Let’s take it down a notch
Kudos and thanks to Gregg Schwartz, whose Jan. 21 guest column correctly called out the absurd grandstanding that followed the supermarket confrontation between Bill Scher and School Committee member Michael Stein.
Like Schwartz, I was disappointed that Scher lost his temper in a way that necessitated public apologies from both him and his wife, the mayor. And like Schwartz, I found Stein’s response to the incident to be a rich display of pompous self-involvement. As Schwartz wrote, “It takes real talent to turn ‘Mayor’s husband shouts at me near the frozen food aisle’ into ‘I am the vanguard of resistance against neoliberal austerity.’” Indeed.
Schwartz’s column was a nice reminder that I still have neighbors in Northampton who have not yet become radicalized into the us-versus-them rhetoric of the extreme online, and who still tend to see local elected officials as decent people doing their best — not as operatives of the globalist elite or whatever.
Like many other progressive towns and cities across the country, Northampton is a great place with real problems. I’m not sure how to solve them, but I do know that the rhetorical bomb-throwers of the Valley, while brave warriors in their own minds, aren’t helping. Let’s all take it down a notch, shall we?
Jonathan Fine
Northampton