J. TODD FOSTER: Straight Talk About A Contentious Campaign

Typically I wouldn’t write this many columns on the national election, but no other issue has galvanized local readers this much since the 2004 recall election in Bristol, Tenn. Or so I hear.
Fuses are short, emotions are laid bare and the news media, including the Bristol Herald Courier, are public whipping boys.

Some reader complaints directed at this newspaper are misconceptions and just plain wrong. I hope to dispel those today as well as any Pollyannaish notion that we are color blind 45 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Let’s tackle letters to the editor first. Some of you claim we are intentionally publishing more letters that support Barack Obama than John McCain. As I have noted before, we run ALL letters to the editor. Like other newspapers, we do impose limit and taste guidelines. But we don’t care if you support Carrot Top for president; we’re happy to run your letter. And Carrot Top might be the lesser of three evils.

Here’s another criticism that is absurd on its face. By covering Obama’s campaign visits to Southwest Virginia, we are supporting him, some readers have said. Some even have suggested that we should not have covered Obama’s visits at all.

Our sister television station, WJHL News Channel 11, received this viewer feedback after our joint coverage of Obama’s visit to Lebanon, Va., on Sept. 9: “WHEN IS THE DUMB BLACK MAN GOING TO BE DONE SO WE CAN SEE SOME REAL NEWS? I KNOW CBS IS A LIBERAL NEWS STATION BUT CAN’T WE NONLIBERALS GET SOME LOCAL NEWS.”

Aside from the fact that Obama is the antithesis of dumb, he is the first major-party presidential candidate in nearly a half-century to visit this area. John F. Kennedy was the last. We would love for McCain – and especially that running mate of his – to grace our region with a stump speech. We can guarantee that if McCain gets anywhere near this region, he’ll cover our entire front page the next day.

A couple of weeks back, I wrote about a guy named Dick who left me a voicemail referring to Obama as “your black boy Hussein.” Some of you have asked me whether I’ve heard from Dick since. I haven’t. But I did hear from a Bristol, Va., man who essentially called me a liar.

“Without proof, I find it very difficult to believe that anyone named Dick in your story even exists. Not for one minute do I believe – again without proof – that anyone would leave messages like that in this day and time,” this reader e-mailed. “In my opinion, your article is pure nonsense. To put it bluntly, I don’t believe you.”

I’ll accept being labeled nonsensical. But being called a liar triggers my Irish temper. So I sent this reader an audio recording of Dick’s message, but I still await his apology.

Then I had a bright idea, which has been in short supply for me lately. I posted the audio file on our Internet site with my Sept. 7 column in case there were other Doubting Thomases out there. To hear Dick run his mouth, go to TriCities.com and search the site for the word Hussein, then click on the top entry. Or, go to News, then Opinion, and then scroll down to More Columnists. Click the Sept. 7 column headlined “J. TODD FOSTER: Sorry, Folks, Bias Charge Doesn’t Hold Up To Fact check.”

The voicemail is not the worst I’ve heard during this campaign.

Recently, I attended a public event to represent the newspaper. An older gentleman sidled up to me and moved his head in close to my ear. He hadn’t a clue who I was and said: “I’ve got a joke for you. Did you hear that if Obama gets elected president he’s going to tear up the Rose Garden? Yeah, he’s going to replace it with a watermelon patch.”

I recoiled, to which this fellow quickly and nervously added before slinking away: “I’m not a racist, you know.”

Of course not.

I’ve also fielded complaints that by running wire service articles questioning Sarah Palin’s veracity that we are de facto supporters of the Obama-Joe Biden ticket. Not only has this newspaper not endorsed a presidential candidate yet, but our three-member editorial board (I, the publisher and the opinion page editor) has not even met yet to begin deliberations. That will occur after the vice presidential nominees debate and after Obama and McCain debate at least two of their scheduled three times.

So, any conclusions about who we’re going to endorse would constitute mind reading.

I’ll end on this note. At the same public event where I was told the racist Obama joke, I later was introduced to the crowd as a special guest. The majority must have been Palin supporters or media critics because my applause was tepid.

Then a woman pushing 80 and who had been giving me the stink eye earlier turned to her husband and said, “I ain’t clapping for that son of a bitch.” Then she glared at me for three seconds to put an exclamation point on it.

Finally, some straight talk.

J. Todd Foster is managing editor of the Bristol Herald Courier and can be reached at jfoster@bristolnews.com or (276) 645-2513.