Dear Gregg and Richard...

To the Editor:

Only 12 days of Christmas and I find myself compelled to use one of them to retort to one of your recent editorial misadventures. Either I’m not sufficiently capable of properly managing my time or your insidious tracts are capable of simply overpowering me. I’ll have to give that some thought.

I’ve, for eons it seems, wondered whether you are really just kind, misunderstood nitwits or if you are willfully lying to your readers when you display your entirely biased, utterly dogmatic viewpoints.

After reading the “Our View” piece from the 12/15 edition of your paper, I still find myself facing that quandary. 

Let me explain. 

In the interest of setting the scene, I’ll need to quote a bit from that tract.

Having found grievous fault with how the presidents of 3 major educational institutions responded to questions at a congressional hearing you stated, “Our position on this might surprise some, given that we are pretty much free speech absolutists around here. Indeed, there should never be a blanket ban of even the most obnoxious and morally corrupt speech, even “Kill the Jews.” 

And then in just the 3rd paragraph after that you cited an example of the kind of utterances that these leaders should have acted against, 

“Graffiti on campuses around the country have stated such expressions as “Shoot a Jew in the head.” 

 During a recent afternoon with my 4-year-old grand-daughter I asked her what she would call a person who said that there was a difference between “Kill the Jews” and “Shoot a Jew in the Head”. 

She said, “Um, a nitwit” (I think that she’s stuck in her terrible twos). So I was obviously swayed in that direction.

But then, after digesting your statements further I found that you went on to state that these university leaders were antisemitic. “And no one should buy the answer that these three university presidents are themselves victims and are not antisemitic.” 

That was the conclusion you said we all should come to based on the rest of the information that you provided.

But, as I’m sure you learned in Bible School, at least you should have, there are lies of commission and of omission. 

You conveniently omitted a large part of what Elizabeth Magill, the President of the University of Pennsylvania, said in her opening statement. 

Let me share just a few of her words from the congressional record.

“Let me begin by saying that I, and the University of Pennsylvania, are horrified by and condemn Hamas’s abhorrent terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th. There is no justification — none — for those heinous attacks. The loss of life and suffering that are occurring in Israel and Gaza during the ensuing war are heartbreaking. The pain extends to our campus. I know it from my daily conversations with our students, faculty, and staff, as well as parents and alumni. This hearing was called to discuss antisemitism on college campuses. 

I value this opportunity to reaffirm my and Penn’s unyielding opposition to antisemitism and to outline the urgent, university-wide actions we are taking to combat this centuries-old and resurgent threat.”  

Hardly antisemitic wording it would seem to me (and my 4 year old grand-daughter agreed). 

Perhaps you could disapprove of how she was handling matters at Penn, but you really should be able to take her word that she’s not antisemitic in light of how readily you take someone else at his word that he’s not a racist. 

So now I’m back to struggling with how I should think of you. And I haven’t a lot of years to resolve the dilemma, unfortunately. But, I will diligently continue the effort.

And now, Merry Christmas (belatedly) and a Happy New Year. 

And make it your New Year’s resolution to try to do better? 

I promise to do the same. 

And you still haven’t contacted me to have that drink that I proposed we have a year or two ago. 

We could work on finding our common ground, even if it might end up being a rather small parcel.

Michael Henry

Rhinelander

P.S.

I must say that I appear to be drifting towards being untruthful, too. So, in all honesty, I never really discussed any of this with my grand-daughter.