This essay, dear reader, is my 200th for this publication. It calls for something special. To wit:
To write, or not to write: That is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to ignore
The lies and hypocrisies of American society,
Or to take up pen against the calumnies,
And by denouncing end them? To write: To influence;
Endlessly; and by influence to say I end
The anguish and the thousand natural shocks
That mind is heir to, ‘tis a destiny
Devoutly to be wished. To write, to influence;
To write, perchance to dream: Ay, there’s the glory;
For in that dream of glory what legacy may come
When I have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give me hope: There’s the respect
That makes endurance of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorn of critics,
The name-calling, the innuendos,
The pangs of death threats, the publisher’s editing,
The ignorance of the ill-informed and the spurns
That prevaricators unceasingly make,
With a mere shrug of the shoulders? who would ridicule
bear,
To grunt and sweat in the task of writing,
But that the evils of the world,
The relief from which
Few people can endure, grip the mind
And makes the writer rather bear the scorn he has thrown at him
Than allow the evils to go unchecked?
Thus conscience does make him stronger;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is bolstered with greater determination,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard find their way into being,
And gain the name of action.
(With apologies to the Bard, William Shakespeare)
The Chas has been venting his spleen since June 1966, first in that other newspaper in town (TONIT), and later in this publication. He has said things that no one else wants to say or dares to say, but which need to be said. Obviously, he has taken considerable heat along the way, but that comes with the territory. He realizes that not everyone will agree with anything he says, but he is not deterred. On the other hand, he seems to have acquired a fan club for which he is gratified.
From the beginning, the purpose of my enterprise has been to provide the greater community some food for thought. I have sown seeds, some of which have fallen on fertile ground and some on fallow ground. But I am not deterred. My philosophical mentor, the 18th-Century Frenchman, Voltaire, once stated famously, “I have come into the world to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” And so, I embark upon “enterprises of great pitch and moment” and refuse to “lose the name of action.”
Will there be a #300? That, dear reader, is the real question!
Just a thought.