I had a phone conversation with John Hueston yesterday. John is the president and editor of our local paper, the Aylmer Express, a paper I mentioned in a recent post on my site. John took issue with my words, and so he reached out to express his thoughts and feelings. It was a lively conversation that included segments of disagreement, explanation, and common ground.
The post in which the offending words appear was not an open letter like the previous post I had written. It was more of a journal entry documenting my emotional state and my reactions to the events of the past months as I experienced them at the time. As a result, I didn’t make the effort I should have to review the sources of my dismay and verify whether my impressions at the time held firm still today, when the dust of those events has somewhat settled.
The offending words in my post read as follows: “Our local paper, in addition to some straightforward reporting, also publishes editorials that are barely less incendiary than Pastor Hildebrandt’s speeches. This also escalates tension.”
My intention with these sentences and the surrounding paragraphs was to shine a light on the sources of escalation in our community. In November, when John published his editorials and I read them, they struck me as harsh, mean, and unhelpful. Having gone back and read those same editorials, with the advantage of hindsight and recent history, they strike me today as appropriately blunt and properly confrontational. They are the words of someone who cares passionately for his community.
What started in my mind as, “Well, that doesn’t seem very helpful…” grew into the aforementioned paragraph. The intention of my words was certainly not to equate John’s life’s work and impact on Aylmer and community with anyone else’s, but I can see how they could be taken that way. And so I owe John an apology. In retrospect, my words were unwarranted.
As a result of this reflection on my part I offer an apology to Mr. Hueston and have retracted the words from my original post, with a link to this explanation.