Jon Margolis is a political columnist for VTDigger.
The time has come, said the walrus, “to speak of many things.”
Some years earlier, the prophet, entirely indifferent to walruses, said there was a time to do everything, but also a time to stop doing it. That included a time to speak and “a time to keep silence.”
A time, in short, to cease speaking of many things.
For me, that time has come. This will be my last column for VTDigger.
The first was just about a decade ago, and there seem to have been some 500 columns in between. That’s more than I expected, but you know what they say: Time passes quickly when you’re having fun.
It’s been more than fun. It’s been a privilege to be associated with Digger, which has preserved quality journalism in Vermont as so many traditional news organizations have cut back on coverage. Vermont Public Radio and Seven Days have done their part, too. But Digger has led the way. On a typical day in the pre-Covid era when the Legislature was in physical session at the Statehouse, Digger had more reporters in the building than any other news organization.
As it will when lawmakers can again convene in person. The absence of one part-time columnist won’t make much difference.
Besides, that columnist is replaceable. Everybody is.
Writing for Digger has been great fun because of its people. Starting, of course, with editor Anne Galloway, who founded Digger in 2009 with little money and no employees and now runs a multimillion-dollar operation with a staff of 25 and the gratitude and honor of journalists all over the country.
Followed by a corps of editors who are almost as grumpy as I am (that’s praise; editors are supposed to be grumpy) and a bunch of young reporters (average age from my perspective? About 12) who want to do the job right, which is most of what anyone needs to do it right.
What with the pandemic, I’ve never even met several of them except at conferences on Zoom, which doesn’t really count. Still, it’s been a joy to hear them discuss the stories they’re working on, and then to read those stories. It’s a relief to learn that there are a bunch of young people who want to do real journalism and do it well.
Who knows? There could be hope for the world.
I feel fine, and I’m still interested in what’s going on. But a few weeks before Election Day, I had a birthday.
No big deal. We all have a birthday every year. But this was my 80th birthday, and as it approached it occurred to me that there is something unseemly about an 80-year-old covering the news and writing political analysis. Such work is better suited for younger people who are more energetic and less jaded, people who have more to learn because they know less.
Yes, there are disadvantages to knowing too much; it’s always possible that some of what you know has become obsolete.
If after his 80th birthday a person insists on continuing to write (I do), that person should write something else. I joke that I will either attempt an epic poem in quatrains or the libretto of an opera.
I will do neither, both being beyond my abilities. But I will do something. Just no more covering the news. No more columns.
A couple of parting points, or parting shots, both inspired if not required by the tribalism that saturates not just politics but the whole society.
Start with the news business, not because it’s mine or because it’s more fun than working for a living (though it is) but because a thriving democracy depends on an informed citizenry and that citizenry can never be well-informed by ideologues. “Truth is a jealous mistress,” said the classicist Edith Hamilton, “and will reveal herself not a whit to any but a disinterested seeker.”
“Disinterested,” here does not mean “not interested.” It means not taking sides.
“We must not become a nation of observers,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said in a speech he gave on Long Island years ago.
“Well, yes,” said the young reporter (an observer) at a post-speech reception. “But should we become a nation with no observers at all?”
King paused, smiled, looked at the young reporter (me), and said, “You’re right. We need impartial observers.”
Another pause.
“I suppose,” he said, “it is a matter of temperament.”
Temperament, but also the conviction that once the observer joins a faction, a party, a cause, he is no longer impartial, and therefore less credible.
“No cheering in the press box,” the great baseball reporter Jerome Holtzman warned his fellow sportswriters. “We don’t root for a team.”
And Jerome is in the Hall of Fame. There is a place for advocacy journalism, but also for the journalism of the disinterested seeker.
In the broader world, the body politic seems to have arranged itself into two conflicting tribes, or tribal coalitions, each with its own cable television network, social media outlets, and other sources of information and propaganda. Safely ensconced in its own cocoon, each group keeps telling itself how wonderful it is and how awful the members of the opposing coalition.
How’s this for an idea: Every once in a while, some members of both tribes try wondering what’s wrong with them and their own, and try to understand the folks in that other coalition.
To start with, members of Tribe A might ask themselves why they find it hard to accept reality, such as that the world is getting warmer and Joe Biden won the election.
And members of Tribe B could reexamine their conviction that they are morally superior to the general run of folk. They are not.
Enough. I will miss doing this. But no one is irreplaceable, and the time has come.
