The rest of the story…

Sometimes people ask me why I insist on writing column after column about Barack Obama, or before him George W. Bush, when I am just a small-town editor.

The answer is simple.

Because I care about what happens to this country.

If you know of anything more important to write about than the takeover of health care under Obama or the attempted surrender of sovereignty under Bush, let me know what it is. Oh yeah, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. You are right. Those are important, too.

More important, for instance, than the city council's vote on whether or not to establish "light pollution" guidelines. More important than whether a new library is built in Kalispell. More important even than my opinion about the rivalry between Flathead and Glacier high schools.

All of those have been suggested as topics for my column, and they are all worthy of discussion. In fact, you can often read the Inter Lake's opinion on such local topics in our editorials.

But this column represents my personal interests and expresses my personal opinions. Therefore, I can write about anything, within reason, that touches my fancy. Sometimes that means I do write about personal topics such as my wedding day, my children's accomplishments, or a favorite artist such as Bob Dylan. But even then, I try to strike some universal chord in an effort not to be too provincial.

It was not always so. In fact, when this column started five years ago, I had a tendency to write about either the newspaper itself or my family and my personal observations on a weekly basis. This resulted in some heartfelt columns such as several I wrote in honor of my mother, who had died in 2003 of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (the human version of mad cow disease). I even won a first-place for column-writing that first year, so I might well have kept on in that vein till this day.

But then something happened.

A reader called.

He told me he thought I was a good writer, but he wanted to know why I was wasting his time.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Don't you know what's going on?" he answered. "Don't you read the newspapers?"

"Well, as a matter of fact I do," I insisted proudly.

"With everything going on - with what's happening in Washington and Iraq and the economy - why are you writing about the Seahawks?"

Or maybe it was "Why are you writing about fry bread?" or "Why are you writing about the cold weather?" I confess I no longer remember the topic that had struck my reader as so insultingly trivial in an era when momentous decisions are being made every day.

But I remember what he concluded with: "Why don't you write about something that matters? Don't waste my time."

Phew!

I don't mind telling you, that was food for thought.

At first, I demurred. I told the guy that he didn't want to read my opinion. I was just a small-town editor from Montana. If he wanted to know about political issues in Washington, D.C., he could read lots of columnists from Washington or New York. But he told me he wanted to know what I think.

"I don't buy those papers from New York," he said. "I buy the Inter Lake. I want to know what people in Montana think about the things the people in Washington are doing!"

It was kind of my equivalent of one of those town-hall meetings where plain, everyday citizens are confronting their senators and representatives and demanding answers. "Why don't you vote for something that matters?" they could be shouting. "Don't waste our time!"

And you know what? I have no idea if my caller was liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. He was just someone who saw big things happening all around him, and wanted confirmation from me, his local newspaper editor, that I "got it."

Again, it reminds me of those folks in the town-hall meetings who are demanding answers from their government today and insist that they are non-partisan, even though many of them might vote for Republicans. Their anger doesn't have anything to do with PARTY; it has everything to do with COUNTRY.

Do you get it? I do.

And if anyone thinks I write these columns to advance the interest of a political party, they don't know me. My purpose in writing passionately about big issues is not to satisfy any politician; it is to satisfy one reader who picked up the phone and told me he expected me to do better.

Like it or not, now you know the rest of the story.

n Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com