Do not question
A conservative columnist asks a valid question: What am I getting for my federal income tax?
And gets sacked.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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March 13th, 2009 at 9:41 am
Um, what part of “freedom of speech” do these people not understand?
March 13th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Sam Hatch, rebuking Mr. Valentine:
“His federal tax dollars, my federal tax dollars and your federal tax dollars provide for all Americans a quality of life unlike any other in the world today.”
I’ll say! Most expensive Healthcare system in the industrialized world, with the lousiest coverage?
Largest standing military in the world?
Greatest income inequality of any industrialized nation?
Mr. Valentine is on to something but too hyper-individualist to catch a clue.
And people like Sam wonder why I feel slightly insulted to be called “liberal” and lumped together with him. They’re also shocked when I disagree with them on the 2nd Amendment and come down firmly on the pro-gun rights side.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Where is Wilson County? What cities does it encompass?
March 13th, 2009 at 10:57 am
lebaonon, near murfreesboro.
March 13th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Lorn,
There’s no “freedom of speech” on someone else’s property. The paper is quite within its rights to fire him, just as his radio show can cancel any scheduled commercials for, say, the Wilson Post.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Some things:
Phil Valentine is a syndicated talk show host based in Nashville. He also writes 2 columns a week–one for “The Tennessean” and another that he distributes *for free* to Tennessee’s local papers. Instead of just not carrying the column anymore, the editor of this paper decided to publish a letter deriding Valentine.
Valentine then did an on air fisking of the letter, and generally made the guy look like an idiot to people in about 9 states.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
I just sent this to the CEO of the paper:
Mr. Hatcher,
I am appalled by your decision to pull Mr. Valentine’s column. He was right to demand much needed accountability from Washington. The not-so-creeping socialism that the current administration is forcing productive Americans to pay for is an affront to American values of individualism and freedom.
You have every right to stop printing Mr. Valentine’s columns, but consider that in doing so you effectively endorse the continued erosion of freedom. Your explanation that tax dollars pay for national defense, the Supreme Court, and the FBI ignores the real issue: those proper functions of government amount to a small fraction of the total federal budget. The disparity between government spending directed at protecting individual rights and spending directed at providing handouts and bailouts is only projected to grow in coming years. Every year your argument becomes more and more spurious, as an increasingly larger share of our tax dollars is diverted from the legitimate functions of government you mention in your explanation.
Perhaps more important, though, is the suggestion that the government—much less the federal government—is responsible for our standard of living. The free-market aspects of our mixed economy are the driving forces for our quality of life in this country. Indeed, the world has benefited from American economic freedom and the technological and cultural advances the free-market has made possible. From pharmaceuticals to entertainment to computer technology to a hundred other endeavors, the minds at work in the United States or funded by capital created here lead the world.
Capitalism and the free market are important to defend only so much as one desires to live as a rational human being. To live as a human being means to live in a world where the wonderful achievements of the human mind are possible and where men treat one another as traders instead of slaves. To the parasite, to the slave master, to the second hander who is content to live off the hard work of others, capitalism is not worth defending. Roman historian Sallust observed that, “few men desire liberty; most men wish only for a just master.” We Americans, the sons and daughters of liberty, are among the few. We are the champions of liberty, the champions of the mind, and the champions of capitalism. The United States of America is the first—and perhaps the only—occasion in human history when a government has been organized on the premise that the individual matters—on the premise that you and I have the ability, the dignity, and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny. That, I think, is an important premise to defend.
You just silenced an important defender of that premise.
Very sincerely yours
March 13th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Freedom of speech is protection from government interference; there is no right to another man’s pen or radio or typewriter. That the man was fired, however, speaks rather poorly for his employers judgment, but in a free world people with poor judgment get to make their own mistakes, and burn for them.
March 13th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Regarding my freedom-of-speech comment:
1) The paper published the writer’s words. It didn’t have to publish that article — just as the paper doesn’t have to publish any more articles — but it published that one.
2) The paper lambasted the writer’s words, and further stated it would never again publish that writer’s words. Those who control the paper have every right to publish their opinions — I was simply criticizing the opinion published (ie, the way the paper lambasted the writer).
If those who control the paper truly felt the writer’s words were so awful, then the lambasting should have included an apology to the readers for publishing the writer’s words along with a promise to not publish anything similar. IMO, Hatcher sounded like a self-righteous prig intent on imposing his own point of view rather than one who believes in free speech.
Just my 2 cents.
March 13th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I tried to read the comments, but was so disgusted with the level of vituperative ignorance that I could not finish.
March 13th, 2009 at 10:24 pm
Before call-in shows, radio was pretty much one-way. Some weblogs have multiple “columnists,” and once in a while one gets let go. Some blogs have no comments.
So Lornkanaga (@9) makes a real interesting point on the editor’s role. Papers came to think that those “opinion” pages were their public forum–well, those and cringe-worthy letters to the editor. But sometimes even Doonesbury gets pre-empted. An editor’s job is to know his readership, and choose the printed matter accordingly. That’s how you sell the ads. That’s what a newspaper does. That’s why I dropped Journalism.
Dropping a columnist is completely within editorial erm purview. Spelling “so-to-speak” (sic! I mean it!) with hyphens is not.
March 16th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Dropping a columnist is completely within the editor’s rights. Dropping a subscription is completely with a reader’s rights. I hope a lot of readers are exercising that right.