Everyone needs oversight

Recently I’ve been asked by people if I’d read about the controversy going on at the newspaper in Clarksville, Texas, which has no connection to our newspaper.

Apparently, the publisher there wrote an editorial expressing her opinions about drinking and driving. It came after the death of two students in her area and even though you can see that her intentions were good, her words and her timing weren’t. Now, I don’t have all the facts, but from what I understand, the two students killed hadn’t even been buried yet and her editorial had a headline that read, “Being Stupid Get You Dead.” Look, the headline itself is stupid, in my opinion. The grammar is terrible, and it appears the person who wrote the headline was attempting to sound like a hardcore rapper. The headline failed miserably in my opinion and upset the readers before they could even begin reading the actual column. The anger that this editorial caused has spread far beyond Clarksville and when I looked at their Facebook page, there were 109 comments and they were brutal in their criticism of the publisher and the newspaper. This situation made me think of so many other things. I’m a publisher, I write opinion columns, so I know the dangers of tackling subjects that are highly sensitive, especially in today’s world where people can be overly sensitive about everything.

In my many years of writing columns, I’ve tackled subjects that were controversial, but telling families who just lost a loved one that their deceased family member or friend was, “stupid,” wasn’t really the way to handle it and it made me realize how important it is to have oversight in our lives. The people that you see that get in the most trouble, are those who are surrounded by “yes men” and “sycophants.” Even in small town America, someone who is left unchecked and has no one in their universe that can say to them, “I really wouldn’t say that if I were you,” is a person who will eventually get themselves in a lot of hot water.

I was raised in a family that in today’s world, would be considered cruel or bullies. For example, if I put on a shirt that was really unflattering, someone in my family, my parents or my sisters would have said, “you aren’t going outside dressed like that, are you?” I’d be like, “well, I was planning on it until just now.” Then I would go back to my bedroom and change. Another example, I’ve always been a full-figured guy. I think the last time I was skinny was at the age of 11, then I discovered the deliciousness of food. So, when I first grew sideburns, my oldest sister said, “your face is too fat for those, it doesn’t look good.” Now, she owned a beauty salon for 30 years and spent another 20 years working for L’Oreal, so her credentials as well as her eyesight were beyond reproach. In today’s world, we coddle everyone because we might hurt their feelings. Because of the way I was raised, I am unoffendable and I thank my family all the time for the way they raised me. I’ve raised my two daughters the same way. The world is a cruel place and protecting your kids from criticism is not helping them, it’s hurting them.

Even here at work, when I write something, I have others read it and I tell them to let me know if something I wrote appears potentially troublesome. This publisher in Clarksville doesn’t appear to have anyone in her building that should have said, “First, I wouldn’t go with that headline if I were you and secondly, why don’t we hold off printing this until the students are buried?”

So, the moral of this story is the importance of having someone in your life that has the courage to tell you when you’re being a moron, lovingly of course. And remember, when you hear people say something like, “no one reads newspapers anymore,” write something really ignorant and have it printed in the paper or even better, if you own a business and believe no one reads newspapers anymore, have a sale at your store offering 75% off everything in the store and run that in the newspaper, I’m sure all those “no ones,” would enjoy that sale.