Orchids & Onions: Twitter’s forerunner

In two more days the midterm election will be over and the devoted, political cage-fighters in this publication’s “Orchids and Onions” ring will go to neutral corners to rinse their mouths and apply butterfly bandages to the cuts around their eyes.

The battle has been well fought; body slams and rabbit punches with just the right number of one-two combinations, swirling kicks to the face and dancing taunts to keep the audience on its feet.

While I know some of the elite, intellectual snobs in The Republic’s readership may disagree with me (and may call in an Onion), I think the local, state and national elections will be won or lost based on the exchanges of blows in this daily, Page Two brawl.

“Orchids and Onions” was condensing all anyone ever needs to know about anything into deep philosophical statements of five to 30 words long before Twitter invented the concise tweet of 140 characters, which President Donald Trump uses to settle the daily problems of the entire free world.

Of course, much of the success of this widely-respected community forum must be credited to the editors of The Republic, who scrub the statements to eliminate libel, slander, names of private citizens, names of businesses and death threats before publication.

The primary secret to the success of this acclaimed newspaper feature, however, comes from adherence to the overwhelming desire of Homo sapiens for anonymity. And, I must humbly admit to having had a major role in creating that primary feature of the column.

Back in my early days at The Republic, no column of anonymous comments was needed. Throughout our history — and up until the mid-1980s — we published anonymous “Letters to the Editor” on the Opinion page. We understood anonymous letters could be unfair and misused, but permitted them, as long as the editor knew who had written them.

The logic was that our world is not as equal and free for some as it is for others. If a person had a legitimate comment to make, but in doing so would cause her boss to fire her, or his social community to punish him, we needed to remove the barriers to free expression.

The flip side of that coin was the worry that anonymity more often was just cowardice — that anonymity was patently unfair to those institutions and individuals being accused of some misdeed without being told the name of the accuser. And no doubt many of those asking for his or her name be withheld were not in fear of community reprisal but just wanted to scream while hiding behind a bush.

Eventually, the anti-anonymity forces won the newsroom argument, and the current strict requirement for attribution of letters was created. With the change came an immediate drop in the number of letters submitted. And, from a reader point-of-view, the letters column lost a certain “free-wheeling, off-the-cuff” quality that was sometimes infuriating but also quite entertaining.

Out of the ashes arose “Orchids and Onions” — conceived as a place where readers could both praise the good or oppose the bad anonymously, but with some editorial control. We talked about only having the “Orchid” side, but realized quickly that praise can also be just a backhand slam (as contributors now seem to prove nearly every day).

Whether the column has evolved into a worthwhile feature or just a listing of worthless tripe and venom is still debated today. As I said a few paragraphs ago, I believe the political exchanges over the last several months may well be the determining factor in the midterm election this week — locally, nationally, internationally and maybe extra-terrestrially.

Many people do not agree, say they hate the feature and never read it. They say it is a discredit to journalism and they give me examples of the horrible items published in the columns they haven’t read.

I have sympathy. I know that can be true.

Years ago, my wife picked me up at the barber shop and discovered I was reading a copy of Playboy magazine inside the cover of Field & Stream. She was shocked, but calmed down when I told her I was just reading a highly intellectual article and never looked at the pictures.

Bud Herron is a retired editor and newspaper publisher who lives in Columbus. He served as publisher of The Republic from 1998 to 2007. His weekly column appears on the Opinion page each Sunday. Contact him at [email protected].