Dear Mr. Dillon [Mike Dillon, publisher],
I left you a phone message but I feel it is important to follow up in writing as well. I am aghast that you allowed Mr. Folger's "Rant" to be published (5/20/09). The author purports to believe that he might be the only person wanting to cut in line for a few "pumps" of coffee, of course free. What if there were five people like him who felt so entitled? A request for coffee is not the same as a request for a spoon, and to assume it should be free because it would otherwise be thrown out, well the same could be said about your newspaper.
But far worse is his judging the intention of the barista ( "The capper was her smug, I-have-got-so-much-better-things-to-do-than-be-here-serving-the-likes-of-your-yuppy-ass attitude.") and then such derogatory comments about tattoos and piercings ( "A word to indy coffee-shop owners: go ahead and hire the barista who has tattooed every part of their body, including their face and eyelids and pierced their eyes and brain and stretched their earlobes so they can put dinner plates in them."). I suppose such biased assessments were true in the 1960's of long-haired hippies. I shudder to think what Mr. Folger might have thought about Negros in the 1950's.
The fact that he is your editor is my major concern. I had mentioned to you in a previous phone conversation the debacle at the Santa Barbara NewsPress caused by Mrs. McCaw's (owner and publisher) blurring the lines between opinion and news (and Ben Bradlee's wonderful quotation about the importance of the separation of news and opinion, akin to the separation of church and state, in the DVD which was made chronicling Mrs. McCaw's abuses of her power).
If Mr. Folger is your editor for both news and opinion, and he displays such attitudes and bias as he did in his "Rant", then how can a reader be comfortable in his ability to distinguish fact versus opinion throughout your newspaper? I certainly am not.
As Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird taught Scout, one has to work hard to get in the shoes of the other person, to know what it must feel like to be that person. It appears obvious to me that your employee and editor lacks such skill. A barista is serving a customer and Mr. Folger interrupts to request (though it sounded more like an assumed demand) a "pump or two of...house coffee" and when not served can do nothing but think awful thoughts about the barista (note he had to add the barista was a 'young woman'- would he feel the same if the barista was 6'5", Hispanic, and perhaps male??).
I have no confidence that your editor's biases might include age, gender, race, religion, disability and other 'differences" - he pretty much left me wondering about his tolerance for anything not according to his expectation. Please note I am not judging Mr. Folger's character nor his intent because I do not know him and hence cannot and should not come to conclusions. But I express to you a sincere worry about your newspaper's ability to be objective and fair based on publishing his writing.
Note to Ellen Monrad: I would appreciate your forwarding this email to the QACC leadership. As I have expressed to you, the QA News inadequate 'facts" relating to Coe's principal (involving the farmers market dispute) leads me to question the capability of Mr. Dillon and his employee Mr. Folger to be fair in reporting and editing news concerning our community. I would strongly recommend that the Council reprimand the QA News for printing this "Rant" (included at the end of this email) as hostile, biased, and adverse to community-building which we need to work so hard to sustain.
-Phil Irwin[[In-content Ad]]
