Julie Lipkin Cape Cod Times

To Julie Lipkin, Letters Editor, Cape Cod Times:  

First, is truth more important to you than your career?  Second, who is the new editor?  Is it Eric Gongola?  Now, for my letter, which you will likely not/cannot publish due to the first question:  

Seeing the term “democracy” in the Cape Cod Times grabbed my attention because the Times has been anything but “democracy” (i.e., freedom of expression)!  Instead, it has been 100% Chamber-of-Commercracy… not quite the same thing.  It would not publish anything I sent critical of its overly-lauded editor, Paul Pronovost.  The latter would not cover, let alone even respond to, any of my criticism regarding Cape Cod institutions.  Why would it not cover, for example:  “Barnstable taxpayer permanently banned from Barnstable library w/o due process or warning”?  Contrary to Jerry Kibbe’s letter to the editor, “Shutting doors on part of society never works in a democracy,” Pronovost seemed to prove the opposite:  shutting doors always seems to work in a democracy, at least on Cape Cod!  But when one never really tests the waters of democracy like most citizens, one often has a cloudy, rather than clear, sense of reality.  

Over the past decade, I have tested the waters of democracy on Cape Cod—all over Cape Cod—and have yet to find just one institution open to democracy (i.e., freedom of expression).   The doors were simply shut, right and left, by the Cape Cod Times, Cultural Center of Cape Cod, Clams Library System of Cape Cod, Barnstable County Human Rights Commission, Provincetown Arts, and on and on.  Now, wouldn’t that make an interesting story for the Cape Cod Times?  No way, Jose!  How to wake up those like Kibbe to the reality of undemocratic life on Cape Cod… beyond the Corona Hysteria?  Kibbe’s is an easy, risk-less concern:  “I cannot hide my disdain for the comments I read today of closing the bridges because of COVID-19.”

Sadly, closing part of society, contrary to Kibbe’s opinion, always seems to work in a democracy like ours!  Hell, I’ve been closed out left and right.  Do the Kibbes of Cape Cod give a damn about that?  Certainly not!