[donation]
By Joel Thurtell
Man, are my ears burning.
A reader named “Ricky” really socked it to me in a pair of caustic comments last weekend.
I’m still reeling. My sense of self is in total tumult.
Don’t know where to turn.
Guess I’d better write.
Yep, “Ricky” really bore into the core Joel. Got me where I live.
Here’s a list of my sins, as perceived by “Ricky”:
I’m a pontificator.
I’m inconsistent.
I’m a newspaper reporter.
I’m white.
I’m a white newspaper reporter.
I’m racist.
I’m a racist newspaper reporter.
I’m a white racist newspaper reporter.
I tell you what, the slur that stings the most is the one about my being a newspaper reporter.
“Ricky” is clearly a newcomer to joelontheroad.com, or he would know that I most definitely am NOT, doggonit, I repeat, NOT NOT NOT a newspaperman!
A blogger, yes.
A bloviator, sure.
A fulminator, and yes, okay, a pontificator, most certainly.
(Check out the length of the first comment “Ricky” posted and tell me if maybe “Ricky” hasn’t picked up some bad habits from me in the pontification department)
But back to this newspaper thing. “Ricky,” I quit newspapering the way others quit smoking. Well, okay, that’s something of an exaggeration. I was paid to quit my habit. Took the Gannett Grant, aka a buyout, and walked out of the Detroit Free Press newsroom in November 2007. That makes almost a year that I’ve been newsroom-free. One day at a time, “Ricky,” but I’m doing it, I’m kicking the habit, killing the curse and I’d appreciate a little credit for the extraordinary will power it takes every minute of every day to keep from going back to newspaper reporting.
So please, please don’t malign me by calling me a newspaperman.
Now, what about that inconsistency thing?
My first reaction is simply to say with Ralph Waldo Emerson, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
And, of course, by “Ricky.”
Unlike “Ricky,” I don’t take the low road of ridicule, so no ad hominem wisecracks about his being probably a step or two removed from a divine. Nor will I bloviate on as “ricky” does about how I’m typing slowly so even a dimwit like “Ricky” will get my drift. No sir, no ad hominem ad nauseum in joelontheroad!
I’m not going to come back, either, with that Emerson wisecrack about consistency and hobgoblins, because what the hay, sometimes a little inconsistency can be just what the doctor ordered.
Besides, on second thought, I realized “Ricky” didn’t fully understand what he was pontificating about. Maybe he should have typed a little faster.
There’s a little inconsistency in “Ricky,” too.
Better retain inconsistency on my side as a Bad Thing that “Ricky” is guilty of.
Here’s what “Ricky” had to say:
I don’t get you. Your essay on Conyers is excellent. The reporting is the type of stuff a paper should do. But where is your consistency?
You are a white man working for a white-run paper and you want an Ethics Committee in Washington to take action (bring down) a black Congressman elected by a mostly black Detroit district?
Heck, the local resident got the info. They could recall him. But they didn’t. So now mostly white outsiders should remove him?
You bitched about that when Kwame came down. So what’s different? Other than this was your story?
Well, “Ricky,” regarding the recall of Conyers, that’s not a bad idea. Except that white or black, when was the last time you heard of a congressman being recalled?
What’s different, “Ricky,” is that the constituents of John Conyers Jr. did not get the full story. The Free Press dropped it posthaste. Thus, there was no development of the Conyers story, unlike Kwamegate, where the Free Press seemed to have standing orders that anything about Mayor Kilpatrick was Page One.
See what I mean? Apples and oranges, “Ricky.” No inconsistency with joelontheroad, but plenty on your side. Following your example, I typed that REAL slow.
And for good measure and at the risk of pontificating, I’ll repeat: In the case of Conyers, the story was choked off. In the case of Kwame, it was over-stoked. Yet even with all the hype, and with plenty of history of mayors and council members being recalled in Michigan, a recall movement against Kwame never got legs.
I’ll recap my recapitulation: There was no media echo chamber for Conyers. Not even a ghost of one. Curiously, the story was not picked up by national newspapers like the New York Times, Washington Post or Los Angeles Times, though they were fully aware of it. Doesn’t that seem odd? There was a period of time when the Republicans were taking hit after hit on ethics, and the New York paper I mentioned would, yes, pontificate about it once a month on its editorial page.
Those were, with one exception, white congresspeople who were being lambasted. Not a mention in the elite papers about Conyers. Odd? An understatement.
Without a press interest in the Conyers story, it was easy for the moribund House Ethics Committee to drop his case.
As to my “racism,” well that is such an easy thing to say, and generally so meaningless, that it usually refines down to nothing more than a taunt, an attempt to get one’s goat, like making mock of your mother. The object of such a jibe usually is to tip the scales of argument, to appeal to latent white guilt about slavery and segregation, to put the recipient of the slur on the oratorical defensive.
And here comes “Ricky” trotting out his “Uncle Tom” remarks.
Uncle Tom. My, my.
Lacing phrases like “uncle Tom” into your prose is meant, I know, to further embarrass and “out” me as a racist.
I should feel righteously castigated, I know, my evil ways having been exposed in such a forceful screed typed very slowly by the dreaded “Ricky.”
Instead, reprobate that I am, I’m thinking of what Dr. Johnson said about patriotism.
I’m thinking it applies equally to people who accuse other people whom they’ve never met of being racists.
An old rhetorical trick? Indeed.
And still it is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
