In a somewhat uncharacteristically introspective way, this column is about me. In an effort not to bore you to tears, it’s also about you, which, I suspect, is one of your favourite subjects… especially compared to me. Just to broaden the scope so we don’t wind up feeling like we’re drinking on a sun-drenched patio getting sloppily personal, it’s also about the town we’ve chosen to live in and, well, all of our futures.
But first, as politicians running for office like to say, about me. Almost 13 years ago, Bob Barnett walked calmly into the place I was working for the summer and said, “How’d you like to write a column for Pique?” I felt like someone had slipped a sack over my head and punted me toward Bizarro World. My first thought was, “Is this man out of his mind?”
The sum total of my contributions to the printed word consisted of a couple of humorous letters to the editor and a couple of features I’d written to con businesses around town into letting me sample their adventures — river rafting, guided fishing and such — without paying the monetary price. Other than that, my credentials for becoming a columnist were nil. No journalism school, no creative writing courses, no burning ambition to write the great Canadian novel. Just an opinion, an eye for observing the world around me, an imagination that sometimes runs amok and a facility with words.
Kinda casts Bob’s reputation for being level-headed and reasonable in a whole new light, doesn’t it?
My comfort with stringing words together was part organic — if I weren’t a card-carrying atheist I’d make a metaphorical reference to being touched by the hand of God to illustrate the luck of the draw nature of it — and part hard work. I’d discovered early in my schooling that writing essays, term papers and even non-multiple choice tests with a touch of humour was a surefire path to good grades, considering the sheer boredom teachers and professors faced in reading them. So I sharpened the gift with practice and exercise.
Still, a weekly column? I agreed for much the same reasons I agree occasionally to speak in public. It’s a stretch, a challenge and, in ways best described by Homer Simpson, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. And I figured it’d last about three weeks.
That was 641 weeks ago.
It wasn’t too many weeks before politics came up. It wasn’t too many weeks before we were threatened with a lawsuit. And it wasn’t too many weeks before I had to decide how I was going to approach what I wrote about.
I decided to follow the everyman/woman route. When I read something, see something, hear about something, I have a reaction, an opinion; I suspect you do too. I “test” this opinion by talking to friends; I suspect you do too. If whatever it is has enough substance to build a column around, that’s what I write about. I figure if I have an opinion about something, there are probably a lot of people who share that opinion. I also imagine there are a lot of people who think I’m full of it, such is the nature of opinion in a pluralistic society. The only difference between my opinion and your opinion is that facility with words I have and the amazing opportunity offered by Bob’s lapse of judgement.
Journalists work with facts. Columnists, at least of the everyman variety, work with opinions. Journalists are objective. Columnists, by definition, are subjective. Facts are a great jumping off point for opinion pieces but opinion isn’t limited to facts. Besides, facts, in political settings, are often just opinion disguised with authority.
I’ve been doing this long enough that, like a journalist, I could call the mayor, councillors and others and ask them to ‘splain themselves. Theoretically, so could you though in reality, I suspect you don’t feel quite that empowered. But that would be treading on journalists’ territory and would only make things less entertaining, which is part of what the back page is supposed to be: entertaining, thought-provoking, argumentative, hyperbolic, silly and provocative.
But there’s a widely-held opinion around the council table that I’ve gone too far. Pique’s gone too far. We’ve become agents of negativism, shrill harpies with none but discouraging words and skies that are cloudy all day. My good friend, Councillor Wake, has even said my ill-informed opinions were part of what made him decide not to run for a second term. I can live with that.
But I don’t think we have to pass the Kool-aid around the Pique office to contribute to the, at times, robust debate about how we want to see the town we live in move forward. I think there’s an easier way to deal with what’s perceived as our negativity. Glibly, I’d describe it as stop doing dumb things. But positively, I’d describe it as exercising leadership — something that’s been avoided by the mayor’s office for so long now it’ll be hard to recognize when it finally happens — start being as transparent as you say you want to be about the decisions you make, communicate the reasons for your decisions and the vision you have for the future and recognize the uncomfortable fact that as a town, we may not be able to afford to be all we would like to be as quickly as we’d like to be.
“It’s not that easy,” is generally the response I get to such entreaties. Well, maybe it isn’t. But it’d be easier if as much time and energy went into communicating the message as goes into trying to control the message. Information does not flow well between muni hall and the people who live in Whistler. The budget earlier this year was a prime example. And information apparently doesn’t even flow that well within the hall as illustrated by the flap about Rainbow’s alternate qualifying criteria.
Oops! Was that too negative? Hey, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you decide?
Personally, I think Pique performs a public service being ballsy enough to cry foul when the air is full of chicken feathers. Or is that fowl? I’m willing to let you decide though, at least as far as this page goes. I’ll give you a choice. Keep doing what I’ve been doing all along or give local politics a pass. Or as one letter writer put it, “Why don’t you just stick to writing those cute dog and cat stories?”
You tell me… or better yet, tell Bob. After all, he’s the one who foisted me on the public in the first place.
