ABOUT A YEAR AGO, WHILE waiting to get my hair cut, I happened to browse through a copy of Ebony (first time for me), where I saw mentioned the “known fact” that African-Americans had been sailing to this continent and back hundreds of years before “the criminal” Columbus. This was not an assertion, not a contention, but a bald-faced attempt at changing the truth simply by faking it: Saying it makes it true.

So I was less surprised than I might have been upon reading Patrick Symmes’ hero-worship piece on cutting-edge white-blamer Ralph Wiley (“Writin’ Is Fightin’,” 12/10). Is this some sort of retribution for the “white and cowed” story (“The Unbearable Whiteness of Being,” 11/12)? Pathetic. Anyway, this must be said: The “parable” of Ardelia is the most outrageous, disturbing, and (since the audience seemed to swallow it whole) foreboding silo full of shit ever to be peddled outside an asylum.

Arlington, Va.