Vicious Cycle

If you force yourself to read the Daily News editorial pages, you’ll notice that the majority of letters it publishes on the subject of bike lanes are from readers who don’t like them.  It then points to those letters as proof that “ordinary” New Yorkers “don’t really seem to want bike lanes,” as Alex Nazaryan said in defiant ignorance of the latest Q polls.  So the only real vicious cycle going on is within the Daily News itself: it publishes an anti-bike-lane screed which in turn encourages the haters to put pen to paper to “sound off” on bike lanes.  Those letters, in turn, encourage the editors to run more anti-bike-lane screeds, which in turn enable more haters to put pen to paper…

And the head eats the tail.