Opinion: Once Upon a Time in the People's Republic of Amherst
There lived some liberals with
zero tolerance for common sense

By Izzy Lyman
December 2000

Every Friday I receive the Amherst Bulletin newspaper in the mail. Or, the 'Weekly Waste of Ink,' as a friend of mine has dubbed it.

The Bulletin is my town's newspaper of record. It offers me an opportunity to read about the ordinary - the police report, classifieds, property transfers, marriage intentions, obituaries. But the Weekly Waste of Ink is also a window into the soul of the nation's most aggressive social engineers.

Cozy little Amherst, which is home to a university and two colleges and is located in the picturesque Pioneer Valley, is often hailed as one of the more liberal communities in the Commonwealth. How liberal you ask? In 1988, Jesse Jackson won the presidential primary here. This election year the green signs proclaiming "Ralph Nader for President" were ubiquitous. Al Gore is arguably too much of a mainstream Democrat for these radicals.

The residents fit the stereotypes about the educated left: many drive Volvos, subscribe to The Nation, recycle religiously, campaign for animal rights, eschew smoking but want marijuana legalized, and look like they buy their clothes at Homeless Chic, if such a place exists. As is fitting for a community of people who enjoy waging class warfare, but rarely earn a living working with the sweat of their brow or running a business, there's an abundance of artists, teachers, novelists, social workers, Ph.D.'s and government employees.

Week after week, the Bulletin faithfully chronicles the foibles of these latte-drinking utopians and transient transplants, many from New York. Last year, the two hot issues in town were the Board of Health's decision to ban smoking in the bars and school officials' decision to censor a production of West Side Story. The former was an effort to protect bartenders from second-hand smoke; the latter was an effort to protect Latino students from being typecast as gang members. 

Lampooning these people is a conservative writer's dream, as there's no scarcity of material. But not everyone finds the socialist paradise amusing. In reality, there's grumbling from the "townies" - the blue-collar folks who have been in Amherst for several generations, as well as from the middle-of-the-roaders who wish the left-wing do-gooders would stop crafting schemes that raise their property taxes.

To give you an idea of how silly things get in Amherst, allow me to offer a synopsis from three articles in recent issues of the Bulletin. As you will quickly observe, "common sense" does not figure in a liberal's lexicon. But, at the same time, let me also offer what the Weekly Waste of Ink rarely provides - spirited commentary from the level-headed residents.

1) "My sensitive city ears can't take the noise of people working with their hands." Ken Bernstein, a therapist, who moved to Amherst from New York City three years ago, couldn't sleep because of a sawmill his farmer neighbors operated in the pre-dawn hours. The mill is located three quarters of a mile from his home, but Bernstein insisted that the noisy freight train that rumbled near his house was less of a bother.

"The train's a drag, but I grew up in the Bronx," Mr. Bernstein told the Bulletin. "With the train I can fall back asleep. The sawmill is like a dentist's drill."

After consulting Town Counsel Alan Seewald, Mr. Bernstein had the cops cite the Wagners - the sawmill operators - for violating the noise bylaw. The Wagners went to court to contest the $100 ticket, and a Northampton District Court clerk-magistrate threw the case out because, according to the Bulletin, "the decibel reading from the sawmill was about as high as that of a refrigerator." (That loud, huh?)

The dispute hardly ended there. In typical Amherst fashion, the tale of two conflicting lifestyles became the focus of a National Public Radio story and a one-hour discussion at Amherst Town Meeting. Alas for Mr. Bernstein. In this instance, Town Meeting members determined that farmers were the protected political group du jour, not refugees from the Bronx. They voted, overwhelmingly, to approve an amendment that completely exempted "farm-related" sound from the noise bylaw, even though Mr. Bernstein's complaint was the first one made against farmers in thirteen years.

The Reality Check: David Keenan, a former Amherst selectman and longtime friend of the Wagners, was appalled at Town Meeting's decision. "They used a hand grenade to get rid of a mosquito," protested Keenan, "and a lack of leadership in town government has resulted in giving something to a group of people that no one group really deserves." He lamented, "Farmers now get special treatment, and residents who may have a legitimate complaint about the noise of farm machinery have no recourse. This just fosters an "us vs. them" mentality in a case that could have been easily mediated by town officials."

2) "Boo-hoo, we don't have enough multiculturalists in our schools." It seems like every week the Bulletin features a front-page story about a school committee meeting where there's much agonizing over the dearth of minority teachers. (Thirteen percent of the teaching staff at the regional level are minorities). Jacqueline Bearce, Assistant to the Superintendent for Diversity and Equity (some title!), proposed a marketing plan to the school committee to recruit more candidates. As noted by the Bulletin, Bearce suggested "larger ads in Boston and New York newspapers, a possible video for use at conferences, new networking efforts with schools of education, expanded use of Web sites, and a speed-up of the hiring process."

This effort ain't cheap. Gregory Davis, one school committee member, theorized that just producing a recruitment video could cost $10,000. But money concerns did not deter the true believers gathered at the meeting. They were unimpressed by Bearce's suggestions. Parent Willard Pinn sniffed, "What we have seen was analysis, not something new."

The Reality Check: "Not that again!" exclaimed Anne Gaddy when she was told of the Bulletin's story about the minority staff shortage. Gaddy, who is white, has three children who attend the Amherst schools and is married to an African-American. She has little patience for what she considers "these peripheral issues."

"We live in a country that is already diverse. The focus of public education should be to provide a quality education, not to promote affirmative action," she says. Gaddy believes the money spent on recruiting persons of color could be better used in mundane concerns like upgrading the school's sports equipment, fixing the playgrounds, and providing air conditioning for the high school.

3) "I can hold a grudge against dead white European males while hating bigotry." This story was on the editorial page of the Bulletin where the libs really show their true rainbow colors. In the October 20 issue, one busybody named John Furbish wasn't content with pushing pedestrian progressive concerns like freeing Tibet or downsizing the military. In his Bulletin op ed piece, he argued that the town, named after Major General Jeffrey Amherst (a commander in the British army during the French and Indian War) should have a new name. His reason? Because General Amherst disdained Indians. Furbish tells readers that the General considered using smallpox-infested blankets to spread an epidemic among the Indians captured at Fort Pitt.

And he dramatically editorialized that the 18th century Amherst "sought to 'extirpate this execrable race' of Native peoples by a total kind of warfare that knew no bounds." Furbish mentions that the town could be renamed after " ... an anti-racist such as the 19th century author Helen Hunt Jackson, who was born in Amherst." La-di-da.

The Reality Check: Larry Kelley, a fifth generation Amherstite and the Bulletin's token moderate columnist, thinks these attempts at revisionism are a waste of time. Kelley advises, "The past is the past, so get over it. War is hell, and, truthfully, chemical warfare, which the United States and other countries engage in, is far more egregious. There's also no historical evidence that any of General Amherst's methods actually worked." Kelley is also dismissive of bleeding-hearts like Furbish. "Amherst attracts the types that think, 'Hey, this worked great in Cambridge. It should work here.'"

Just another week of  "business as usual" in Amherst. That's the bad news. The good news is that residents like Dave Keenan, Anne Gaddy, and Larry Kelley are trying to counter liberal foolhardiness with responsible thinking.