I have an amusing very part-time hobby, that being a contributor
to the commentary threads of the Op-Ed columns found at NewWest.net, a website based in
Missoula, Montana, and about which I’ve written before in a
previous piece, “The Wicked Witch of the West.”
Despite its pretensions that it produces serious, well-balanced
journalism, New West can best be described as being of the
regional kneejerk Left, along with High Country News,
“Headwaters News” service, and major newspapers such as the
Denver Post. One irony about living in the contemporary
West is that in spite of its overall conservative makeup and
dependable red-state electoral base, the media landscape — with
a few exceptions — is as liberal as that found on the blue state
coasts. These are media entities that conservatives out here love
to hate (oops — there’s that word again; the one they’re always
tarring us with). The editorial page of my own “local” (it’s
published 130 miles away) daily, the Idaho Falls Post
Register, sometimes strikes me as so leftwing bizarre that I
can’t believe it’s published in Idaho, which gave John McCain 62
percent of the vote the last November.
Most of the opinion pieces found at New West actually relate to
Western issues: politics, culture and especially our endless
environmental debate that involves the management of the public
lands. The latter never changes. Administrations —federal,
state, local — come and go, as do policy and policymakers, yet
still the same parade of lawsuits by environmentalists march
through the courts. The lawyers remain static. The commentary
threads on these show opinion clearly delineated black or white.
There is little middle ground on environmental questions.
Other pieces are of national import, lately concerning such
matters as Rush Limbaugh’s infamous “I hope he fails” comments,
or the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller, or the attack on the
Holocaust Museum in Washington. These highlight the usual
Lefty-tropes branding mainstream conservatives as evil
revanchists not only obstructing the Left’s progress, but capable
of violence. The recent piece on the Tiller assassination
featured talking points from the Daily Kos; another “humor” piece
about moving Guantanamo inmates to an empty prison in Hardin,
Montana, had a photoshopped picture of uniformed Nazis with the
faces of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld superimposed on them.
The writer of the Limbaugh piece implored the radio host to “Kiss
my a—” in its last line. All this found on a website whose
mission seems to be to save the West from unenlightened ,
recalcitrant Westerners like those 62 percent of Idahoans who
voted for McCain. There’s something for everybody at New West.
So I wade in and join the fun, taking my lumps from the Left, but
always mindful of New West’s explicitly detailed commentary
policy. We’ve all seen those. Please refrain from “hate speech,”
profanity, etc. But New West also has a problem with good
old-fashioned American sarcasm. A couple of my posts have been
deleted over the last few months (that’s okay, I’m still batting
over .900), and one recently when I poked fun at a piece about
New West sponsoring an urban planning seminar in Boise. The smart
growth guys take themselves seriously, so I interjected my
support of the Obama administration’s ideas about bulldozing
large portions of rust belt cities like Flint, Michigan, in order
to restructure them in more green ways. I said in my post that
this modus operandi might work in such western garden spots as
Butte, Montana, and Idaho Falls, Idaho. Later, I returned to the
thread to discover that the post had been scratched. In another
post I directly inquired of the author, none other than Jonathan
Weber, Publisher and CEO of New West — the great man himself —
as to why I’d been scratched. The next morning, Mr. Weber took
time away from the administration of his media empire and other
civically-minded enterprises to answer me:
Bill, If you want to comment in a manner that is relevant,
useful, interesting even in the slightest, great. But we’re
certainly under no obligation to allow the comment session to
be a place for meanspirited and gratuitous mocking of me, my
colleagues and my company. You are a classic Internet troll and
we’re not going to leave comments up if they are in that
spirit. We’re being generous by not blocking your IP
altogether. Don’t you have anything better to do than piss on
people who are working very hard to make a living doing
legitimate journalism.
Well. I simply answered this by inquiring of Mr. Weber if he had
a sense of humor.
Bill, If you knew me you’d know I actually had a great sense of
humor, I just don’t find your nasty sarcasm particularly funny.
Oh, and we actually do pay our writers, believe it or not.
Making a living in this business is not easy and we’re working
very hard at it. To return the sarcastic favor, thanks for all
your help and support the cause of original journalism in the
West. If you don’t like New West, don’t read it, but spare us
the gratuitous meanness.
When William F. Buckley, Jr. died, there was unleashed a flood
elegiac stories, reminiscences of friends and colleagues, etc.,
as befits a man of his intellectual stature and accomplishments.
After reading one of these pieces (not on New West), I followed
up with a short trip down the commentary thread, and one post has
stuck in my mind ever since. It went: “William F. Buckley is
dead. Too bad conservatism didn’t die with him.”
That’s all they really want. They want us to go away.
