EDITORIAL: Bullies and Black Eyes

My friend Bill Hudson came walking through my front door last week with the casual manners he obviously adopted long ago from ’70s sitcoms.  No surprise, I imagine, for readers who regard us as the Lenny and Squiggy of Pagosa journalism.

“There’s a guy who wants to talk to you from Indiana,” Hudson called out with a mix of concern and disbelief… (reporting on Pagosa politics forms the habit).

Now, I don’t know much about Indiana other than its penchant for producing white non-Mormon basketball players and sensible serious politicians like Evan Bayh and Mitch Daniels (who would be our next president if he looked like Rick Perry).

The only folks I know from Indiana are John Egan, Cate Smock and their impressive polymath son Will.

“He’s from the Saturday Evening Post,” Hudson added.  Which confused me more, as I thought the Saturday Evening Post had been based in Pennsylvania and was in a circle of purgatory reserved for defunct publications somewhat more prominent than the defunct Pagosa Post magazine.

Then my confusion cleared.  “He wants to talk about the cover,” Hudson called again.

I smiled.  Someone from Pagosa had obviously sent the “guy from Indiana” a copy of our ‘Special Election Edition’ of the Pagosa Post magazine featuring a satiric reworking of artist Norman Rockwell’s “The Shiner” on its cover.

Sending a copy of our cover to Indiana was a good old-fashioned cheap political stunt — some comic relief from the advocates for the mega-campus, who have preferred to mix bureaucratic secrecy with brazen public dishonesty paid for by honest taxpayers.

When I spoke with the representative from Curtis Publishing, he was professional, direct and uncompromising about everything but the bill to be paid.  He had a solid, throwback Mad Men quality.  Collecting bills is a difficult job in 2011, especially from people who don’t actually owe you money, and have little.  Later, when I totaled up the actual costs I’d incurred publishing our election issue, including hardware and software purchases, and a week of unpaid leave from work, the compromise figure Mr. Waldner had left between us was not out of line.

But it was a line I couldn’t cross, which surprised me, because I don’t regard myself as a particularly principled person.  I sent an off-the-cuff reply to Curtis Publishing:

Dear Mr. Waldner,

Please understand that the Pagosa Post is not a commercial venture. We have no marketing, distribution or editorial staff. This was a one-time publication of a community informational news sheet. The publication cost was in part covered by a few advertisers. The balance was covered by my next-to-zero bank account. The total [printing] cost of the publication was $1,000. Honestly, [your] post hoc quote for the humorous usage was, in my opinion, somewhat unreasonable.

The usage of Norman Rockwell’s ‘The Shiner’ was satirical and humorous, and well within the long-standing, and remarkably broad, parameters of free satirical political speech which was the gravamen of our First Amendment rights before the contemporary focus on guaranteeing such rights for strippers and porn stars. The placement of the most controversial public figure in the contemporary political controversy within the reproduction, as well as the painstaking inclusion of Pagosa Springs High School identifiers, places this reproduction well within fair use guidelines.

What damage could be asserted before the court? Usages like this are ubiquitous, though few are done with the artistic integrity and homage of our cover. Usages such as ours only help to maintain Rockwell’s reputation as the iconic artist of small town values — values which we were supporting by protecting our community from the legal larceny of Front Range investment bankers and an out-of-control government tax scheme.

Again, I understand that you see this differently, and will pursue the wide avenue of legal options at your command. I do not intend to evade answering whatever court charges are brought, despite my geographical, economic and educational disadvantages. Your case, should you decide to bring it, is against me. My 1985 Honda Civic manages nearly 45 miles per gallon. I could drive to Indianapolis, make my best case before the judge, and sell it to satisfy part of the judgment if I lose the case.

I look forward to speaking with you, or to appearing in Indiana courts and making an honest, direct defense of our publication: a small town grass-roots publication opposing the abuse of our community by a rather sad tag-team of an overbearing government and a few greedy bankers (presently under SEC charges for defrauding Midwestern school districts of $200 million dollars).

Mr. Rockwell would enjoy reading our publication, and would be complimented by our amateur efforts. If I must satisfy a judgement of a few thousand dollars in order to spare my small community a ruinous $100 million tax bill, it will always register in my personal checkbook as money very well spent.

I wish you and family a peaceful weekend.

Sincerely,

Glenn Walsh

When I had considered the cover for our special election issue of the Post, three choices came to mind right off.

First, a photo of the one-room schoolhouse west of Pagosa Springs.

Second were two Rockwell illustrations.

Rockwell came to mind because he is still relevant in a deeply human way.  (Try, for example, to make the Jackson Pollock/Lee Krasner crowd — or Frank Stella — relevant to anything human and alive today. Most of their pieces are footnotes to their theories of themselves.)

“Country School” relates to one of the real concerns of those of us who oppose the mega-campus: the honored and confident place schoolteachers once held, before the bureaucrats and investment bankers and administrators took charge of the classroom.  Call it 20th Century, maybe 19th Century, schooling, but there is something occurring here that we miss in the big box school that our school district’s big city consultants — Stifel Nicolaus, and Adolfson and Peterson — want us to pay $4 million dollars per year to construct.  (Remembering that $4 million is the salary and benefits of 80 teachers).

Yet, “The Shiner”, though penned in the Berkshires, is pure Pagosa… or could be.  Of course, nowadays, a school fight resulting in a black eye on a young girl might call for therapists, lawyers and the new bullying bureaucracy, even in Pagosa.  The whole ‘God of Carnage’ cacophony.

Unless, of course, that young girl received her ugly black eye in front of a number of teachers at Pagosa High a few years ago — courtesy of another young woman, a key member of the state-tournament-bound basketball team, whose parent sat on the school board.

Or unless a young man is subjected to a coordinated sexual assault in the unmonitored back of an athletic team school bus, and was sent home without any counseling when school administration — perhaps weary after returning from the latest ‘prevent bullying conference’ in some pleasant locale — decided to take a “boys will be Crips” approach.

I prefer the simpler fisticuffs world of “The Shiner” to the recent events at our “secure, off-highway” high school where a student gets re-admitted — on parole, with ankle monitors — and is allowed to patrol the football stadium at night, and attack and nearly kill a fellow student.

Let’s keep our “country” elementary school as far away as possible from the cultural collapse at the high school, please.

I am not concerned about any legal ramifications from my choice of “The Shiner” for the satirical cover.

First, our parody is protected by the First Amendment.

Second, I am well protected by my co-workers and my debts!  My next-to-nothing bank account results in part from weekly commuting to my weekend job at a New York law firm, without question the most prominent First Amendment firm in the country.  When I drive to Indiana I’ll probably meet a talented young, and still idealistic, lawyer.

Or I may forego the trouble for everyone.  Owing to a seriously broken body during a short break in medical coverage, I am presently paying off a medical debt the size of the GDP of Botswana.  My wages will be garnished at the federal maximum until Will Smock-Egan becomes the next sensible senator from Indiana.

The black eyes that concern me are the ones on the faces of our school board and superintendent Mark DeVoti, who have misrepresented every central fact of this mega-campus issue.  Why were they — unlike our young heroine in ‘The Shiner’ — so afraid of a fair fight?

Why is the district’s investment banker — from a firm under SEC charges for orchestrating a $200 million fraud of Wisconsin school districts — still running the mega-campus campaign, and now badgering County clerk June Madrid for daily lists of voters who haven’t returned ballots?

Why did Mr. DeVoti conduct a pre-scripted pro-3B radio interview at the half-time of last Friday’s football game — and never indicate the interview was a political announcement?

Why does Mr. DeVoti misrepresent the actual tax impact of his $98 million tax hike on struggling homeowners (and employers, who pay a 400 percent higher rate) by underestimating the actual cost by 45%?

Honestly, the most difficult thing about creating the cover was actually superimposing Mr. DeVoti’s face on Norman Rockwell’s ‘principal’. At least there is some comfort in knowing that civics and ethics and business practices are not being taught to our kids by Mr. DeVoti and the school board, but by our teachers.