Reporting & Essays - Best of TR

By: Tom Robotham

(Opening film clip—from Reds: Jack Reed (Warren Beatty) at meeting of The Liberal Club, asked what he things World War I is all about. "Profits," he says, and then sits down.)

I'm not here tonight to talk about war. I'm here to talk about peace—the sort of inner and outer peace that comes from doing good work, rooted in enduring values.

I know many of you probably see that clip from Reds as a relevant commentary on the armed conflicts we are fighting today—war has always, to some degree, been about profit. I also know that some of you share the view of the character who introduced Jack Reed—that our conflicts abroad are principally about the preservation of freedom. I have my own views on the matter; but far more important to me than the validity of any single opinion is that we listen to one another with open minds and hearts. I always tried to make that my core operating principle when I was editor-in-chief of Port Folio Weekly, and I stand by that principle still. It goes to the heart of the original definition of liberalism, which we need to reclaim from forces in the media that have trivialized it.

I chose that clip from Reds not because it was about war, per se, but because it gets to the heart of what I see as a larger central problem of our culture: the fact that the profit motive is far too dominant in every sphere of life. Profits in our personal lives and in our business are certainly welcome. I'm not suggesting the pursuit of them is inherently wrong. I'm just asking, to what end are we seeking them? Is it for some greater good—the realization of a noble dream—or do we get caught up in a never ending quest for more and more and more?

I want to return to that point in due course. But first, let me back up and elaborate more generally what I'm doing here.

Not long after I left Port Folio, Tench Phillips approached me about doing a lecture here at the theater. A longtime supporter and collaborator, he said he wanted to give me an opportunity to continue engaging with the community, even though I no longer had the alt weekly as a platform.

I was flattered but a bit reticent. I'd never been shy about sharing my views in print. But somehow, the idea of asking people to come to a theater to hear me speak seemed a bit egotistical and presumptuous. Then I thought about one of my intellectual and spiritual guiding lights—Ralph Waldo Emerson. We remember him as an essayist and poet; but in his own time, he was well known as a lecturer, and saw lecturing as just another means of reflecting on his ideas. Though we are fond of quoting him, he was not interested primarily in pronouncements. He was interested in thinking out loud, so that we might better understand the workings of our own minds and the potential therein.

Over the last 30 years Emerson has become a constant and inexhaustible source of inspiration for me. So here I am, making my own modest attempt to think out loud in your company.

Emerson was—and remains, through his writing—our nation's greatest advocate of the idea that there is innate genius in every man and woman. "To believe your own thought—to believe that was true in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction," he said, "and it shall be the universal sense."

"A man should learn to detect that gleam of light, which flashes across the mind from within...."

The gratifying response I got to my weekly essay over the years was, for me, an affirmation of Emerson's belief. It never suggested to me that my ideas were unique or especially distinguished in any way. On the contrary, time and again I felt that I was merely giving voice to some collective yearning. To your latent convictions, and your inner genius, which you share with grace and eloquence in a thousand ways. I had the great good fortune to have space in a weekly newspaper in which I could share my thoughts. But I was able to do so, week in and week out, only because you continually fired my imagination with your good works. I think of all of the great people in this community who are pursuing their personal visions with passion, not only for their own satisfaction but for our collective welfare. Tench and Thom Vourlas are among the first who come to mind; for 30 years they've provided a cultural sanctuary in this community, an alternative to the mainstream, not unlike Port Folio. Next door, Tim Cooper does the same thing with the video store—and I'm particularly grateful to him, by the way, for providing these film clips.

There's also the Muse Writers Center, the brainchild of Michael Khandelwal and Lisa Hartz. As we speak, some of the Muse students are giving readings over at La Bella, and if I were not here tonight I would surely be there. I urge you to check out other Muse readings—and perhaps sign up for some workshops— in the upcoming weeks.

I could go on and on, talking about great spaces and places, like the Farm Market on Church Street, and great people like the Market's Bev Sell, as well my good friends Jim Newsom, Tom Ellis, Tom Palumbo and Tim Seibles who've joined me up here tonight. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention the wonderful staff and stable of freelancers with whom I worked at Port Folio—especially film critic Greg Epps and staff members Leona Baker, Kathy Keeney, and Hannah Serrano, who is now starting her own publishing venture. I wish her well in that endeavor and believe that the new publication I'm working on will be a perfect complement to hers. More on that later.

What I want to emphasize now is that these played instrumental roles in shaping a paper that came to mean a lot to many people in the community.

Of course, along with all the good response we got at Port Folio over the last 10 years, we also took our shots from people who saw the magazine as an exercise in bleeding-heart liberalism and intellectual snobbery. I remember one voicemail in particular from a guy who said, "You people are just a bunch of bisexuals running around Ghent thinking your better than everyone else."

I suppose the assumption of bisexuality stems from our commitment to things like civil rights for gays and lesbians, not to mention ballet. What could be more suspect than that, right?!

What I never understood was the notion that we thought we were better than everyone else, simply because we tried to speak intelligently and passionately about politics and art and the life of the mind and spirit. We did so out of a pure love of ideas and respect for the intelligence and sensitivity of our readers. I continue to believe that many people crave more elevated fare from the print and electronic media.

But in the relentless pursuit of readership and ratings, the mainstream media pander to the lowest common denominator of their audiences, speaking to them with a fourth-grade vocabulary and patronizing them with expressions of pseudo populism.

I'm far more insulted by that than I am by the occasional encounter with so-called intellectual snobbery.

I suspect you are too.