Opinion: The Letters Top Five: Prop 8 crushes Barack Obama

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Each week, your letters maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.

After she cuts out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, from which she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper.

Last week The Times received 1310 usable letters, 1185 of which were in our Top Five Topics.

This week’s headline: Surprisingly (or not, considering the comments on this blog), letters received Wednesday and Thursday responding to the passage of Proposition 8 outnumbered letters commenting on Barack Obama’s historic election by 73%.

• Proposition 8: 667 letters, including reponses to the measure’s passage as well as reactions to stories such as this collection of Op-Eds;
• The Presidential election: 427 letters, including post-election thoughts as well as comments on stories such as this story and this story about life on the campaign trail;
• Other election: 61 letters, including reaction to ballot propositions beyond Proposition 8 and election day process;
• Illegal immigrants’ healthcare: 18 letters, responding to this story; and
• Defining ‘rich’: 12 letters, reacting to Mitchell Rofsky’s Op-Ed about defining what income makes a taxpayer rich.