitive things I've ever read in that newspaper. Even for the

Daily News

, it was pretty bad.

I'm not sure what kind of upbringing you had, but it must have been a pretty charmed one for you to assume Brown's revelation is false and a publicity stunt because it didn't rise to your level of "genuine horror." You also had the audacity to slam the Catholic Church and proclaim that those accusations are the ones you believe. Your reasoning? A car ride you shared with Cardinal Bevilacqua. You even went as far to mention you had a driver in that scenario - was that to imply something may have happened otherwise?

You seem to be looking for juicier and more substantiated details in order to believe the story of Brown's childhood. If your own child couldn't or didn't want to recount the genuine horror of sexual abuse, would you dismiss his claims, too? Maybe you're just envious that Brown told his own story and you didn't get to trail him for a few years in order to craft a dramatic piece which could be made into a TV episode or feature film and boost your best-seller stats.

Kate Rafferty, Boston

nolead begins

No one in their right mind is reveling in the allegations of abuse in the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church is falling, and it's not the fault of the Daily News, cartoonist Signe Wilkinson, liberals or gays.

Columnist Christine Flowers wrote: "The gay culture that liberals celebrate and want to bring into places like the Boy Scouts is what opened the door to this."

I'm a Catholic, liberal-minded, married woman, and I am not to blame for the behavior of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

Ellen Merrigan, Philadelphia