Letter to the Editor: Silencing Our Voices?

In a recent letter to the editor, the Pulse was admonished to keep its “editorial commentary” to “beer, food, nature, the arts, etc., not politics.” While I won’t debate this letter writer’s personal politics, to suggest that “politics” should be off limits to the Pulse is at best patronizing, and at worst, smacks of dangerous censorship. Yes, Door County is by all accounts an amazingly beautiful and enticing vacation destination, luring both visitors and seasonal residents from all parts of the world. And yes, the Pulse is a prime resource for introducing these guests to the county. But it is also a fiercely independent hometown newspaper to the roughly 28,000 people who call Door County home. It is local journalism at its finest, covering the issues that affect the people who live here, work here, retire here, and invest their futures here. Though we choose to live on a peninsula, we do not naively live in a bubble. State, national, and international events reverberate here. What happens in Madison or Washington, DC or Syria affects us here in Door County, too. And while others may see us only as a vacation or seasonal retreat, our local communities, like most others around the country, face all-too-familiar challenges such as joblessness, inequality, hunger, access to health care, climate change, and intolerance: challenges that are not only personal or sociological or economic, but also political; challenges that are often impacted by the political decisions made elsewhere by elected leaders whose obligations include accountability to their constituents. This newspaper – its reporters, editors, and readers – have both the right and the duty to investigate, to question, and to appraise both those who are in authority over us and responsible to us, and those who campaign to be. For this writer to imply that the Pulse should cast a blind eye to anything deemed “political” and instead constrain itself to being nothing more than a visitor’s vacation guide to the peninsula is offensively patronizing. More disturbingly, it is an outside attempt to censor local journalism and debate and ultimately, to silence our voices.

Kathleen D. Toerpe

Baileys Harbor, Wis.