The new year triggers in many of us musings about the year just passed, decisions made and actions taken, and thoughts about what might be ahead, questions of why are we doing what we do and do we continue to do these things.
I have been thinking about my curious decision to write a column with a conservative voice in a newspaper which serves what is likely some of the most liberal communities in the nation. On these editorial pages, I am clearly the skunk at the party, the guy who asks for the pie in the face.
I started seriously considering this well before the new year, after my last column at the beginning of December. In that column I had the impertinence to question the hyperbolic and apoplectic language expressed on these pages following the recent presidential election, and the temerity to suggest that maybe we should wait and see what the president-elect does before folks go nuclear.
With that, I was rewarded with responding columns, letters to the editor, and emails wondering which extinct branch of human evolution I represented, with some asking if I also practice cannibalism. I want to reassure those readers that I am not a cannibal, but I hesitantly go public on these pages for the first time to admit that I do eat some meat.
I have been writing this column monthly in the Gazette for about five years, and it began with an invitation from the then-editor Larry Parnass to contribute by representing a more conservative viewpoint that had not been much included previously on these pages. I had just finished a campaign for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Congressional seat, and the Gazette had been very fair in its coverage of my campaign.
I hope that Larry Parnass and the Gazette haven’t come to regret that invitation. I know that early on the editorial board had some qualms, as I did have a sit-down over coffee with Mr. Parnass after the first several of my columns. It was suggested that I pitch my column more to reach out to the generally liberal readership of the paper. I respectfully declined. My point was that the liberal readership was not my audience, that no matter how I tried to re-pitch what I was saying, that part of the community would never agree with me anyway, and I am not sure that conservatives and liberals even live on the same planet.
One aspect of writing this column which continues to surprise me is that I cannot predict in advance which of my columns will cause a furor of response, and which will go completely ignored. I will submit a column that I worry will be very inflammatory, then hunker down for the uproar only to have absolutely no letters to the editor or online postings in response.
Just the opposite happens as well. Though I am not surprised that there was some response to my last column, I did not anticipate the fervency of that response. Two years ago I wrote a column on municipal snowplowing, which I thought was amusing. The responding letters were ballistic.
For the first three years of my writing this column, it was also picked up by the Worcester Telegram and Gazette. The readership of that paper is far more conservative than that of the Gazette, and it was comforting to read the responding letters and online postings that broke three to two in my support, as opposed to the zillions to one in opposition as happens here in Hampshire County. Unfortunately for me, the Worcester Telegram was bought by the New York Times, the editor left, and my column appears there no longer.
There is, however, a considerable supporting audience to my column in this community. These are people who are glad to see someone publicly saying some of what they are thinking and believing. I meet these people all of the time – they say hello at the recycling center, they let me know they appreciate the column in passing in the supermarket, or come over when we are at a restaurant.
I’ll ask them to write a letter to the Gazette in support, but often they defer as they have businesses in the area or are worried about their neighbors if they are publicly outed about their beliefs. They expect a lack of tolerance of their “dissenting” views by this community.
Folks, I understand this concern. As many readers know, I am a physician in Northampton. I have worried all of these years about the potential negative impact my writing this kind of column might have on my practice. I have recently been thinking about this as well, and it occurs to me that I know of only two or three patients over all of these years who have left me over the politics.
Perhaps the expectation on the part of local conservatives of a universal community intolerance of more conservative ideas just isn’t true.
It also has recently occurred to me that I may have actually gained many more patients as a result of this column. If nothing else, I am daily presented with the enjoyable problem of patients being comfortable talking politics in the office with me, as I have made it clear where I stand on certain issues. I hope they understand that when there are time constraints in my schedule, I try to redirect the conversation to their medical problems.
So here I remain writing this column, as long as the invitation from the Gazette remains open. My thanks for the opportunity to write: it’s fun. Happy New Year to all.
Jay Fleitman, M.D., of Northampton, writes a monthly column. He can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.