Posted by:
steve benson
(
)
Date: May 06, 2019 08:47AM
Rather, along with dozens of other Gannett parent-company employees, I was laid off in January 2019 in a nationwide cost-cutting move implemented by company headquarters in tightening times.
I tremendously enjoyed my 38 years with the Arizona Republic. It was my first official newspaper job, where I had the marvelous opportunity to work with patient editors, professional reporters and fellow commentators in addressing important issues of the day on the opinion pages of this nation's newspapers. Without that experience, I don't know where I would have landed so early in my desired career.
There is nothing more American than the freedom of the free-wheeling debate that occurs daily in the arenas of these indispensable forums, be they online or in print. To quote Neil Diamond, it is the "beautiful noise" of robust ruckus being made by We the People in response to the world around us. In the process of being engaged and enraged citizens, fights are known to break out. Real ones. Not the fake ones in the made-up "War in Heaven." Good for Old Glory. It goes with the territory. Ben Franklin, who himself was an editorial cartoonist for his own newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, observed that "if printers were determined to print nothing til no one was offended, little would be printed." Hoorah!
For what it's worth and maybe even for what it's not worth, I remain an active editorial cartoonist, doing freelance work for the Arizona Mirror, the Phoenix New Times, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and anyone else who lacks taste and judgment. My cartoons remain nationally syndicated. It all keeps me busy and in constant trouble. As my dastardly doodler colleague Cal Grondahl, formerly of BYU and then the Deseret News (before he quit to move on the freer pastures) observed, "Editorial cartoonists throw the first punch in a bar fight, then stand back and watch everyone else join in."
I value the similar energetic and memorable times here on RfM, where we routinely engaged in dynamic and informative debates about actual, not priesthood-lesson-manual Mormon Church history, doctrine, policy, and the constant misrepresentations of same by LDS Inc. I hope we have managed to make a difference in the lives of those searching for firm facts over blind faith.
Through it all, it was my privilege to make wonderful friends here, to learn new things and to come to appreciate the tough but necessary job that this site's dedicated Admin crew does in providing such an important forum as RfM for those who are searching for truth; who are committed to protecting individual freedom of thought; who are determined to offer clear and convincing correction of demonstrable institutional religious abuse, error and deceit; and who are into disseminating empirically-demonstrable terra firms reality. I don't think that's too much to ask of people with brains, do you?
Carry on the good fight, folks. Be well and give 'em hell (For the record, that's a figure of speech that I don't mind using, despite being a staunch atheist. Besides, as President Harry S Truman was famous for saying, "I don't give them hell. I tell them the truth and they think it's hell.")
Perhaps we'll see you around here in the future. If not, it will perhaps be because of the whims of Nature, me being preoccupied, or my own stupid mistakes.
Cheers 'n beers!
(And, yes, Shummy, I'm humble--and proud of it).
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2019 09:02AM by steve benson.