After a year of full-time talking on WILK News Radio, you’re really getting to know me.
I’m a registered Democrat whom critics accuse of making war on Barack Obama. But I’m a populist who has no time for political corruption or manipulation from any party. I’m a voice for people who often lack a platform.
Registered Democrat or not, I’m a fierce independent who more and more sees the need to hold elected officials accountable so they cannot use the people rather than serve the people.
Masters of the political shell game try to pull that stunt with the press as well.
During the 17 years that I wrote columns for the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, mainly about crime and politics which in Northeastern Pennsylvania are often the same, I aggressively sought out confrontation and conflict.
I thrived on argument.
I went looking for trouble.
My commentary included breaking news as well as opinion. That’s what a real newspaper columnist does, by the way. Good print and broadcast journalism does both.
And I was good at it.
I’m still good at it, although I’ve tempered my thirst for confrontation and conflict, honing my temper and my zeal for the truth into a sharper instrument of information and perspective.
Even some of my biggest targets back then have told me that they like me more nowadays. Two elected officials in particular have mentioned that I seem less angry and more agreeable.
It’s nice that they noticed.
But my anger is building.
Public officials see compromise as weakness and see the empty space of conflict resolution as another way to avoid being held accountable for their behavior.
That’s a big mistake.
I waited for more than a year to give elected officials in our region the benefit of the doubt, to see if they would respectfully reciprocate, respect the soft approach and become more cooperative in releasing public information. I waited to see if they would respect the need for people to hear them publicly defend their positions.
I was a fool.
Most of them took the change in tone as conciliation, as bending to their will as most members of their party and the press historically have done around here. Some congressmen, senators, county judges, one particular county sheriff, and others viewed my lack of aggression as a victory.
Some elected officials went out of their way to insult the intelligence of listeners.
Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton has absolutely refused to talk with me on the air even when I asked, through a spokeswoman, of course, that he be strong enough to let bygones be bygones.
The Lackawanna County sheriff and his faithful solicitor even ignored my Right To Know Letter, the legal avenue that’s available to the public when we want to know about how public money is spent by public officials.
Most public officials who continued to talk on the air used the sacred public platform as a safe way to ingratiate themselves to their constituents. They used us when they needed us, not when we needed them.
I acquiesced. And we lost something in the process. We lost a piece of the edge.
A video is now available on YouTube that shows somebody sticking a camera in U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski’s face as he leaves a room. The interviewer persists in asking the congressman about comments he made that were caught on tape about how Democrats duped voters into believing that they would end the war in Iraq.
The video is tense.
Kanjorski’s chief of staff looks ready to call the cops.
We need more home movies of our elected officials. We need more people sticking cameras – and microphones – into politicians’ faces. We must remain polite, but we must increase the aggression.
How else will we get to know each other? I mean really know each other?
Sue Henry
