Matt the newspaperman (newswebsite man does not sound as cool)

A friend posted to Facebook an e-mail she got that was a copy of a letter to the editor in the Star-Tribune of Minnesota in which Satan takes Pat Robertson to task for blaming the earthquakes on a pact with the devil. Satan points out that is not how he works.; "I'm no welcher," he says. Satan is also obviously no fan of dictionaries, where he would have learned the preferred spelling is "welsher."

Satan also suggests that Pat and he have a deal, telling Pat to watch out or "we may need to renegotiate your own contract."

Now I knew this letter wasn't really from Satan -- no way he goes through a Minnesota newspaper. But I doubted it was actually from the paper. Sure it is funny and all, but the Star-Tribune is a good paper. It wouldn't print a joke letter that even says Robertson has a deal with the devil. It wouldn't stoop that low, right? Please, my journalistic ethics have taken enough blows lately.

If the Star-Tribune wanted to get involved in this fight, which I have no problem with -- newspapers should not let vicious lies be told -- it could have printed a point by point rebuttal of Robertson.

Instead, it stooped.

And it is working. The page with the letter is one of the most popular on the Star-Tribune's website. I am going to propose a U.S. version of Page 3 Girls for the money section of our website.

On another note, I wondered what Kevin Roose would say about the letter. Roose wrote The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University. He was a student at Brown who decided to take his semester overseas at Liberty University in Virginia on the theory that Jerry Falwell's evangelical school would be as foreign as any college across an ocean.

I really wanted to use the words "snot-nosed punk kid" to describe Roose. I mean he has a published book before he finished college, but he made me laugh. I read the book because Roose worked for A.J. Jacobs as a slave, or unpaid intern.

But I read it quickly because it was fun and interesting.

After his semester he is changed. He did not become an evangelical. But he did
become sympathetic, or compassionate, to people who hold beliefs he doesn't. He even winds up defending Falwell once or twice.

I don't know where he would fall on Robertson. I hope, though, he would come down against a newspaper printing a joke.