Adventures In Wonderland

To say it’s been an “interesting” year tracking the goings-on at my home-away-from-hometown newspaper would be a serious injustice. Actually, “bizarre” more aptly describes the editorial antics of The Leavenworth Echo, a weekly publication in the mountain country of North Central Washington, over the past 12 months.

The end of the year is nigh, yet this comical story continues to develop. The odyssey truly resembles the fantasy world described by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, and takes the genre of literary nonsense to a whole new level. So, if you dare, you're welcome to join me for a surreal trip down the rabbit hole.

Where to begin, but the beginning? But before the beginning, we have prologue. Allow me to introduce the characters: the March Hare, publisher of The Echo, who uses his editorial pages to propagate the tenets of conservative politics in America today. Yes, he’s “mad as a March hare,” but fully within his First Amendment rights.

His partner, the Mad Hatter, is a local blowhard and letter writer to newspapers throughout Chelan County. However, he’s most frequently an Echo contributor who takes offensive invective to new heights (or, in this case, depths). As in Alice in Wonderland, his narrative poses unanswerable riddles while reciting nonsensical poetry.

But enough nonsense, let’s proceed to the beginning of this story. In year’s past, I have commented on editorials and letters to the editor in The Echo, and these experiences are well documented on this blog. But I have become increasingly weary of wrestling with pigs over their political viewpoints, so I have maintained “radio silence” of late.

However, about a year ago, the March Hare was lamenting all the “flack” he receives for his right-wing editorial positions. “It does get frustrating at times,” he confessed in the editorial. “Particularly when the critics are so clearly partisan that they have to resort to personal attacks or threats to cancel their subscriptions.”

Taking the bait, I fired off a quick letter, not really expecting it to be published. The March Hare had ignored several previous missives, so for me, it was more of a “get it off my chest” sort of exercise. Much to my surprise, he published the letter. From there, it was “off to the Mad Tea Party with the March Hare and the Mad Hatter.”

The first sign that something was odd: the weekly Echo failed to arrive at my Eugene address: first for weeks, then months. Could I be "persona non grata" with The Echo? Reminded by a colleague that, according to mass media law, newspapers -- much like restaurants -- can refuse service to anyone, I deferred. Temporarily.

Soon, my underground network alerted me of a response to my letter from the Mad Hatter. Oddly, the letter was not in The Leavenworth Echo, but The Cashmere Record, a nearby newspaper also owned by the March Hare. “Curiouser and curiouser," I thought. (Coincidentally, I was editor of The Cashmere Record briefly in 1981).

In his typically condescending manner, the Mad Hatter noted: “…it is not healthy to be so narrow minded and mean spirited over a simple difference of opinion. I understand they now have medicine to help that. Have you sought treatment for all this hate you are harboring for conservatives? It is not worth the risks to your health.”

“It has been proven that stress resulting from unresolved anger over conflicts is the cause of cancer, strokes and heart attacks,” he continued. “I urge you to seek out the Lord Jesus Christ to find solace, serenity, patience and forgiveness in a supernatural power and joy that is not of this world, but it works. God bless you.”

Disingenuous tone aside, something about the editorial style of the letter was amiss. As a former copy editor and reviewer of thousands of student papers over the past 30 years (and hence, someone with an eye for convoluted style and plagiarism), I smelled a rat. Could the March Hare have ghostwritten the Mad Hatter’s letter?

Meanwhile, despite having paid for a two-year subscription in January, still no weekly news from Leavenworth. Visiting the Bavarian Village in June, a friend dropped off a copy of The Echo, noting that I “probably haven’t seen a copy for awhile.” Reading an editorial written by the March Hare, I was astonished to read the following:

“This week’s mail included the following letter from a reader on the wet side. The individual who submitted this did not include a phone number and there is no listing in the Issaquah phone book for this name. So, I am taking a chance that the letter is a hoax, but it is well written and espouses a point of view that deserves a response.”

Really? So now the March Hare is responding to fictitious authors instead of real-life letter writers? He, who waxes on about those who oppose his views not being “fair and balanced” or having “an ounce of sense?” I suppose that in the case of the March Hare, as Carroll noted, “his imagination is his only weapon in the war against reality.”

Back in Eugene (which the Mad Hatter describes as that “festering sinkhole of socialism”), still no Leavenworth Echo. Instead of contacting the March Hare, I fired off an email to the circulation department: “I have not been receiving my print subscriptions of The Leavenworth Echo. Please remit at your earliest convenience.”

Here was their response: “You have not been getting your Echo newspapers because we received an advice from the post office that your address was not deliverable or forwardable. The subscription was placed inactive because we pay for each one of the address corrections we receive. (We) apologize for this mix up.”

They reinstated my subscription and credited my account for 13 weeks of missing issues. But we’re been receiving the newspaper at this address for nearly 30 years. I'm more than a tad suspicious, unlike the White Queen (below), who noted: “Why sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Receiving my Leavenworth Echo weekly once again, the first thing I noticed was the lack of an editorial page. No opinion columns by the March Hare. No letters to the editor. Nothing. The paper had also unexplainably morphed from a metro (full) size to a tabloid (mini) and back. As Alice herself might ponder: “Ah, the great puzzle.”

Then comes this, from the March Hare: “My friends all ask me why I haven’t been writing an op-ed lately. In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t get a lot of letters. I’ve been wondering if anyone cared about my decision to drop the opinion page. What I am doing is trying a new approach. I am going to publish the opinion pages on the website.”

Like flies on cow dung, the Mad Hatter pounced on the March Hare’s new op-ed policy: “I for one am vehemently opposed against your new letters to the editor policy. You had a great thing going because your paper was the only one that would allow a conservative point of view from the many conservative readers. Now there is none.”

“The Wenatchee World has banned my op-ed letters,” continued the Mad Hatter. (Their) content is very pro-liberal and anti-conservative. I think that is the reason that Rufus Woods (publisher of The Wenatchee World) is married to Harriet Bullitt’s (local philanthropist) daughter. The whole outfit desire to shut up conservatives.”

Ironically, the demise of The Echo’s opinion page appears to have been greatly exaggerated. Despite the assurances of the March Hare that times would be changing, the editorials and reader comments have continued unabated. But it was this gem from Rufus Woods himself that caught my attention in a recent edition of The Echo.

Under a banner title of "Community Letter," Woods wrote: “I read with amusement the letter from (the Mad Hatter) in the Leavenworth Echo that described me as being married to Harriet Bullitt’s daughter. This was news to me, as I’m sure it was to Harriet’s daughter, Wanda O’Reilly. For the record, we don’t know each other.”

“I have great admiration for Harriet Bullitt and appreciate her commitment to enhancing the quality of life in North Central Washington,” Woods continued. "As far as The Wenatchee World’s practice on printing letters goes, we require the content to be factual. (The Mad Hatter’s) letter would not qualify on that basis.”

My friends in Leavenworth say it’s madness to try to follow the odd twists and turns of The Echo. Am I mad? As the Cheshire Cat opined: “Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” say I. “You must be,” replies the Cheshire Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”