Evans “Buddy” King
This is the time of year when columnists and editors around America used to sit down at their Royal’s or Corona’s and type out pieces about the Christmas spirit and how we basically were good and how we shared common dreams and values.
In 1897, Francis Pharcellus Church, editor of the New York Sun, answered the letter of an eight-year-old girl named Virginia (Virginia O’Hanlon to be precise), who asked if there really was a Santa Claus?
Church penned a response that lives to this day, elegantly chastising skeptics and those who refused to believe in the essential goodness of mankind.
In my mind’s eye, shaped by my “Santa Claus days” of the late 1950s and early 60s, the columnists and editors of that long ago era were paunchy men with bushy white eyebrows, wearing red suspenders over starched white shirts, topped off with bow ties and either a cigarette or a pipe dangling from their mouths.
They were sages, not overly political, not the creators of “fake news,” not as much trying to mold or distort public opinion as to observe their times and reflect upon them.
I envision these chroniclers as sitting down on dusky, late December afternoons in their messy offices, typing and gazing out their windows at busy, happy shoppers, writing about the common good that existed in all of us.
Nat King Cole would be singing “The Christmas Song,” or Perry Como would be doing “I’ll be Home for Christmas,” on a small black radio sitting on a stool in the corner of the room.
Those times probably never truly existed. There was no doubt more turmoil and discord than I choose to remember, more poverty and discrimination and fundamental unfairness and hatred in our society than was reported.
Ozzie and Harriet and the Beaver probably didn’t exist. But there was a peacefulness and civility that has long ago faded from the scene.
We live in a fractious and often fractured country. No longer in America do we adhere to what I thought was our common goal — that we wanted peace and prosperity for all, we merely differed on how to get there.
Our political parties are horribly (and I mean horribly) influenced, if not controlled, by those at the fringes. Compromise is either too nuanced for the vast majority of voters to recognize as laudable, despite their protests to the contrary, or is viewed as a sign of weakness, dooming those who practice it to sudden political death.
Civility died sometime between my childhood vision of the wise observers of the human condition and our last several presidential elections, where the concept of polarizing was raised to art form. Rather than a collateral result, it became the goal.
We have elected one president who arrogantly threatened half the country by boasting, “elections have consequences” and another who has no concept of decorum or self-control.
So what am I going to say about this? What “wise” observations do I have?
Well, first, I am going to suggest that we lower our goals, that we no longer expect that all of us can “celebrate and embrace” our diversity and our differences. While a wonderful utopian goal, we have not only proven collectively that it isn’t going to happen, but that it is essentially impossible. So let’s not put it all on the conduct of the few, enhancing division.
Next on the continuum would be to “accept” our differences of opinions, a milder form of “embracing” them. But in the end, that isn’t going to happen either, not by the vast majority.
We live in a world of “social media” (two words that make me cringe every time I hear them, knowing that when I do, they will be followed by an excuse for something).
We tweet at each other fiercely, tossing insults like they are candy at a parade and saying things we would hopefully never say face to face.
In the “social media age,” there is no accountability, unlike in my early remembrances when the local newspapers had to do their jobs and strive for accuracy and some sense of fairness.
As a lover of newspapers, and one who has spent a lot of my working life around them, I am saddened by the fact that much of the reporting now should be on the op-ed pages, that maybe all of the “news” now is op-ed, political correctness and the politics of division run amok.
So where do we go? Personally, I hope simply for recognition. There are way too many of us to agree on everything, or maybe even on anything.
I do not care or get worked up over whether certain professional athletes kneel during the national anthem as a sign of protest.
I am willing to accept that “fake news” and hurt feelings are the price of a truly free society. We need to recognize that America was a unique social experiment, that individualism was rewarded and encouraged, that a certain “rough and tumble” rule of play was part of the game plan, that thought control was not part of the plan.
We were free to think and worship (or not) as we chose. Let’s recognize that the human condition will prevent us from having a world that totally satisfies each of our unique perspectives.
Let’s recognize at least the importance of due process, the rights of the minority and the need for compromise — the fundamentals of living in a country that was the first to move beyond monarchies and ruling classes and tyranny.
Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus — he doesn’t look the same to all of us, or maybe to any of us, but let’s continue to believe.
Evans “Buddy” King grew up in Christiansburg and graduated from CHS in 1971. He lives in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where he practices law with the firm of Steptoe and Johnson PLLC.
