Dear readers,
We want to respond to questions raised by many of you regarding Gazette columnist Jay Fleitman’s most recent piece, published Tuesday, “Further responses to Medicare for All.”
In the essay, Fleitman also opined about Democratic presidential candidates and referred to Sen. Kamala Harris of California, the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father, and her “impassioned story of her oppression as an impoverished minority child forced into school busing.”
In the hours after the piece appeared, dozens of readers spoke out on social media and in letters to the editor, expressing their concern that the Gazette allowed it to be published in the first place.
Many people took issue with what they saw as Fleitman’s deliberate misinterpretation of the facts, as well as with a joke he made about the racial backgrounds of both Sen. Harris and Sen. Elizabeth Warren that some characterized as racist.
Jennifer Taub, a Northampton resident and professor at Vermont Law School who started a thread about the column on Facebook, called on the Gazette’s editorial board to “[let] the community know if you stand by those comments,” adding, “If so, I will promptly cancel my subscription.”
As an editorial board, we want to make it clear to readers that we operate independently of all columnists. Columns and letters to the editor are printed six days a week on our Opinion page, and printing them does not mean we endorse them — we agree and disagree with members of our community all the time, just as you do. We also disagree plenty among ourselves.
That said, we recognize that Fleitman mischaracterized Sen. Harris’ statement and story, and we take seriously readers’ concerns about both the accuracy and inflammatory nature of his column.
We also recognize that some of our liberal columnists write pieces that need further fact-checking and un-twisting of the truth.
As for those readers who reached out appalled by Mary Wentworth’s recent guest column, “Is the Mueller report a hoax?” (She thinks it is): We hear you and are discussing the matter further in the context of a bigger conversation about the Opinion page.
We know a lot of readers wonder how exactly the Opinion page works, and we want to take this opportunity to give you some more information. Do you have questions about the editorial board, columnists, how letters are handled and how the page comes together in general? Ask away at opinion@gazettenet.com, and we’ll try to answer your questions in the coming weeks.
In the meantime, we’ve pushed some letters in response to Fleitman and Wentworth to the top of the heap. You can find them below and online at gazettenet.com/opinion.