"If writing is a chore -- a painful duty -- for a columnist, he or she should find another vocation."
-- George Will
In November George Will, who has written for The Washington Post for half a century, celebrated the 50th anniversary of doing what he said he "would pay for the pleasure of doing" by doing what he gets paid to do: He wrote an op-ed.
"Most people do not read newspapers," Will noted -- sad but true -- "and most who do skip the op-ed page." Also, sad but true.
Writers who do what George Will does, are "properly quarantined on 'opinion' pages."
In the 15 years I have been "properly quarantined" in these pages -- off and on, more on than off in recent years -- I have learned that writing opinion pieces requires not only a deep sense of humility but also an appreciation of and respect for the reader.
One of my beefs with inside-the-bubble partisan discussions of political or social issues is that they often assume and sometimes state explicitly that anyone who disagrees with the official party position -- which is to say, anyone who is outside the bubble -- is either a fool or a pawn of the devil. Disrespecting those who think otherwise is a sure way to deepen our destructive political divide.
"A newspaper column," Will writes, "one musty option on a rapidly expanding menu of distractions, requires reading, which, unlike passive grazing at an endless buffet of graphic distractions, is an activity. It demands one's mental engagement."
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"This means," he adds, "that the few, the happy few, who do read columns do so because their mental pantries are stocked with curiosity, information, and opinions."
Those stocked pantries "enable large arguments in small spaces."
I love that phrase: "large arguments in small spaces." That in a nutshell is the challenge of writing op-eds. Tell me what you think about Gaza -- in 700 words or less. By Monday noon.
Americans are permanently enrolled in a seminar, Will said, in which "the perennial subjects of Western political argument are constantly contested: the concepts of freedom, equality, consent, representation and justice."
Those "constantly contested" arguments take place in a variety of "small spaces" -- around dinner tables, in bars, classrooms, or wherever people with opinions hang out, and in editorial pages of newspapers in hundreds of towns and cities across America.
We engage in "large arguments" -- whether we contribute columns or letters to the editor -- because the issues are important, and because we care.
We care more about the state of our democracy and health of our country than we care about the price of a dozen eggs or a gallon of gas.
The work of democracy ends at the voting booth, the meeting of the school board, the city council, the county commissioners, the zoning board, the HOA, or wherever we get together and make decisions about how our common life can best be shaped for the benefit of all.
But the work of democracy begins here and in other "small spaces" where citizens test their ideas, often against the ideas of people who think otherwise, which is how opinions are refined and sharpened and sometimes, in light cast by better information or clearer thinking, abandoned.
I don't always agree with Will, though I agree more often than I usually admit. I don't read him for confirmation of what I think. I read him because he writes with clarity, erudition and a sharpened wit that he wields with an air of smug self-assuredness. I also read him to expand my vocabulary.
I turned 82 a few days ago, so I don't make long-range promises. But, as Hank Williams used to say, "Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise," we will gather round this space again next week, cup of coffee in hand, and think about some issue of interest and/or importance to us all, in the comforting knowledge that across this great land millions of other Americans are doing the same thing.
Richard Groves lives and writes in Winston-Salem.
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