We’re all for printing opinions as long as they’re not libelous. We’re enchanted by producing a newspaper every week. We’re blissed when people read what we have to say, whether they like us or accuse us. So…
We received an email last Friday that the reader agreed we could print as a letter to the editor if we apologized for a Wolftoon on March 1 that the reader found offensive. The cartoon showed Donald Trump trying to sell a lemon (oil leak, missing wheel, smoky exhaust) as a finely tuned car. The car was portrayed as Trump’s cabinet.
You know, sometimes the pain of deciding which words and pictures we want in our newspaper is exquisite. Newspapers harness public debate, contribute to broad culture, mirror the community. They can kick and they can trip.
Newspapers were a huge political influence during the fracas, no, the war, to gain independence from England. In this country’s earliest years of becoming a republic, those years working up to the American Revolution, newspapers sounded the siren for patriots. Patriots were the ones who were going up against the Mother England and insisting on a healthy, fair government. They were called uppity, delusional and misinformed, and they won our freedom.
Now, hundreds of years later, we’re fighting that same battle. We have a president who said during his campaign, “This country is going to hell!” but refuses to release his income tax returns and said he doesn’t pay taxes because he’s smart.
Come on. How can he refuse to help support the country he’s leading?
Being imperfect (whatever that is) ourselves, we explored our thinking.
We seem to define ourselves as rich or poor. Old or young. Interesting or dull. Liberal or conservative. Vegetarian or meat eater. Atheist or theist. And then we fight what we’re not. So every crazy thing we identify as, polarizes us.
Americans who read, listen, and talk among themselves know we have a man in the White House who perceives anger and deception as normal. He’s a man who has never paid his own way and still doesn’t.
Yet there are millions of voters who preferred him to the status quo. Voters were tired of crappy water coming out of taps, tired of wages not keeping pace with prices, tired of prison sentences for non-violent crimes, tired of Oklahoma earthquakes caused by fracking for oil, tired of the one percent. Voters weren’t inspired, they were tired. And they ached to be heard.
Voters apparently thought this president would change their lives, and he has. But all we’re doing is rearranging the same old furniture and stubbing our toes doing it.
We became, because of your letter, aware that Donald Trump is a reflection of us, or maybe our shadow. We realized that as long as we think of him as a master, we are slaves.
So we were left with what feels like a duty to point out snarkiness in those who upset us, including the president. We also understand the futility of that, as it only riles us even more. What’s the alternative? Leave him alone to thrust his wobbly temperament on the whole world?
We’re at a crossroads here. Being naïve, angry or a supplicant is just so, oh, easy. We do occasionally believe that Trump is good for us. He knows the dark side of business and human relations. Maybe he will expose the fraud of politics and humanity in general, so we can get rid of borders instead of building walls. Maybe he’s teaching us by waking us up.
No, we won’t apologize for a cartoon Wolf Grulkey drew. Wolf is a veteran, a pilot, a political junkie, a father, an artist, a taxpayer, a fair and true man who loves his country as much as any patriot. He appreciates his brain.
However, we invite you, sir, to come to our office for a cup of coffee. It takes honing both sides of a blade to get it sharp enough to be useful, and your letter reminded us that civility is the first step. For that, we owe you.
Mary Pat Boian
Perfectly stated!