Some readers were very unhappy with me over the weekend. I wrote a column about an old friend, Bill Beard, who died recently after long struggles with drugs and crime. I said he was "a good man," and then wrote about how he had brutalized a young woman who worked at a convenience store that he tried to rob. I used the column to explore how pain is transitive — hurt people hurt people. Millions of Americans who have been left behind not only suffer greatly but also sometimes inflict great suffering on others. I encourage you to read the comments accompanying the article, and my responses to them. Many readers were offended at what they saw as me writing a sympathetic portrait of a man who had committed an atrocious crime; some noted that Bill was a white man and wondered whether a person of color would have been treated as well. Some thought my focus should have been on Betty Gerhardt, the woman whom Bill attacked (who also died recently). Some readers were furious at what they saw as an article minimizing or making excuses for violence against women. Many were particularly indignant because much of my career has been spent writing about gender inequality and violence against women; they felt betrayed. "When you call a violent man decent, you are telling me that it is decent and acceptable to ruin women as long as you say how sorry you are later," one commenter said. I don't mind being challenged by readers in this way; I think these conversations in the comments between readers and writers are an important part of what we do at Times Opinion. Dialogue is a great improvement over the situation when I began as a columnist in 2001, when it was all monologues. In my responses to comments, I tried to make the point that if we are to keep people like Betty Gerhardt safe, we also have to figure out what has gone wrong in so many of the lives of working-class Americans. On my old school bus in rural Oregon, at least six people I can think of committed truly serious violent crimes. But I don't think my generation was worse than previous generations, and I don't think Americans are worse people than those in Canada or Germany or other countries where there is less violent crime. It's fair to insist on personal responsibility for people like Bill, and to hold him accountable (he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and he held himself fully responsible). But I believe we also have to have a difficult conversation about our collective responsibility when so many lives like Bill's go off the rails — and about how we as a society can do better. I was delighted that some readers donated to the organizations I mentioned in the piece that do that. It's a privilege to be able to engage with readers on these vital topics. Even when many of them utterly disagree with me. Read the column (and the comments):
Here's what we're focusing on today:
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Thursday, January 25, 2024
Opinion Today: Many readers were unhappy with my column
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