Interactive
Don’t ever say The Quill isn’t interactive with its readers.
I received a letter the other day from Ray Garrison of West Plains referring to the columns we use by syndicated columnist Arianna Huffington. Apparently he had read a piece on Huffingtonpost.com., Huffington’s website, about the Democratic Convention. I haven’t read it.
With reference to it, Garrison wrote: “This is the kind of liberal crap you run for a column. Perhaps you should run a little bit of Thomas Sowell.
“If we end up getting this liberal as the... executive branch we will have received exactly what we deserve -- promises are easy -- paying the bills is tough -- and liberals promise the world and leave the bills to pay for the productive conservatives.
I sure hope you aren’t actually paying this woman (Huffington) for the left-wing, liberal crap you are printing.’’
So, Ray Garrison, we are, to use a football term, trading Clarence Page for Thomas Sowell. We’re not putting Page on waivers: He’s out of here.
Believe it or not, The Quill always has tried to have a couple of syndicated columnists whose views are in opposition. The problem is that we have had trouble finding a predominantly conservative columnist who writes well; that and about interesting topics. That is that we have found few columnists who fit both requirements -- at least since we dropped William F. Buckley. Buckley ceased to be what we wanted when he veered off of the highway of topics of general interest. Although he often is hailed as the father of modern conservatism (along with Barry Goldwater), he kept writing about subjects concerning administrative and faculty problems at Harvard and Yale Universities. (He wrote a memorable book titled “God and Man at Yale’’) after he matriculated from that Yale.
But Buckley wrote well, and on that score he probably is irreplaceable, and he has since died.
However readers of Arianna Huffington may disagree with her strident, even shrill, opinions, it must be admitted that her writing style is well done and interesting.
Interesting is a big consideration. And, of course, the object of having columnists is neither to represent the views of their subscriber newspapers nor to simply preach to the choir. I looked at Sowell several times and came away with the view that he isn’t a particularly good writer and his views typically are written to please the choir.
Nevertheless, to please Garrison, and readers like him, we are going to give Sowell a try -- even though we may hear from liberal readers that his columns are conservative and crap and claptrap. Liberals, it could be worse: We might have tried to recruit Anne Coulter, the doyen of female right-wing writers.
Sowell does have considerable background, including regular columns, lectures, political counseling. (It is said he is a great influence on the thoughts of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.) He also has written a bushel of books. He is a fellow at the Hoover Institute, a conservative think tank.
He is represented by the nonpartisan Creators Syndicate, and if he can be said to have a home publication it is the Jewish World Review; it has every one of his columns dating back to 1994 on its website.
This is not, of course, to say he is a Jew. That Sowell is a major columnist archived on a Jewish website means little; the Jewish World Review has a large stable of columnists.
Sowell is secretive about his personal life. The most that can be said about him other than his remarkable writing and publishing output is that he is an African American conservative with a Harvard education.
I mention religion and ethnicity only because some columnists write too much about subjects relative to their religion or ethnicity. A quick review shows Sowell does not.
So, there you have it: We are keeping Arianna and adding Thomas Sowell -- and we’ve turned a Page.