Opinion: The Letters Top Five

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For a second week, American International Group’s woes had the most letter writers buzzing.

During the week ending March 28, The Times received 496 usable letters, 207 of which were in our Top Five Topics.

• AIG: 104 letters, reacting to Times coverage of bonuses at the company (including this column by Tim Rutten);

• Obama: 34 letters, responding to the president’s trip to California and to this editorial about his campaign promises;

• Mexico: 30 letters, reacting to news about drug wars and the border;

• Oakland shootings: 25 letters, lamenting the murders of four police officers in Oakland; and

• Dementia drugs: 14 letters, reacting to this Op-Ed by psychologist Ira Rosofsky, who argues that Americans depend too much on drugs when treating dementia.

How the Top Five is tabulated: Each week, your letters maven receives thousands of e-mails, dozens of letters through the good old U.S. postal service, and even a few faxes here and there.

After she cuts out spam, obscene mail, letters addressed to more than one recipient, letters that seem to be the fruit of letter-writing campaigns and letters with attachments (which gum up our computer systems,) she is usually left with several hundred eligible items, represented in the Letters Top Five tally. From these, she selects the somewhere around 100 that get published in the newspaper. Faxes and snail mail are not reflected in the chart.