Citizens Oak Ridge
Letter to the editorPersonal attacks in column unjustified4/13/2007To the Editor: A staple of the nation’s editorial pages is complaints about the loss of civility in public discourse. What are we to make of it when a newspaper is the one that starts to attack civility?
First there was his column attacking three Anderson County Commissioners from Oak Ridge who refused to vote to commit county money to the Crestpointe development until after Oak Ridgers have a chance to vote on the matter in the upcoming June referendum. Mr. Esposito has every right to use these pages to express his disagreement with their positions, but he could have done that without suggesting that these officials are traitors to the city. Now there’s his April 10 column that parodies Crestpointe opponents as a bunch of na ve fools unable to hold their own on an imaginary trip to Bentonville, Ark. (I guess I should say “unable to hold our own.” It’s pretty clear that his character “Elaine, a candidate for City Council,” was supposed to represent me, although he gave the fictional “Elaine” a couple of opinions that I don’t share.) By giving his characters only the thinnest of disguises and peppering his story with ridiculous details, Mr. Esposito made it clear that his goal in writing that piece was to ridicule specific people, not to engage in reasoned discussion of Oak Ridge’s retail situation or the Crestpointe proposal. Attacking a person, rather than arguing issues on their merits, is well-known to be a preferred tactic of debaters who don’t think they can win the debate on its merits. Is that what’s happening here? This name-calling by the daily newspaper does not bode well for the upcoming city election. Observers of recent Oak Ridge municipal elections have pointed with pride to the positive nature of local campaigns, particularly the absence of personal attacks. If this year’s election breaks the pattern by turning negative, we can point to this newspaper as the cause of the negativity. Reasonable people can disagree without attacking the people they disagree with. I oppose the Crestpointe proposal, along with thousands of my fellow citizens, but after the dust settles on this issue I want to be able to continue to get along with those among my Oak Ridge neighbors who support that proposal. Mr. Esposito may not feel that same concern, since he makes his home in Farragut, but that does not justify his departing from normal journalistic practice to engage in personal attacks and name-calling. Ellen Smith Oak Ridge |
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