I laud Growing Community Media for its work in bringing a conversation between Joe Walsh and Fred Guttenberg to Dominican University on April 9 for a presentation of “Two Dads Defending Democracy.” From my perspective, current political discourse involves lots of shouting and virtually no listening. But change has to start somewhere. If this presentation becomes even a small element of that change, we all benefit.
I was struck by this particular comment from our publisher, Dan Haley, while discussing the presentation in the Our Views editorial of the April 3 Viewpoints section:
“One path back to American optimism and realism is finding ways to talk to each other, to stop the debilitating and dehumanizing ways we have come to communicate about our shared civic life.”
I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment, but I think Mr. Haley need look no further than the newspaper he founded for persistent evidence of what he claims to decry. Consider Viewpoints editor Ken Trainor referring to all elected Republican Congresspersons as “insurrectionists”[1] (as if all of them stormed the nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, or supported those who did), or his declaration that “one-third of this country is functionally mentally ill” because they disagreed with Mr. Trainor regarding the safety or efficacy of COVID vaccinations[2] or Mary Kay O’Grady writing under the headline “Republicans are a noisy bunch of toddlers”[3] as just a few of many worthwhile examples of what Mr. Haley rightfully calls “debilitating and dehumanizing ways we have come to communicate about our shared civic life.”
Exacerbating this degrading approach to political opponents is the absence of any counterbalancing perspective presented in this paper. I’ve written to Wednesday Journal Viewpoints twice [4] [5] to point out the omission of anything approaching a conservative perspective. Those letters resulted in no responses and, of greater concern, no changes.
Here’s hoping our new editor, Erika Hobbs, can help enforce a more respectful, reflective balance to these pages.
[1] Viewpoints, Feb. 14, 2023
[2] Viewpoints, Jan. 4, 2022
[3] Viewpoints, Feb. 28, 2023
[4] Viewpoints, July 27, 2021
[5] Viewpoints, Oct. 11, 2022
Tom Healey
Oak Park
