Liberal Newspaper Publishes Convict Op-Eds Bashing Conservatives

Convicted Murderer Does Newspaper's Dirty Work

Bleeding Heart Liberal Newspaper Editor Defends Publishing Op-Ed Pieces Bashing Conservatives From Convicted Murderer In Local Prison

Newspaper to convict: "Take Care of My Light Work for me, will ya?"

The New Hampshire paper, the Concord Monitor invited convicted murderer and prison inmate at the men’s prison in Concord, Charles Huckelbury to write several op-ed pieces.
The executive editor, Felice Belman, appalled by the “flood” of over “100 nasty and repulsive emails” followed up with her own editorial, “Murderer gives our readers a peek inside. Prison town needs to look behind walls.”

She goes on to ask the question, “Should a convict be allowed to write columns for the newspapers?” I think a better question to ask is this: “Why ask a convicted murderer to write Op-ed pieces for a newspaper?”

Ms. Belman writes:

“If you're a regular reader of these pages, you already know what I think. The Monitor has published several recent columns by Charles Huckelbury, an inmate at the men's prison in Concord, and a couple of dozen in all during the last three years. He follows in the tradition of the late Ray Barham: Both men were murderers, inmates and writers for the Monitor.”
Concord Monitor

As if this “blanket” explanation covers all the subtleties of posting Huckelbury’s Op-Ed’s. Here is a slice of one such Op-Ed piece from Huckelbury:

In the state prison, Iraq war is popular, Hillary Clinton is not
Most criminals appear to think like Republicans

GOP to the bone
The men engaged in critiquing Hillary's motives and policies were thus anomalies of a sort. GOP to the bone, their arrests and convictions had done nothing to sway their political philosophy. The unconcealed antipathy toward Clinton left only one conclusion: Republican sympathies are forever and not subject to interpretation, analysis, reflection, or modification, a characteristic confirmed by a recent study on problem solving and learning theory ("Red minds, blue minds") that appeared last month in the Monitor.

When you think about it, men predisposed to criminal behavior exhibit personality traits very similar to self-described conservatives, which perhaps explains the confluence of discouraging recidivism rates and presence of so many Republicans in prison today. But it doesn't explain the counterintuitive Republican preference for disenfranchising convicted felons. With so many of their brethren behind the walls, that king of voting bloc would certainly be a force in any election. In fact, it just might be their last chance to beat Hillary, a detail certainly not lost on Gov. Lynch and the Legislature.
(Charles Huckelbury is serving a murder sentence at the state prison in Concord.)

Ms. Belman goes on to write quite the flowery prose about her “prison protege,” Huckelbury:

“I surely cannot deny that allowing Huckelbury to write about his life behind bars has softened his image in the eyes of the public. He is not only a convicted murderer but also a man who loves literature, mourns the death of his mother and is dabbling in acting. He has a sense of humor and an interest in politics. Life, alas, is rarely as black and white as we'd like.”

More from Ms. Belman:

“Huckelbury is, indeed, serving time for killing a man in a murder-for-hire plot in Florida 31 years ago. He is also a talented writer. In the past several years, he has written provocative columns about false patriotism among inmates, the appeal of the Harry Potter series to criminals, a humiliating trip to the doctor's office, and how state officials might identify sexual predators while they're still behind bars.

We don't give Huckelbury space in the newspaper as a gift to him, although I imagine for a writer with time on his hands it certainly feels like a gift.
We publish Huckelbury's columns for our readers.

Concord, among many other things, is still a prison town. There are 1,523 men packed into cells on North State Street, a fact that's strangely easy to forget on your daily commute past the tall prison walls. We put those men there, and we pay $45 million a year to keep them there. It's the newspaper's job to shed some light on what we're getting for our money. Are the inmates being treated humanely? Are they being prepared for life on the outside? Do taxpayers like the fact that there's a Shakespearean drama program behind bars - not to mention a service-dog training program?”

One could point out to Ms. Belman that Huckelbury’s piece on how convict’s thinking processes are the same as “Republicans” is not even “Six Degrees Of Separation” to such subjects as preparing for life outside nor a Shakespearean drama. It is a hit piece on Conservatives written by a man who sits in prison for taking the life of another man. Surely Ms. Belman knows about the “content” of a story she chooses to publish? She has, by her own admission, admitted to “championing” the prisoners locked up inside by giving them a “voice.” Therefore, Ms. Belman must accept the fact that she is also responsible for which “pieces” she chooses to publish which she has done in her own editorial.

Ms. Belman:

“When choosing columns for the newspaper, I like to think about the quality of the writing and whether the writer is giving readers something they won't get elsewhere. That's definitely true in this case. The newspaper, of course, does not condone Huckelbury's crime, but that doesn't mean he has nothing to teach us.”

My question is this, why does Ms. Belman assume that her readers are in dire need of “lessons from convicts” in the local prison especially “lessons” where a convicted murderer compares the worst side of criminals to Republicans and Conservatives?

by Little Baby Ginn