Observations: My Political Writing

Work in Progress - Subject to Modification

 
I’ve been writing the weekly columns for the Bluefield Daily Telegraph editorial page since June of 2008, when I sent a letter to the editor to my friend and fellow Rotarian, Tom Colley from the beach while on vacation. I emailed the piece to Tom with the message that he could do whatever he thought best with it. At the time he was Executive Editor of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, my hometown newspaper.

He emailed me back to say that the “letter” would run “atop the edit page” the following Tuesday. I was surprised. And thrilled!

I had been editor and publisher of a weekly community newspaper, the Twin State News Observer, from 1988 to 2001, and had written the editorials for that publication. The editorial page was titled "Observations." After it closed, I wrote for my own blog site and posted opinion pieces on Internet sites. The letter to Tom was a lark, a response to some political issues of the day.

When I returned after vacation and talked to Tom at the next Rotary meeting, he said the Tuesday slot was open, if I wanted it. I quickly accepted his offer. I was thrilled, and he was pleased, too. My great grandfather had bought the Bluefield Telegraph in 1894, as a two-day or three-day a week publication, turned it into a daily, and my family ran it until 1985 when the family businesses were sold. Tom had worked for my family prior to the sale, and had stayed on with the new owners. He said he was really happy to once again have a Shott writing for the paper.

Unfortunately, Tom passed away a short time later, ending a relationship I valued greatly. I still write the weekly column, however.

I write about subjects I feel strongly about, subjects that I feel are important to America continuing to be a bastion of freedom. The issues that have the greatest opportunity for great harm are those of national significance, and that is what I primarily focus on.

My op-eds are intended to present to the newspaper’s readers information that they may not see or hear, and/or to present ideas that they may not have thought of or read elsewhere to help clarify important issues.

Given that goal, the weekly columns generally focus on topics that I believe are important, and a perspective that needs wider awareness among the readers in the seven-county area covered by the newspaper.

These columns are also published on my Web site, Observations (jshott.com), and other Internet sites, and articles not submitted to the newspaper also appear on Observations.

Among readers of the newspaper columns, critics are more numerous than fans in the Letters to the Editor section. Their critiques range from small things like my not being specific enough about some element in a column, to arguing against a point made and supported by fact or logical argument with a “that’s not so” statement with nothing to support it, to an argument against a point I didn’t address at all.

The letter writers seem to be generally in one of four categories:

1. They missed the point:
     a. They didn’t read the column all the way through, thereby perhaps missing clarifying information later in the piece; or perhaps didn’t read any of it, but took what someone said about it, thereby talking nonsense.
     b. They misinterpreted what they read. They actually read the article, but missed the intended meaning. Consequently, they are unable to address the issues in a sensible way.

2. Some are simply dishonest: They deliberately exaggerate or distort what was said to try to discredit an idea they otherwise are unable to refute. And sometimes they even argue against something that wasn’t mentioned at all.

3. Then, there is the odd letter that makes a valid point or counter-point, which I especially appreciate, as they provide a different and potentially educational perspective.

4. And, there is the odder-still letter where the writer agrees with me. However, whether there really are more critics writing letters (as I suspect) or whether the paper prefers to print the disagreeable ones, I’m not sure.

Black and White in Bluefield

 Work in Progress - Subject to Modification

Growing up in Bluefield, I had perhaps a unique experience with race.

My great Uncle Hugh and Aunt Jane were elderly and well to do, lived in a nice, but not splendid home in a good neighborhood, and had a black couple that worked for them. John worked around the house and yard, and drove Uncle Hugh around, while Selena worked in the house. They lived in an apartment above the garage with their children.

I knew that John, Selena and Geraldine, their daughter, were black, of course, but that didn’t matter. I believe that Geraldine had a younger brother, but I didn’t really know him. They were great people; very much like us, except for the color of their skin.

When Dad would take Mom and me to visit Hugh and Jane, after saying hello, I went to find Geraldine, who was about my age, both of us probably about 8 years-old, and we wiled away the time playing around in the yard.

When I was in high school starting in 1959, there were several black students also attending that school. Most black students, however, went to the black junior high and high schools. No rule about that, I think; that’s just the way it was. It was at least partly because the black schools were nearer the black neighborhoods.

In our school of grades 10, 11, and 12, there were probably 10 or 12 black kids out of the thousand or so total student body. We all shared essentially the same values: goals, behavior, and appearance; there was no actual difference based upon one’s race, and in my experience there was no unequal treatment of the two races, either by students or staff and faculty.

While in high school, I worked at the local radio and TV stations, and there were black employees there. Again, no real difference. I worked the AM/FM stations on Sunday mornings, and one program was a black lady who performed gospel music live from our studio along with her three daughters singing backup, and her son playing drums. I was a musician, primarily a trumpet player, but also played electric bass, and played with that group each Sunday. They were great people, very good musicians, and once again, no awareness of racial differences.

When I went to college, I don’t recall any black students, although it may be that there were some that I just did not encounter.

Then came the Air Force. One of my two Basic Training Tis was a black sergeant and other black people on the base. No issues. When I reached my duty station, no issues from other Air Force personnel or base personnel, or from the musicians in the off-base bands I played in or the audiences we played for.

After my separation, I returned to my hometown and went to work again at the radio and TV stations where there black employees. We all got along fine, in a friendly, respectful atmosphere.

In fact, in all those years the only bad experience I had with black people was one time when my cousin and I were walking home after signing off the radio stations after midnight, and were confronted by two black guys who drove up and got out of their car, challenged us, and started a minor scuffle. Pushing them off, we ran off and they didn’t follow us. That’s it. The only negative interaction I remember in my hometown.