News-Record.com

I'm only now saying anything on the discussion over at Ed's about Nelson Johnson's open letter to Jerry Bledsoe because I've only now seen the letter.

As it happens, I apparently was sent one. It is dated March 27 and postmarked March 29. It wound up in my mailbox here in the office this morning, having been opened somewhere along the line so that the anthrax powder could be safely disposed of or something.

Nothing I can add, frankly, except that we have achieved perfect post-Truth & Reconciliation Report Nirvana: Everybody's talking, nobody's listening. And almost all who are talking are talking in broad and undefended generalities that add nothing of substance to our news report or the larger public discussion. What I've heard ranges from "You've got a lot of nerve pretending to show such courage in the face of our pain" to dog-whistle appears to racism. Wait, that's not quite right: It's more like a barbell with two big ol' mounds of polarization connected by a thin bar of rationality and willingness to listen and to think.

And you know what always happens, don't you, when you grab such a thing and try to lift it?

I don't often say this in a discussion in which I have both knowledge and a shooting license, but: Y'all knock yourselves out.

*Name of an obscure collection of REM outtakes and B-sides.