“So you’re causing a ruckus again,” observed one reader. “You’re stirring the pot with all those ‘take life too seriously’ people.”
“Well, that’s kind of my job,” I answered. “I paid my dues.” I spent years as a humble reporter assembling objective reportage every week. “Now I get to go off once in a while.”
Actually, this summer I’ve tried to be informative and entertaining, but ultimately I’ve been marking time until I could write my truth from my heart. That’s what it’s about for me. Luckily, not everyone agrees with my truth; think how boring that would be.
Any writer is lucky to work in interesting times, or conversely, perhaps good writers help make their times interesting. If someone wasn’t out there stirring the pot, even making some people angry, interesting would be a relative thing. Edward Abbey stressed the importance of stirring the pot: “…if you don’t keep it stirred up you get a lot of scum on top.”
I’ve always considered Abbey a good writer, and no question: he made a lot a people mad. He definitely informed and educated a generation of Americans, and he didn’t give a hoot in hell whether people liked him for his radical rants or not. I once asked Abbey how he could be such a misanthrope and hope to do good in the world. He answered that people who thought he was a misanthrope didn’t know him.
Abbey also held that people who lived in desert places were more to his liking than those who lived among mountains. He considered us xenophobes and socially inbred. I say to hell with Abbey, and I think he would have approved that attitude. He is correct in one respect, though; our relative isolation confines us in a stew pot that has nowhere to vent except back upon itself. So be it; there are compensations.
One of those compensations in our small mountain town is our newspaper. The newspaper gives us a voice, a place to put out there what is on our mind. Yes, I enjoy a bully pulpit because I earned it from years of being a reporter. But anyone who signs their name can write a letter and see it published in the newspaper. Never take this public voice for granted; not every newspaper in every town provides it.
So it bothers me only a little when folks disagree with what I write and respond with a major case of ire. It affirms me and lets my boss know I’m doing my job. One colleague always complains I’m a higher-paid pundit than he is. Perhaps we should institute a sliding pay scale where the writer with the most hate mail gets a raise.
I would be a wealthy writer—if there is such a thing—this week, because my email inbox is full of critical missives, my boss had to increase the page count to print outraged readers, and the tyranny of my cell phone is having its way with my ear. The only person I haven’t heard from is George W. Bush himself, which isn’t surprising since he never responded to previous letters I wrote. I even signed them.
If response mail is any indication, in the last couple of weeks I achieved a hat-trick. I angered what the left wing would call the right wing because I pummeled George W. Bush after his visit to our fair valley. I didn’t think I was being that harsh; we can never forgive and we must never forget. “Bush doesn’t matter,” opined one critic. “He’s a war criminal.” Whoa: I didn’t say that.
The second element of my hat-trick: I angered what the right wing would call the left wing. I trespassed on ground over which I seldom venture, and offended those who seek a different path for development of the ski area and proposed ski area expansion.
Having been so soundly thrashed by both sides of that particular debate, I hope here to very carefully watch what I say so as not to prolong or exacerbate the discussion. Writers must carefully measure their words, although sometimes such care gets in the way of truth and generates its own consequences. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t: such are the rewards of the bully pulpit.
Finally, I offended the fringy middle with my assertion that we must somehow achieve health care reform. Few issues in our national debate stir so many opinions and feelings. Yet I believe if something isn’t broke, leave it alone. But if it’s broke, and I believe health care is indeed broken, then fix it.
Okay, now about that raise…or not.
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