Editorial

Hardly noble

We can think of no one other than Vladimir Putin, conspiracy theorists, or tin-foil-hatters who doesn’t support Ukraine these days. Otsego County has stood up large for a nation thousands of miles away, a noble testament to our region’s inherent benevolence.

This newspaper has published several reports about people doing good things on behalf of Ukrainians everywhere and, we’ll be honest, we’ve reported only after hearing about the events almost by chance. Maybe we saw a social media post or a flyer taped to a storefront and thought we could amplify the cause with a notice in our paper.

We rejected the one proactive release we’ve received to date: one dated April 4 from the Otsego County Democratic Committee announcing they had raised $5,000 to send to World Central Kitchen — that’s the group preparing hot meals for Ukrainian refugees.

A worthy cause and, well done for raising the cash. The release (now deleted from the party committee’s site, by the way), finished with this nugget: “Of course, our role as the County Party is to register Democrats, and support and elect Democratic candidates, but it’s also important that we help in non-partisan ways that make our community and world a little better. We are Democrats and we support Democracy here at home and abroad, in words and deeds.”

The make-the-world-a-little-better message, we thought, was a good one — until partisan politics reared its omnipresent head. We cringed a little at the blatant grandstanding and took a pass.