I am Outraged, and You Should Be Too....

I received an email from long-time and highly recognized columnist Don Williams whose columns in the Knoxville News-Sentinel have been strongly critical of the Bush Administration for years. His column is no more. Following is the entire text, along with the content of the last column which the paper refused to publish. Please join me in expressing your opinion to the editors, Don was kind enough to include their email information!

LTS

The editors declined to publish this last column. It is available, however, at http://www.opednews.com/ , where lots of writers converge, www.moosemeals.com/oped.htm , where you may hear podcasts, and at http://www.newmillenniumwritings.com/ . If you’d like to write a letter to the editor, see instructions at the end of this. Or contact me at donwilliams7@charter.net . The column is no longer available at http://www.knoxnews.com/kns/opinion . The main number at the News-Sentinel is 865-523-3131.

My Last Column in the News-Sentinel
by Don Williams

Dear Reader,
Barring a change of heart on someone else’s part, this is my last column for the Knoxville News-Sentinel. Here’s what I know about the reasons why. On Monday, Editor Jack McElroy informed me he would be cutting my column to once every other week. On Tuesday I let him know I could not go along. It would mean letting too many people down, and waiting for the other shoe to drop, along with readership, would compromise my independence. So ends a 21-year association.
I won’t defend my record. Fan mail, awards and readership polls speak for themselves. My column draws more readers than most, as I can prove. This isn’t about quality or popularity.
Jack said he was trimming my sails because I don’t write enough on local issues. Some readers might remember this notion came up in 2004, after I wrote a series of columns opposed to the re-selection of George W. Bush, whom this paper endorsed. Shortly afterward, Jack asked me to begin writing about local issues.
In a widely read column that ran Feb. 4, 2005, I tried to put a smiley face on this development. Naively, I didn’t regard it as an attempt to “muzzle” me. I promised readers that, “should the time come that I can no longer go along with Jack’s request, I’ll recognize it and act according to my conscience.”
I believed then that going along would be easy. Most local issues worth writing about are tied to Washington. Our quality of air and water, the well-being of our soldiers and veterans, the role of Oak Ridge and TVA in nuclear weapons technology, healthcare of the disadvantaged, rights of people with alternative lifestyles, integrity of our elections, separation of church and state, health of public lands and much more around here are affected by national policies. I’ve tried to cite such local angles in about three-fourths of my articles since 2005. Even when I didn’t say so explicitly, I believe these issues were implicit, especially in columns my critics write off as “Bush bashing.”
Those are at the heart of my predicament, I believe. In 2001, months before 9/11, as Bush was rolling back environmental regulations, holding secret meetings with energy, religious and military strategists, busily appointing foxes to guard all the henhouses where treasured eggs are stored, I thought it should be obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that George W. Bush was a disaster for our world, our country, our communities. As I’ve written in several columns over the years, had Bush set out with a goal of destroying the world, he could hardly have done worse than he’s done. Sadly, history bears me out.
Name an issue I’ve been very wrong on. Name a prediction I didn’t nail since 2001. The list of things I got right is a long one, and I’ll put my record up against any columnist in the country, liberal or conservative. Loss of civil liberties, outright torture, electoral malfeasance, war-profiteering, use of depleted uranium, banned weapons, strip-mining, species decline, media manipulation, broken treaties, soaring deficits, efforts to hide the truth about global warming, Dick Cheney’s many conflicts of interest, and the sad decline of our nation’s reputation have been borne out by clouds of witnesses.
To downplay such disasters the way most media do is akin to complicity in the Holocaust, for the destruction of this good earth is an ongoing holocaust in which millions of people and fellow creatures suffer and die. History proves the silence of good people makes a culture complicit in its own destruction. So I leave you with a question that courageous women and men from ages past have asked:
What then must we do?
To obscure America's fingerprint on global warming, the death of maybe a million people in the Middle East, the creation of millions of refugees, the maiming of millions more, the possibility of a trumped up war with Iran, is simply wrong. I won’t be a party to it. I often wonder how Bush apologists sleep at night. That’s a problem I’ll never have.
In keeping with the promise I made in that Feb. 4, 2005, column, I’m ending my News-Sentinel career rather than “go along” this time around. Pardon me if I don’t get all teary-eyed. This is not a time for making nice, it’s a time for taking stands. I’ll sail my opinion out on the Internet. I’ll write for other publications. I’ll finish books. If you’d like to come along for the ride, get in touch.
Finally, I’ve loved writing a weekly column these 21 years, mostly from home the past 11, and I’m letting go with no bitterness and little regret. Rather, I feel the way I’ve come to feel when my name’s held up to ridicule on the Letters Page. Why, looky here, Mama, I made the honor roll.

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Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of literary writing. His awards include a National
Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He is finishing a novel, “Red State Blues,” set in his native Tennessee and Iraq. His book of selected journalism, “Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People” by Don Williams, is now available for ordering. For more information, email him at donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at http://www.newmillenniumwritings.com/.

To write a letter to the editor follow these guidelines, which appear on the Letters Page:

* Letters must contain your street address and phone numbers, and if you have an online signature that would help, if emailing.
* Must be original material, or all sources cited.
* No more than 200 words.
* Mail to:
Letters to the Editor
News-Sentinel
PO Box 59038
Knoxville, TN 37950
* Email: letters@knews.com

Note: It's been my experience the NS does not typically run letters that have been copied to me, as I've been CC’d several others that never ran. Either way, I appreciate your support.

Thanks for reading. My editors' email addresses are letters@knews.com, editor@knews.com, canady@knews.com, and avent@knews.com . They've been having trouble receiving emails, however, so it may take several efforts should you try to reach them that way.

All my best,
Don

LTS NOTE/UPDATE:
In response to the comment by Jack, I have chosen to edit his email from this blog.
Jack, I am sorry for the error, and hope you have not been inundated by emails, and thank you for stopping by and pointing the error out to me.