A Columnist’s First 50 Years: Reflections on a Long Career | editorial

The 15th century produced what remains the most momentous communications technology of all time: Johannes Gutenberg’s movable type. Glassy-eyed Americans squinting at videos of kittens on their smartphones might find it strange to attribute a history-defining power to mere printing, especially during today’s digital typhoon. The media constantly competes for Americans’ attention, which is increasingly rare and short-lived.

A newspaper column—a musty option in a rapidly expanding array of distractions—requires reading, which is an activity as opposed to passively browsing through an endless buffet of graphic distractions. It requires intellectual commitment. That’s why a column should be pleasant from the start, even if the topic is not pleasant. Here is Murray Kempton (1917-1997) in a column about President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s campaign in Florida in 1956:

“In Miami, he had dealt cautiously with the harsher realities, speaking about 20 feet from an airport drinking fountain marked ‘Colored’ and saying that the condition he depicted could be solved by human hearts rather than laws, and praised Florida as such “typical of the best in America today,” a verdict that for some may hinge on finding out what happened to the Negro kidnapped from Wildwood Jail on Sunday.”

This curved 75-word sentence indirectly expressed Kempton’s pointed judgments, albeit stiletto-sharp. His sophisticated syntax enticed readers to share in his penetrating perception. His concise style enabled him to make arguments through innuendo – arguments that the reader internalized almost unnoticed.

Note Kempton’s dry wit: “…which to some might seem as if…” A spoonful of humor helps administer the medicine (information, arguments).

An enchanting idea of ​​heaven is this: endless learning. For the self-selected cohort of editorial readers, learning is valued as fun. Columns are properly quarantined on “opinion” pages, but a columnist’s opinions will lack respect unless they are accompanied by a barrage of facts that give readers the joy of discovery: “I knew that not.”

It is said that a deadline is a writer’s best friend. But if writing is a chore — a painful chore — for a columnist, he or she should find another calling. Joy is contagious, and over time readers will appreciate the company of a columnist who clearly enjoys putting together sentences, paragraphs, and arguments.

This columnist is caught in a contradiction: He believes that prices are rational in our market society. Still, he would pay for the pleasure of doing what he is paid to do. He’s in the right city.

John F. Kennedy once jokingly described Washington as a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm. However, the city he knew was a caterpillar that turned into a butterfly. It received physical and cultural infrastructure worthy of a large metropolis. The Beltway opened in 1964, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1971, the subway in 1976.

In a sense, this columnist is doing what he did before he came to Washington. Until then he had taught political philosophy at the University of Toronto. Since then, he has worked to discern the small nuggets of great philosophical principles that lurk in the tangle of events.

Given today’s rancor, it’s hard to remember when America’s consensus was considered stiflingly dull. This columnist, now 83, remembers the time when he became politically sensitive in the 1950s and many intellectuals lamented the lack of glowing treatises on burning questions: too much Locke, too little Lenin.

In fact, in the endless American dialectic between legislatures and courts – between majorities and their limitations – the perennial themes of Western political debate are constantly in dispute: the concepts of freedom, equality, consensus, representation and justice. Americans are permanently enrolled in this seminar. And being a columnist is as fun as it is outside the stadium.

George Will is a columnist for The Washington Post.