Former candidate says he is not a racist

Published 11:37 am Friday, December 16, 2011

I beg space to explain — in my own words — my previous political incorrectness, and perhaps insensitivity, that you eagerly reported in the fall, and which damaged my reputation and my chances as a write-in candidate (“Write-in challenge to Nystul for City Council,” page A19, Sept. 30 Herald).

I admit to being an iconoclast who swims upstream against many popular follies, like growth for growth’s sake. However, it must be clear to you by now that I am no “racist.” I have been opposed to racism all my life and demonstrated against it when I was a liberal arts student at Notre Dame in the 1960s.

But one very illiberally educated chef called me that “R-word” this Thanksgiving Day at Kiana Lodge.  His totally untrue epithet was based, apparently, on the Herald’s exclusive stories about my figurative use of the n-word. His intemperate action shows just how insufferable a very small-minded person can be when he misinterprets what actually transpired in the correspondence with the editor.

It all began when I was misinformed about the Herald not using my duly submitted letters in prior months, because I did not see them in the print edition and your online version has had its “hiccups.” So, I felt that I had been treated like a slave and, without thinking about what Media Ethics would require you to say, I rashly said that I feel like you misuse freelance writers like we are (n-word). I did not call anybody that name!I said I felt like a slave, that’s all.

That complete context, which has never been fully reported, may not have been clear to all. That seems to be why the local Eagles rushed to remove me as chair of their civics education committee. Well, I could not do any such work with our public schools; they are very PC, even more so than in higher ed, where I worked in six states and two foreign countries.

The Kiana sous-chef is a product of our very PC public schools, a victim of their agenda to change our language. This de-liberalizing of free speech was well documented by Dinesh D’Souza’s book “Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus” (1991, The Free Press). This ground-changing book was praised by Morton Halperin of the ACLU, and the novelist Tom Wolfe.

Fred Springsteel
Poulsbo