I love Sean Hannity and Michael Moore. They're making my life these days a big scrumptilicious piece of my Mom's from-scratch devil's food cake. But Connie Coyne's Sept.18 reader advocate column said some Tribune readers would prefer angel food.

The 19 callers complaining about the mix of letters got my attention. The complaints had to do with point of view, not topic. Too damn many liberals.

This is not news; it's human nature, and both I and Editorial Page Editor Vern Anderson have written about it before. We try hard to present a representative sampling of the letters we receive, and that means the Forum often includes more letters expressing liberal viewpoints than conservative ones.

When conservatives represent the majority, in government and other areas of public life, liberals are the most likely to criticize what they do and how they do it. When liberals are in the majority -- and of course, we have to look outside Utah for this phenomenon -- conservatives complain. Again, it's human nature. I call it the Underdog Factor of political science, and I've seen it time and again over the course of my career.

On Sunday, Sept. 19, I received 20 letters about Michael Moore's invitation to speak at Utah Valley State College. Seventeen -- yup, 17 -- favored Moore's appearance. Not all of the letters, pro or con, included the required telephone numbers and street addresses. Some exceeded our 250-word limit. A couple were unpublishable for other reasons: ad hominem attacks, unclear writing, etc.

The reason I love Michael Moore is that he's generating reams of letters. Now that Hannity's in the act (literally and figuratively), and gubernatorial candidate Jon Huntsman Jr.'s ventured onto potentially dangerous political terrain with his financial support for Hannity's travel to UVSC, I'm in what we used to call Fat City.

More letters make life easier for me. I can be more selective in my choices and more merciless in the winnowing process. But I and my colleagues on The Tribune's editorial board just wish there were more solid, well-reasoned conservative letters among them. Some of you have told me over the past couple of years that you feel I wouldn't publish them if I received them. All I can say is, try me.

The Tribune, I believe, receives fewer letters to the editor than other newspapers of similar circulation. The reason, in my view, is that we serve a unique population that includes many folks who don't believe it appropriate to complain, or otherwise comment, about various aspects of public life, especially the performance of elected public officials.

The view is that one should be involved in the political process through the election. After that, it's one's responsibility to support without complaint just about everything the winners do. That attitude is not good for healthy public discourse, and it's not what democracy is all about.

It also makes for an often lopsided Public Forum here, and until more of you bright, logical, clear-thinking conservatives give me more to work with, I'll have to have another hunk of devil's food cake.

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Malin Foster is the editor of The Tribune's Public Forum.