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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 12, 2018)
2 Wednesday, December 12, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O EARLY HOLIDAY DEADLINES FOR THE NUGGET The Nugget will be closed on Tuesday, December 25 and Tuesday, January 1. Early deadline for display advertising and the events calendar for the issue of December 26 is Thursday, December 20 at 5 p.m. Deadline for classified advertising, announcements, letters to the editor and press releases for the issue of December 26 is Friday, December 21 at 12 p.m. Early deadline for display advertising and the events calendar for the issue of January 2 is Thursday, December 27 at 5 p.m. Deadline for classified advertising, announcements, letters to the editor and press releases for the issue of January 2 is Friday, December 28 at 12 p.m. Happy ! s y a d i l o H Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writerʼs 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: As Chairman of the Sisters Kiwanis Food Share, I am writing to remind every- one involved, the day we are giving out the certificates for a Christmas Dinner, the Fire Department is handing out toys and Furry Friends are remembering pets is coming up soon: Saturday December 22 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Remember the date! If you havenʼt filled out an application you can still get one at the Food Bank, Wednesday, December 12 from noon to 1 p.m., Thursday during Food Bank hours, FAN office at the school until Friday and at Sisters Fire Department. The deadline, if you have chil- dren, is Friday December 15 to give the Fire Department time to shop and wrap in time for December 22. Last year we had almost 200 applications, but at the end of the day of distribution, we had 28 envelopes left; the Fire Department had half-dozen bags of presents and Furry Friends hauled a lot of pet food back to their storage. We spent two days calling numerous times try- ing to get everything where it was supposed to be. It was stressful at a time that should be joyful. So, if you sign up, PLEASE show up! Naomi and I have decided if you donʼt make arrangements to pick up at a different time, we will not hold the certificates. We will make reminder calls the day of distribu- tion, but not after. If they are not picked up on Saturday, December 22, they will be used to purchase future food for the Food Bank. This is a gift given by the community that is given with love. Hayden Homes deserves a huge thank-you for making this possible. We want everyone to have the best Christmas ever. See LETTERS on page 29 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Partly Cloudy Partly Cloudy PM Rain/Snow Partly Cloudy Showers Partly Cloudy 50/30 47/27 47/27 44/34 45/34 46/37 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC 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. Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen 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. ©2018 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. 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. N Jonah Goldberg One of the most comfort- ing talking points in politics is to claim that your politi- cal opponents are irrationally obsessed. Iʼm sure this is as old as time, but I first noticed it in the late 1990s. Many of Bill Clintonʼs most ardent supporters responded to every new criticism by claim- ing the presidentʼs enemies were twisted by hate for the man. During the George W. Bush administration, thanks in part to a phrase coined by my late friend Charles Krauthammer, conservatives deflected criticism of the president by claiming his foes suffered from “Bush derange- ment syndrome.” The term caught on, and Obama supporters hurled charges of “Obama derange- ment syndrome” (along with charges of “racism”— a secular term for a kind of derangement) at Obamaʼs opposition. Today, itʼs not hard to find people claiming that Donald Trumpʼs adver- saries are obsessed, deranged, or conspiracy-obsessed witch hunters. A search of Twitter finds an infinitely long stream of references to “Trump derangement syndrome.” Now, hereʼs the thing: Sometimes itʼs true. Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump all had—and have—their hat- ers. And some people do lose their bearings and immedi- ately leap to the most out- landish interpretation of the facts (or rumors disguised as facts). The paranoid style is a bipartisan phenomenon in American life. But sometimes the people making the “derangement syndrome” or “hater” charge are the ones who refuse to see the facts, taking comfort in the fallacy that the motives, real or imagined, of a critic automatically disqualify the criticism. As Emory University political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster have documented, we live in a moment of extreme negative partisan- ship: Millions of Americans are driven more by the dis- like of the other party than by attachment to their own. In this kind of climate, being hated by the right people is the best way to get not just a big following but an intensely loyal one. Iʼve written about this before, but I think itʼs worth revisiting in the context of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the “it girl” (sorry, “it person”) of the left these days. AOC, as many call her, is attractive, young, Hispanic and almost eloquent in her passion for some ill-defined notion of socialism or social democracy. She also says many untrue and silly things. Just this week she suggested in a tweet that the Pentagon misplaced some $21 trillion in funding that could have paid for most of a $32 trillion “Medicare for All” scheme. A Defense Department spokes- man told the Washington Postʼs Fact Checker column: “DoD hasnʼt received $21 trillion in (nominal) appro- priated funding across the entirety of American history.” In recent months, she said unemployment was low because so many people are working two jobs (thatʼs not how it works), that the “upper-middle class doesnʼt exist anymore” (it does), and that weʼd save money on funeral expenses if we had “Medicare for All.” If you point out the absur- dity of these things, the almost instantaneous defense is that her critics are obsessed with an incoming-freshman congresswoman. In some cases, theyʼre right. The fixation some conservatives have with her clothes is over the top (though I did love one wagʼs phrase, “Neiman Marxist”). But what her defenders leave out is their own obses- sion with the woman. In other words, AOC is quite brilliantly playing a lot of people for suck- ers. She already has more Twitter followers than the other 60 incoming freshman Democrats combined. Ocasio-Cortez, wittingly or not, has appropriated a technique mastered by President Trump. Trump prefers posi- tive attention, but heʼll take negative attention over no attention every time, in part because he knows his sup- porters will intensify their dedication to him in response to allegedly unfair attacks. AOC is doing the same thing. By forcing partisans to take sides, she generates contro- versy. Controversy attracts media attention. Media atten- tion generates even more controversy. And so on. I suspect this will be the new model for years to come. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.
