Clarifying Wolf Creek Criticism
A Writer Responds to His Own Editorial
By Ken Wright, 4-25-06
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I’ve written many letters to the editor in my day, but I’ve never written one in response to my own editorial. But this was a good time to start, because I needed to object to the headline to an editorial I wrote that was published last Sunday (April 23) in the Durango Herald regarding the proposed Village at Wolf Creek and its developer, billionaire B. J. McCombs.
The headline I suggested when I submitted the editorial was “A Resident Responds to Wolf Creek Developer McCombs.” (Which was also posted on NewWest.net.) But when the editorial ran on the Herald’s Opinion page last week, the headline capping the piece was “Why I Hate His View of Wolf Creek.”
“Hate.” There’s that ugly word. I understand: the Herald’s editors phrased it that way because it’s good headline writing – provocative and strong, to draw in the reader.
Anger? Yes. Passion? Surely. Frustration? Absolutely. But there is no hate in my criticism of the Village at Wolf Creek proposal. Nor do I feel any hate for anyone involved in it, even Mr. McCombs. As a writer, I believe words matter: “Hate” conveys a disrespect and negativity I don’t feel, support, seek to foster, or want to be associated with.
I’ll even confess to a confrontational tone in my piece -- but that’s my job as a writer: to articulate and to provoke. I do this because I, in fact, do not hate: I may be naïve, but I still believe in Colorado, and community, and humanity, and democracy. And toward that, what democracy needs is for people to speak up – so I speak for what I (and, I believe others, as well) value in Colorado, community, humanity, and democracy. And I speak against what I feel is unfair treatment of those values in the way the Wolf Creek proposal is being handled by McCombs and the agencies involved.
Not everyone will agree with me, my opinions, or what I write – but that’s okay, too, because I hope I provoke others to argue back -- I also believe democracy should be a sloppy and sometimes heated affair.
But, in the democracy, humanity, community, and Colorado I believe in, there’s no room for hate.
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Comments
The comment suggesting monkeywrenching is several huge steps too far in my view and I think there is pretty compelling evidence that behavior is indeed "strong disagreement become hate" and has hurt the cause of nature defense immensely in terms of a large part of the community and the government turning down or tuning out many natural defense concerns because of their aversion to what they perceive as haters, bullies, and anti-democratic operatives and the unfair but too common practice of spreading some of those negative feelings to the broader, non-hating, non-law breaking, democratic process believing even in the face of disappointments and setbacks environmental community.
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/7652/
Really my focus, after thinking about it a little more, was to set the stage for and get to the response to the monkeywrenching comment from another reader not you. So I will amend my own previous comment and try to make clear that is my ultimate concern. And apologize for making a harder characterization or reaction to your initial words that I probably should have.