and now for something completely different

An editorial by Biasbuster. It's all about perspective. My contention is the Gray News and the people associated with the Gray News have a dark, gloomy, and self-absorbed perspective. When that negative perspective becomes too insular, too constant, and too myopic, week after week, year after year in their paper, it hurts the town.

The recent commentary by Mr. Proudian on June 30 is a great example. I could make a very long piece about it, but instead I chose a few selected paragraphs to make my point. Mr. Proudian's reappointment to the cable committee was declined by three councilors. Now he is angry at the three councilors who voted no, and his commentary about it appeared in the Gray News last Friday.

On June 30, an opinion commentary by Paul Proudian said:

"The three self-appointed council alphas"

Gee, last year when Gary Foster was recognized as chair he was pronounced a brutal dictator. Now it's a triumverate. Negativity spreads like a cancer.

"in my opinion, been an unmitigated disaster-a period of lost opportunities, personal vendettas, double standards, petty favoritism, and profound administrative incompetence."

I have two words for Mr. Proudian: his blog. The above description fits his writings perfectly.

"In one short year they have made a mockery of small town life, and left ruin in their wake."

1. They ruined the town because they wouldn't sign Mr. Proudian up for a committeee appointment?

2. Blog, Mr. Proudian, blog, it did a good job of creating disharmony, negativity, and hate. Ruin, if you will.

3. Is the glass half full, or half empty? I don’t see a ruined town. I see hundreds of parents at the Little League trophy ceremony, the First Congo ladies selling cookies and breads for fellowship at the Gray marketplace, knots of happy people at the post office wishing each other a happy holiday, and gleeful kids swimming at the lake, which was recently improved by teens working with the YCC. A ruined town in Mr. Proudian’s eyes, a happy and productive town is in my eyes.

"Soviets exiled my grandfather and sent an uncle off to Siberia for thinking and acting in unapproved ways; so I am, in my own small fashion, carrying on the family tradition of paying a price for annoying paranoid tyrants."

Comparing Soviet exile on the steppes of Siberia with a declined appointment to a cable television committee... Nice to have delusions of grandeur.

I suggest that if Mr Proudian can in fact muster the enthusiasm he claims to be about to muster for his Independence Day celebration, that he hold it close and use it for something positive. It might improve his perspective.