Ironically, the Gazette ran a page full of letters critical of Northampton Human Rights Commission appointee Tara Ganguly’s testy tweets in the same issue that ran fulsome praise for “Blazing Saddles,” a movie once disdained as flatulently offensive but now hailed as a masterpiece.
We all want judge fast as a Google search, a proclivity that served us well when we lived in caves; in civilization, we ought to think for a while.
Readers summarily judged Ganguly as unfit for civic duty on the basis of a few tweets, but let me ask: How many followers does she have? 50? 50,000? What percentage of her tweets could be considered obnoxious? Half? One in a thousand?
Do vituperative outbursts intrude into her work, leading her to insult clients, witnesses, and opposing council? Most importantly, what are her accomplishments? The letter writers extrapolate a handful of tweets to irredeemable rudeness; whereas, Ganguly might be a dedicated professional who, in effect, curses when she hammers her thumb.
In reporting on those tweets, the Gazette failed to anticipate how eagerly readers pass sentence, no matter how incomplete the case.
The Human Rights Commission has probably lost a valuable member.
Tobias Baskin
Amherst