freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose

. . . haven’t blogged—or even paid much attention—lately; been taking a holiday break. Frankly, I needed to rejuvenate spiritually after 2004. It was One of Those Years, somethinglike 1968, the old-tymers say, full of desperate highs and revelatory depths. Only something tells me the next few years are going to be even more desperate and even more revelatory. Hence the need to rest briefly, while we still can.

Still, even while breaking, it wasn’t possible to escape entirely. In the blue refuge of Santa Fe, I saw a number of fading Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers, and it reminded me of the last time I was in that city, early in October. K-E stickers swarmed around the plaza then. That was so long ago. It was a different, more hopeful, age.

But it was also an age when I was still Biting My Tongue. You couldn’t express a dissident thought in October, couldn’t sign on to Daily Kos to comment that maybe Kerry was a little condescending after all without getting flamed by groupthinkers who demanded that you get in line lest you ruin our chances of stomping Bush.

And we all know what happened. We all got in line. We lined up, in fact, straighter than Republican ants on crystal meth laced with Ritalin. And we still got stomped.

This is just me talking, but I don’t think I’ll be lining up so straight ever again. I don’t think we progressives-liberals-Reform Democrats are meant to all agree, a fact Will Rogers intuited when he said the famous bit about not belonging to an organized political party. Hell, these days we can’t even agree on what we should call ourselves. And I like it that way.

I’m not even sure I’ll stay in the Democratic Party. Atrios recently had a good bit about core principles. Add me to the growing number who’ll bolt if the Dems abandon those principles. And even the increasingly reactionary Kos has made the point that losing should free us—not enable Republicans to tie us up even tighter with their ugly little red and blue regimental ties.

And here’s another reason why I’m so free / the AGN is through with me.

For the past few years, I’ve written a column every six weeks for the Amarillo Voices series. I started writing the column before I began blogging here, but I never saw the two endeavors as contradictory or unethical. For one thing, the Amarillo Globe-News didn’t pay me to write for them—unless you count a free newspaper thrown into the middle of the street in front of my house as payment. For another, I never hesitated to criticize the Globe-News itself in my column—even though a lot of my comments never made it into print.

But as of January 1, the AGN has decided to terminate Amarillo Voices. Those of us who wrote for the series were informed by John Kanelis, AGN opinion page editor, that

Our aim is to emphasize more local commentary. I intend to solicit more submissions from our community in the years ahead. With limited space, it’s in our best interest to open up more of it to those who want to comment on whatever stirs them, or on whatever we ask of them.

What Amarillo Voices was besides local commentators commenting on whatever stirred us is beyond me. The official Globe-News line makes no sense. But what else is new?

We Amarillo Voicers were invited to occasionally submit guest editorials. But I doubt that I will bother with these glorified letters to the editor. I prefer the regularity of a column in which I can develop a voice and consistent themes over time. And I do write a monthly column for a local entertainment rag in which I am free to do all that and even say “holy crap!” without the phrase being censored to read “holy crow!”

So, for my New Year's resolution, I’ll be focusing more on the Panhandle Truth Squad and my cultural/entertainment writing. Maybe I’ll hit a few more of those Final Friday poetry slams at the Tex-Mex restaurant. But it looks like you won’t be seeing my stuff in the pages of the Globe-News. I’ll miss it. It was real; it was fun . . .

But now I’m free to be really mean to the AGN . . .

SPACEDARK, aka Barry J. Cochran