Why you should hurt the ones you love

Sullivan tells it best:

So why my recent concentration on the far right? It's pretty simple: they're in power. They control all branches of government and a hefty chunk of the media. They deserve to. They did all this legitimately and democratically. But, in my book, that means an independent writer should concentrate more on that extreme right now, while not ignoring the other, because they're the ones running the country. I guess I'm also more angered by the right these days because I care more about conservatism than about liberalism. It's my philosophy, damnit, which means I get more upset when I see it desecrated or abandoned.

There's a lot more I agree with my father on than I used to when I was 18, which I'm being told is one of the annoying but inevitable consequences of getting older. But there's one important exception to that rule. When I was 18, the church I was a member of nearly got torn apart by internal turmoil. My father lambasted the local press for which I worked at the time, for reporting about it. He couldn't understand why, as he put it, one 'would want to soil his own nest'.

That, of course, is a rhetorical reversal of what's really going on in such cases. Our job as journalists is indeed not to litter the place. That would be manufacturing news (and yes, I know that, unfortunately, some 'journalists' will have no qualms about doing it anyway.) But when someone else has dumped dirt all over a place people care about, it's our job - no, our duty - to tell the story to as many people as possible.

People may not always like to hear the world isn't as perfect as they'd like it to be. But the only way to come closer to that lofty goal is to be told as often as possible what issues still need remedying.

19:46

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