God has a wicked sense of humor. I am inescapably led to this conclusion by the fact that I am editor of a monthly business magazine. What's so funny about that? Have you read this blog lately?
I have been a bleeding heart, fuzzy thinking, pinko radiclib ever since I was old enough to realize that I didn't like Ike. Some anonymous wag described a liberal as "a man with both feet firmly planted in the air." Guilty, Your Honor.
The small south Florida town I grew up in was not exactly a hotbed of radicalism. My high school was integrated, sort of, when I was a sophomore. About half a dozen extremely gifted black male athletes and drop-dead gorgeous black female overachievers were recruited to go where no one had gone before.
Those students helped define courage for me. I was one of the few honkies to befriend them and had I known what it would cost me, I probably wouldn't have. But I was young and naive and idealistic and an incurable romantic. Besides, I had braces and zits and not a lot to lose.
One of the black guys, an extraordinary athlete and scholar, took pity on me. Or maybe he just wanted a white friend, no matter how geeky. Whatever the case, we became fast, if unlikely, friends.
We sat-in at lunch counters, campaigned for candidates that passed for liberal in that time and place, and designed the world of the future. I wrote intemperate screeds to the local newspaper on the subject of civil rights. Some were actually published so that the editors could sneer at my naivete.
Feeding off my friend's courage, I asked a black girl to the senior prom and thereby enhanced my reputation as one who was socially unacceptable. High school was not a fun time for me.
My first exposure to journalism came through the high school newspaper. Thanks to an extraordinary teacher, this newspaper was regularly cited as one of the five best in the nation, the Pacemaker Award. While most high school newspapers were speculating on who would be king and queen of the prom, we published an issue devoted to the war in Vietnam. I was the only one they could find who would write an article opposing what was then a popular cause.
I went off to a small southern college, but found the curriculum to be stultifying and irrelevant. I dropped out and got married because I had been brought up to believe that if you had sex with someone, you had to. The sexual revolution started a couple of weeks later. My timing has always been just a beat off.
It was 1969 and Uncle Sam wanted me. Before I knew what was going on, I was drafted and on my way to the war I had opposed in the high school newspaper. If I had had the courage, I would have declared as a conscientious objector or gone to Canada. But I was the son of a military career man and very afraid of what the establishment could do to me if I didn't go along with the program.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, I ended up in Vietnam and had many of the traumatizing experiences you can find well documented elsewhere. I was fortunate in that I got my "million dollar wound." That's the one that gets you sent home in something other than a body bag.
Vietnam did one thing for me: I was no longer afraid of anyone or anything. What could they do to me that was worse than Vietnam?
I was hired by a small town radio station in North Carolina that was owned by one of the only true liberals in the whole state. The station was a member of the Tobacco Radio Network (TRN), prevalent in the sandhills. The TRN was characterized by the political philosophy of the owner, a gentleman by the name of Jesse Helms. The state's only liberal had hired me to provide some semblance of balance to Helms' virulently racist rants.
My Vietnam experience had only served to further radicalize me. If the station manager thought that I was going to provide a well reasoned counterbalance to Helms, he was sadly mistaken. I took to the air with a series of virulent screeds that only succeeded in getting a cross burned on my neighbor's lawn. The local KKK wasn't quite bright enough to get my address right. I got the message, however, and got the hell out of Dodge.
I made the transition to television news and developed a reputation as a particularly savage political reporter who would lull his victims with a few easy questions and then zing a high hard one past them before they had a chance to think.
The technique served me well in one sense. I scored a lot of telling interviews that ultimately got me replaced with someone more respectful. Like most Vietnam vets, I waged some ferocious battles with the VA over benefits. I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and marched on Washington. I got beat up and thrown in jail.
This digression serves to document my fealty to one of my journalistic heroes, Hunter Thompson. Suffice it to say that I got older, somewhat wiser, but have never given up my ideals. One thing that I learned over the years was to choose my fights. Occasionally, those fights can be waged from the inside if one is cagey enough to adopt the ways of the chameleon.
Finally, we are back to the original point of this exegesis. Yes, I am the editor of a business magazine. Yes, most of the people I deal with are conservative Republicans. And, yes, I could be seen as advancing their agenda.
But consider this: since taking over as editor, I have given unprecedented coverage to a group that is promoting sustainable business practices. I have established a department devoted to nonprofits, a $300 million segment of our local economy. I have established a guest commentary section that gives voice to the Audubon Society along with the local building industry association.
The greatest gift, however, comes from the time I spend interviewing local business leaders. While I disagree with them on most political matters, I find them to be, for the most part, essentially good people. Some of them have become very good friends. This is disturbing because I have a hard time demonizing people I know and like.
Here is the point I have tried so hard not to make. No matter how much I may disagree with someone I know, I can always find something that keeps me from characterizing them as "the enemy."
That is not to say that there are not truly evil people out there. I have met at least as many of them that share my political philosophy as those that don't. Is it a sign of maturity that I can get along with people with whom I have nothing in common? Or is it a sign of senility and declining levels of testosterone?
It doesn't matter in the long run. I take no small pleasure in the fact that local business leaders suck up to me in order to get mentioned in my magazine. I am fairly confident that none of them will ever read my blog wherein I reveal my inner radical.
I understand that Shrubya, Cheney, Rumsfeld, DeLay and Lott are probably charming people once you get to know them. Fortunately, I will never have that privilege and can fulminate against them as if they were the Spawn Of Dagon.
For an aging liberal, this is the best of all possible worlds.
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