You didn’t hear this from me

“Radio, writing and politics did not work out. Now more BS from a former politician that cannot just keep quiet. Avoid at all costs.”

— An anonymous reader on the Tidings Web site

This just in: Not everyone likes me and what I stand for. This comment was posted in response to a March 12 feature on the launch of my new talkshow, Immense Possibilities Radio (IPR). I let it tweak me for an instant before remembering that getting smacked now and then is a predictable price for the privilege of speaking out publicly. I’ll keep paying it, because it’s a bargain.

All that bothers me about this Internet comment, like so many that attack people instead of ideas, is that it’s anonymous. This is not someone who wants what s/he says associated with who s/he is. That. say some who want better civic discourse, is a big part of the problem; maybe some of the corrosive nastiness would melt away if we all gave our name when we spoke.

That misses a couple of important points, a Tidings editor told me. One is economic: the tedious and imprecise task of requiring and verifying the real name of every commenter could demand as much as a new full-time staff position. But more important to him is the principle of providing a readily accessible forum. The anonymity option, he told me, “keeps a basic freedom unencumbered. We want to provide an opportunity for people to express themselves in safety. It can be hairy for business people and others to speak their mind, especially in a small town like ours.”

That’s a good, public-spirited intention that brings back grim memories. Let me tell a little story.

Almost 20 years ago, when the Spotted Owl was listed as an Endangered Species and logging volume on the federal forest fell like a rock, elements of the timber industry mounted a campaign to recall me from the Jackson County Board of Commissioners. They saw me as disloyal to their interests and, by extension, to the timber workers who were losing jobs in staggering numbers. It was a hostile and scary moment in Oregon history, a time when free expression carried much more direct risk than it does today, especially if you favored a slowdown in the searing pace of logging on the federal forests. This valley was full of unhappy, wound-up people.

After a few weeks of gathering signatures, the recall sponsors began running some pretty rough TV ads against me, personal attacks that had nothing at all to do with the tree-hugging sins they’d originally brought up. My phone began to ring almost immediately with all kinds of unlikely support. A couple of callers said they actually agreed with the recall organizers more than me on forest issues, but “those guys are scary. Is there some way to help you?” That felt good.

What didn’t feel good at all was another set of callers, maybe a dozen in all, who all but disguised their voices. “You didn’t hear this from me,” they said in one way or another, “but the wife and me, we’re really with you on this thing. I thought I’d call because you’re not going to hear it any other way.”

They went on to tell me that, because of their business, or opinions of co-workers, or concern for their kids in school, they wouldn’t be letting people other than me know what they thought. “But we wanted you to know,” they’d say just before hanging up. “So hang in there, okay?”

It wasn’t okay. I wanted to tell them about the other calls like theirs, and ask them to imagine what would happen if everyone stood straight up in the sunlight and said exactly what they thought. I couldn’t shake the sense that we’re doing something terrible to ourselves — that fearing to stand up for what we believe is exactly what creates a civic culture where it’s unsafe to stand up for what we believe. I couldn’t shake it two years ago, when I played in a Camelot Theatre production of “Judgment at Nuremberg,” the story of a country whose people’s fear paved the path to power for modern history’s most fearsome regime. And I haven’t shaken that sense yet.

So I’m coming down squarely for ending anonymous comments. Not because it would take a cheesy shield away from those who have nothing to offer but slurs, though that would be a nice bonus. What’s more urgent is standing up together for one another’s free expression, even (or especially) when we don’t like the content. Think about the rationale I heard for allowing anonymous comments: “It can be hairy for business people and others to speak their mind, especially in a small town like ours.”

Yes, it can. And if we keep bowing to that principle, keep enabling bullies to punish people for their civic expression, what’s in store for this small town — for this country — as times get more upsetting and people get more upset?

Jeff Golden is the author of “Forest Blood,” “As If We Were Grownups” (www.asifweweregrownups.org) and the forthcoming novel “Unafraid.”