Dear constituent: Buzz off

OK, I've told you about turf, those interest-group mass-produced letters to the editor disguised as the individual efforts of real readers, and how newspapers look for them to prevent them from getting published. What do you think about this? A libertarian interest group is asking its members to bombard members of Congress with automatically generated "constituent letters" so the legislators get the idea that a lot of voters care about this or that issue. Our own Sen. Evan Bayh is apparently refusing to accept such input, saying it is "third-party-generated mass mailings" rather than legitimate constituent input. This is ticking off some of those constituents, who say it doesn't matter whether they phone or write a personal letter or fill out a form on-line -- they still feel the way they do, and he should pay attention to it. Now, the group is urging its members to fight back. Here is a small portion of one of its e-mails:

Starting right now please call the office of Senator
Bayh of Indiana at 202-224-5623. Fax Senator Bayh of
Indiana at 202-228-1377. Ask him to stop deterring
and discouraging constituent messages received via
DownsizeDC.org.

If Senator Bayh is allowed to block messages from
constituents, others in Congress will do so too. But
compel him to change his policy and others in
Congress will take note, and not want to test us.

My initial reaction is that there is a difference between editorial pages blocking turf and Sen. Bayh blocking mass e-mailings. Letters to the editor involve a debate, a give-and-take among readers that should advance discussion of an issue. Cutting-and-pasting opinions adds nothing to the conversation. A senator should want to know what his constituents think, no matter how their expression of it reaches his office.

But maybe I'm too close to it. Am I using a double standard, criticizing Bayh for doing something I also do?