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2 Wednesday, August 2, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg American Voices Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: In response to your July 26, article, “Mayor under scrutiny over rant”: It’s concerning that Sisters Mayor Chuck Ryan reached his “boiling point” over a petite, 50-something woman who happened to be walking past his home as she was reviewing her daily mail. Then to continue his bullying behavior he threatens another female resident who con- tacted him in an attempt to better understand his behavior. Although Ryan acknowledges his behavior was unacceptable, do his actions reflect the desirable character we should expect and demand from our mayor? Kathy Liverman s s To the Editor: To live a long life is to be slowly born. With age we come to a place where we can see the beauty in almost everything. That said some days are better than others. I was cruising along in my ’63 VW, sunroof back, windows open, crossing the Whychus Creek bridge, headed into town. Suddenly the purring of my air-cooled engine was inter- rupted by a sputter, then another sputter, and then the dreaded silence of a mechanical failure. It was mid-afternoon as I coasted along Highway 20, took a slow right turn onto Locust and rolled to a stop in the elementary school right-turn lane. My slowly born-fully awake self let out a four-letter word borrowed directly from my early teens. I had things to s See LETTERS on page 23 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Sunny Sunny and Hot Sunny and Hot Slt. chance T-storms Slt. chance T-storms Slt. chance T-storms 96/59 100/61 98/59 95/58 94/56 91/na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Karen Kassy Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. A friend of mine who attended the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year reported to me that the Young Republican men were “wearing their ties down past their [crotches].” I cleaned up the quote a bit for the benefit of a fam- ily newspaper. Though I’m not sure why I should bother when a White House com- munications director has helped so many staid institu- tions expand their horizons. As my National Review colleague Kyle Smith noted, the New York Times has a long history of insisting that vulgarities do not meet the definition of news fit to print. For instance, it is the Times’ standard practice to render a colloquialism for speaking gross untruths that combines the male of the bovine species with the fully processed product of what it consumes as a “barnyard epithet.” But in the wake of recently hired and recently fired White House commu- nications director Anthony Scaramucci’s profanity- laced, on-the-record tirade with a New Yorker reporter, the Gray Lady went blue. It printed, sans bowdler- ization, words and phrases that surely would have been just as relevant to its cov- erage of President Lyndon Johnson, to say nothing of Bill Clinton. My point here is not to criticize the Times’ double standards. (There will be plenty of opportunities down the road for that.) It’s to note that politics—or, more accu- rately, power — has a funny way of changing standards. Which brings me back to those ties. I’ve been around young conservatives since I was one myself, and it’s always interesting to see how fashion changes. When the first President Bush was in office, blue blazers were a kind of unofficial uni- form for young men eager to mimic what then-Bush aide Torie Clarke called “the C-SPAN and galoshes” crowd surrounding the president. When the second Bush was in office, the cowboy boot retailers near Young America’s Foundation chap- ters must have seen a huge increase in sales. And now, because the president of the United States wears abnormally long power ties (presumably to hide his girth), one sees more and more twentysome- thing men sporting the new cravat codpiece. So about those barn- yard epithets. It’s hard to miss how so many rank- and-file Republicans rel- ish the president’s crude taunts and insults. Nor is it easy to overlook the fact that the president seemed perfectly comfortable with Scaramucci speaking like a “Sopranos” character. Not long ago, it fell to conservatives such as Bill Bennett, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins and Mike Huckabee to denounce vulgarity wher- ever they saw it. And while these men don’t publicly condone Trump’s language, they essentially roll their eyes at anyone who makes much of a fuss. And among the rank and file on Twitter, Facebook, etc., there’s fierce competition to be as vulgar as possible, or to be as vig- orous as possible in defend- ing presidential vulgarity. Of course, the president is not only changing stan- dards — he’s the product of them. Over the last decade or so, a whole cottage indus- try of young anti-left sensa- tionalists has embraced the romantic slogan Epater la bourgeoisie! Their crudeness isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. The rising vulgar tide is typically justified either by the need to seem authen- tic or as genuflection to the sacred right to fight political correctness. Never mind that not everything that is politi- cally incorrect is therefore correct. (William F. Buckley was not P.C., but he had the best manners of anyone I ever met.) And the competition to seem verbally authen- tic has spilled over the ideological retaining wall. The Democratic National Committee sells a T-shirt that reads “Democrats Give a S*** About People.” Several leading Democrats have started dropping F-bombs and other phrases, seemingly as a way to prove their populist street cred. © 2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.