OPINION

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Me and Paul

Last Monday evening I was doing a Zoom thing, a panel discussion on "Media and Polarization" hosted by a group of do-gooders called Braver Angels who have assigned themselves the task of healing the lesions on our body politic by discovering ways that our citizens, having been divided and indoctrinated by the prevailing Politics as Sport business model, might find moments of clarity and instances of common values.

While I very much endorse what Braver Angels is trying to do, I'm not sure I have much to offer in the way of advice on how to achieve this goal other than we need to stand up straight, make eye contact, speak softly, and allow for the possibility that we might be wrong.

Or as John Prine suggested 50 years ago: "Blow up your TV."

I have a funny way of preparing for occasions on which I might be asked questions. I don't like to talk things out ahead of time or prepare speeches. Being a little bit surprised by questions is better, or at least more interesting, to hear what I think as I think it.

I would have two minutes to introduce myself, talk about how I got started in journalism, and report on who inspires me.

The multi-part question was coming, but I didn't think too hard about how to answer it other than to tell the truth as it occurred to me. By the end of it, my time was dwindling. I thought about talking about all the great sportswriters I read as a kid--Jim Murray, Frank Deford and Dan Jenkins--but in the moment I veered into another direction. I said that chief among the newspaper columnists who inspired me were Murray Kempton, Nat Hentoff, and Paul Greenberg.

I am not oblivious. I know whose turf this is, who patrolled this ground, policed this area and fielded this position before I took it up. I hope I am to him as Garry Maddox was to Willie Mays, Doug DeCinces was to Brooks Robinson, as Bobby Murcer was to Mickey Mantle. I hope I am good enough.

Paul Greenberg was the reason I came back to Arkansas. Griffin Smith had made me a good offer. I liked working for New Times in Phoenix, but it looked like it might be another year before the columnist they anticipated me replacing retired. Still, they would match the money and revisit my deal in six months.

Then I came home one night and found a message from Greenberg on my answering machine. He wanted to know when I was going to come home and write a column for him.

That was December 1992. I was here by February, writing this column. It started on a different page back then.

* * *

Later on in the Braver Angels panel discussion, we were asked about if and how our industry might be contributing to the political polarization of the country. We can't deny that it is--that we are--though I wanted to make it clear that most real journalists are too busy doing their jobs to contribute to the problem.

It might sound like so much boilerplate to say that most reporters are, like most cops and maybe most lawyers, trying to do the best they can under less than ideal circumstances. I said the country needed journalists who felt called to their vocation, that we needed monks to burrow and illuminate.

(Our Ginny Monk had a little fun with that line on Twitter, but the truth is that, while the pun was unintended, she is exactly the sort of intelligent, industrious and fearless talent we need to devote themselves to our trade if our trade is going to continue to function as a check on the powerful and privileged.)

And we need consumers to recognize that reporters are different than people like me, who are paid to express opinions and trusted to do the sort of work that justifies the expression of those opinions. But even among the bloviators, I said, the problem was not so much disingenuous and dishonest opinion journalists (though they exist), but lazy ones.

It is easy to align with causes and movements and to receive the focus-group talking points of one faction or the other. It is easy to pose as the house curmudgeon, or to act like the ancient Druids and appease the crowd by setting straw men afire. It is easy to adopt the jargon and the bullet points and to pander to the worst instincts of the mob. The seams of paranoia, shame and fear that run through this diverse and yet-to-be shaped country are as easily exploitable as they are rich. It is always the devil that does the tempting.

It is hard to do the real work. Paul Greenberg did the real work.

And not only did he reject all orthodoxies in favor of genuine original thought underpinned by curiosity and actual learning, he understood it all as just necessary preparation to the main thing, the writing.

He understood that, like most things in life, like basketball and shelling peas, writing is mainly rhythm, a judicious selection of syllables and sense. He understood that words are haunted and each is unique, and that our real endeavor is more the devastation of cliché than the turning of hearts. Lectures don't turn hearts anyway; music does.

* * *

We understood each other, Paul and me.

When we worked together, we worked well, which is to say we left each other alone.

I hadn't seen him over this past quarantined year, but since he retired I'd been to his place a few times. We sat for supper, we talked a little, I brought him books. He had some of my wine. I had some of his Laphroaig. I called him "maestro."

He won a Pulitzer, which like all journalism awards, doesn't mean anything unless you win it. He nominated me for a couple; I was cleaning out my desk at the office the other day when I found one of the letters he'd written on my behalf. I put it in a folder with a couple of other slips of paper I want to save.

If we are to be judged, it might be that the fairest and most kind way to judge is by looking to what we love and what loved us back. As so look to Brooke and Carolyn, to Ruth and Dan, to Pine Bluff and Little Rock and Shreveport's Texas Street. Look to these pages, these high gray seas, these inky wretches ...

This certain slant of light.

pmartin@adgnewsroom.com

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