LITTLE ROCK — “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising.”
- Lord Northcliffe D
ear Professor,
It was wholly a disappointment to learn that you wouldn’t be submitting your letter/guest article/outburst for publication after all. But I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s not as easy as one might think to write a clear, cogent opinion piece for a daily paper, is it? It’s even harder to sign your name to the kind that, on second thought, you’d really rather not see in print.
As for your informing me that “I do not approve my previous emails to be published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,” I have to tell you we don’t need your approval to publish them-not in a free country with a First Amendment. We just need to make sure they’re accurate and, happily enough, I’ve saved all of them for posterity. I know you’ll be happy to hear that.
Somebody needs to keep a record for the historical archives. So that some researcher someday who’s wondering how and why the University of Arkansas dismantled its once fine curriculum will have some documents to work with.
I certainly never agreed to go off the record. Indeed, I make it a rule not to. That way, I don’t have to remember what I’m free to share with readers and what I must keep from them. It saves me from having to do that kind of double bookkeeping, which simplifies life considerably. Useful thing, honesty. Maybe that’s why they call it the best policy.
It’s going to be hard to resist quoting from your emails, so revealing are they of a particular cast of mind among the American professoriate-so defensive it takes personal offense at any disagreement.
Your opening volley fit that pattern perfectly: “Your editorials about the University of Arkansas, the faculty and the administration are insulting to me as a faculty member. . .”
Unfortunately, you declined to have that email published as a letter to the editor. Instead you were going to “embellish and polish” it for publication. As you put it, “I don’t need to publicly embarrass you or call into question your professionalism in a public forum.” Just in private? If you’re not willing to stand by your views in public, that ought to tell you something about how well they’d hold up in private, too.
And please don’t confuse me with a professional. Certainly not in the sense George Bernard Shaw meant when he said every profession is a conspiracy against the laity. Journalism is a conspiracy for the laity, or should be. If you’ve got something you don’t want the public to know, don’t mention it to me. You could be reading about it on tomorrow’s editorial page.
I’m not a professional; I’m a newspaperman. And not even a reporter at that, the kind of journalist who relays the facts and leaves it at that, or should. I’m a columnist, an editorial writer, a utility opinionator and fulminator-in-general. Or as the late great J. William Fulbright called me when the quite respectable Washington Post inexplicably got me to review his latest book in its elevated pages, I’m only “an obscure controversialist.”
The senator had me pegged. Worse, I gloried in the title. Thought of it as a badge of honor. Still do. Feels like I’m bragging every time I mention the senator’s encomium.
Obscure Controversialist. I’ve always liked the ring of it. Certainly no one would confuse me with a gentleman. I carry on in public. Make scenes. Every day. In the newspaper. And being attacked in a public forum is nothing new to me. It comes with the territory. I signed up for it when I chose a career in controversy. I’m no more a professional than John Peter Zenger was.
I’m sorry you decided not to join this free-for-all, otherwise known as the vortex of public opinion, and declined to exercise your First Amendment rights on this occasion, specifically freedom of speech and freedom of the press. What good are such rights if we don’t exercise them?For rights unexercised tend to atrophy. They need to be used regularly, like muscles, if they’re to stay in shape. Think of it as your patriotic duty, as a way to strengthen the Bill of Rights. Fire when ready, Gridley. I’m used to it.
Should you ever change your mind about submitting your views for publication, by all means let us hear from you. Come on in, the water’s . . . hot.
In the meantime, you can relax. I may quote your views but won’t use your name. There are lots of professors on the UAF campus, and you should be able to just meld into the crowd of usual suspects. Why should I add to your embarrassment? Your views are embarrassing enough, as when you backed out of the public dialogue because “the people of Arkansas (or your readers) are not interested in an engaging conversation about core curricular trends at the university level in the 21st Century.”
That’s tellin’ us. All of us here in Arkansas. Turns out we’re just not good enough to appreciate your views.
But I do thank you for your best wishes, and return them. Here’s wishing you health, happiness and courage.
Especially courage.
Inky Wretch
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial, Pages 16 on 06/08/2011