Letter from Chip Northrup

‘Right’ View Is Not Appreciated

The FJ has published several opinion pieces by the same author, Francis Sempa, ostensibly in an effort to provide a right-wing take on current affairs, even though none of these filler pieces has anything to do with local people, organizations, places or events. Apparently no local author has the motivation to step up to defend Trumpism, so the FJ has recruited an outsider to do so. Since these syndicated pieces are now a regular feature of the paper, we are literally paying to get imported political propaganda with our subscriptions and ad dollars. There may be readers that applaud this divisive nonsense, but they can get it free from cable news.

For example, one piece made the false-equivalency of Trump’s high-seas murder of drug mules with Obama’s authorization of strikes on the leadership of Al Qaeda conducted under the post 9/11 Authorization of the Use of Force Act. Readers of the FJ are led to believe that fishermen recruited to smuggle cocaine are the legal equivalent of the terrorist group that carried out the 9/11 attack in New York City. Local people, including ones that lost friends and loved ones on 9/11, are likely offended by that misleading comparison.

Another syndicated piece of propaganda justified Trump’s renaming the Kennedy Center, invoking revisionist fact that the building was originally referred to as the National Cultural Center. Congress passed a law to name the proposed building the Kennedy Center five years before it opened. The National Cultural Center was never built, the Kennedy Center was. Sempa didn’t make that clear, because clarity wasn’t his intention. The Kennedy Center will someday revert to the name it was assigned at birth.

The most recent piece of partisan filler quotes Washington’s farewell address to be wary of “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” who will seek to “subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government.” No one fits that description better than Trump and his cabinet. But in an inverted piece of projection, Sempa identifies the “‘cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” as the “the local officials in Minneapolis, Minnesota”—the political targets of Trump’s vendetta against that city. The weasels that Washington warned us about are more obviously Kristi Noem, Kash Patel, Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi. Not the mayor of Minneapolis, where our daughter lives more peacefully with her husband and our granddaughters now that ICE has left town.

The FJ is demeaned and devalued by publishing syndicated political filler. Kindly find someone more credible to represent the right wing. At least Waldo Johnston’s right-wing limericks were amusing.

Chip Northrup
Cooperstown

Editor’s Note: Mr. Sempa’s column, “The ‘Right’ View,” is not syndicated. It is exclusive to AllOtsego. As is the case with all our opinion pieces, the views expressed by contributors are their own and not necessarily the view of AllOtsego and its affiliates. The debate continues with comments and additional letters on AllOtsego.com.