A friend walked up to me after Rotary and stuck his hand out: “I know what you’ve been up to this past week.” We both laughed.
He was speaking of the column written by Slim Smith the day after the election, a week earlier. It was a strong column and sentiments expressed and analogies drawn were extreme. Like the column, the response has been strong, both negative and positive. It has produced a lot of conversation.
As my Rotary friend implied, blistering criticism has come my way via phone calls, emails and personal encounters with readers unhappy about the column and the timing of its publication.
This has been an election like none other, and I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t happy it’s over. Trump supporters are euphoric; Clinton supporters are distraught and bewildered. Segments of the population are fearful.
The most troubling aspect of this just-completed election season is the rancor that seems to exist between opposing sides. The election is almost two weeks past and demonstrations are continuing; you hear news reports about hateful acts directed at minorities.
As of Wednesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center has collected from a variety of sources 701 reports of hate incidents and harassment around the country since the election. Most of these have been directed against immigrants and African Americans. The amounts do seem to be declining in number as time goes on.
The strength and the beauty of this idea we call America is our capacity to accommodate and tolerate diverse thought, as well as diverse peoples. We seem to have misplaced that.
As I’ve been reminded repeatedly in the past two weeks, the majority — though not all — of the syndicated editorial cartoons and columns we have run during the election season have been critical of the Republican candidate.
We’ve not been unresponsive to reader criticism. A while back a reader unhappy with our syndicated offerings suggested we consider Pat Buchanan’s column.
Buchanan, a conservative who served in the Nixon White House, was on the Trump wagon early. His columns offer historical context to his opinion, and I feel he’s been a good addition to the paper.
The paper’s detractors often resort to the term “liberal,” as though it’s a pejorative. I’m not sure what that really means. America, itself, is the result of liberal thought (and action). Read a week’s worth of our editorials (OUR VIEW), I tell them. What’s liberal about demanding accountability from elected officials and encouraging greater civic involvement, two of our most prevalent themes.
I feel we’re in there swinging every day for the taxpaying public and the communities we serve. I wish our readers would raise as much hell about some of the things we’ve opined about (failing schools, irresponsible behavior by public officials, are two that immediately come to mind) as they have about Slim’s column of Nov. 9.
But, please know this: I’ve heard the criticism about content on the editorial page. Look for changes, though I am sure there will be opinions there you don’t agree with. That’s as it should be. This democracy thing is an ongoing conversation that sometimes requires a clash of ideas and opinions.
Let’s keep that conversation going.
Birney Imes is the publisher of The Dispatch. Email him at [email protected].
Birney Imes III is the immediate past publisher of The Dispatch.
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