Death of a Liberal Column

Word came in a hurriedly written e-mail from the editor of the Greene County Dailies: “After careful review of the newspapers we making some major changes to its content, therefore we have decided to discontinuing your column at this time…” I did not mind the grammatical problems with the notice. I assumed that as a new editor working for a new publisher she was in a hurry and didn’t proofread what she had written. I did mind that after seven years as the sole liberal voice of a newspaper in rock-solid Republican Greene County of Southwestern Ohio, my voice was being extinguished.

After spending most of my 60 years living in the Northeast, I had come out here from Connecticut to be with my college sweetheart. I had settled in Xenia, a friendly place surrounded by farms, where baseball caps, pickup trucks, and deep conservative beliefs predominate.

The intrepid publisher of the local paper was impressed with some of my letters to the editor and, knowing that I had written columns for papers in the East, said that the paper would gladly print my columns. He might have regretted this decision, even though he told everybody that I was the best writer he had. I started out writing in support of the rights to abortion and same-sex marriage. The publisher told me that he was getting lots of telephone calls complaining about me. I think that the readers had never seen anything in the local paper like my columns.

Things turned really ugly when I wrote a series of articles about evolution and the pseudo-science called “Intelligent Design.” Angry letters poured into the paper. As the volume of calls to the editor increased, the invective against me became more virulent. My columns in support of Barack Obama and against John McCain incensed people. I was told that the editor decided not to come in on the days my columns appeared because of the avalanche of complaining calls.

I discovered that many of the most hostile letters came from people in the extreme right-wing. The local leader of the John Birch Society excoriated me. When I wrote an article against guns, one writer opined that they might have to use their Second Amendment rights against me. Friends told me to watch my back. One writer, who objected to my column against militias and the Ku Klux Klan, said that I had “defiled” myself. A surprisingly large number of the letters were illiterate in tone and syntax.

The anger reached its zenith when I wrote a column making-fun of the Tea Parties. In my opening line I quoted from Alice in Wonderland: “`At any rate I'll never go there again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!’ ” I went on to compare Neil Cavuto of Fox News to the Dormouse, Sean Hannity to the March Hare, and Newt Gingrich to the Mad Hatter. The locals were furious!

People would often come-up to me at Kiwanis picnics, look furtively around, and whisper that they agreed with everything I wrote. But in seven years of writing columns, there was not one single letter supporting me. People were simply afraid of the ostracism they would experience if they came out in open support of this dirty, pinko, liberal writer.

Well, the kids will not be exposed to my subversive opinions anymore. Secure in the knowledge that they will no longer be challenged to critical thought, the people around here can sit-back and revert to their old ideas and comfortable prejudices.