The Wrong Image Sandpoint’s Portrayal In The National Media As A Racist Paradise Is Myopic And Undeserved, Says Adopted Son Ben Stein

Let me tell you about my friends in Sandpoint: First, there’s Peter Feirabend. He’s in his late 40s, a woodworker and artist. He’s a single father. He’s something of a poet. He lives in a house off Baldy Mountain Road that looks as if he built it by hand, and he did.

Peter and I met because he was the caretaker for the estate of a mutual friend in Hope. He showed me the house and the neighborhood. He told me about the Great Flood that formed Lake Pend Oreille, and we became friends. He’s a single father and incredibly devoted to his children, Rachel and Alex.

Last summer I bought a boat at The Alpine Shop. With Peter’s fine help, I soon learned to use it. One day, my son Tommy, age 8, Peter, and Peter’s son Alex, another little boy named Anton and I rode up the river to Priest River. On the way back, my son and Peter’s son - three years older than my Tommy - wanted to swim at a little Marina near Dover. They jumped off the boat, but the water was too deep and too cold for Tommy. He swam to shore and would not swim back out to the boat. He was terrified and angry.

What should we do? Sail back to Sandpoint, then get the car and come get him? No. Peter guided my boat into the very shallow marina. Then Peter jumped wordlessly into the cold water. He scooped up Tommy on the beach and carried him back to the boat. When I thanked him, he opened a beer and just waved me off.

Then there’s Gina, the librarian, the strongest woman in Bonner County, married to the strongest man in Bonner County, Tom, the FedEx man. Then there’s Marianne Love, the Sandpoint High School journalism teacher. She e-mails me constantly, and passes on my weak musings to her students as if they meant something.

And there’s beautiful Lorna, former barmaid at the Edgewater, who would stop what she was doing and go outside with my son to help him build a snowman. And the boaters at Whiskey Rock, who always help me guide my boat so I don’t just crash it into the dock, as I am always about to do. Or Jacqui O’Neill, who picks me up when I fall down cross country skiing all of five feet. And the desk clerks at the Edgewater, who greet me like I am their brother when I get back to town, or the women at Larson’s, who sell me hats and gloves and boots, or the people at the Safeway, who talk to me like I was their cousin.

When I drive across the Long Bridge, I don’t feel as if I have arrived at a great resort town. I feel as if I am home.

The joke of this - and it’s not a very nice joke - is that to the extent Sandpoint is known outside the region, it’s not universally known as a place of nice people. Relentless media efforts have made Sandpoint seem like a haven for kooks and nuts, especially racist kooks and nuts. This could hardly be more mistaken. And I’d like to tell you why this racist myth is so maddening to deal with.

First, of course, it’s not true. I have spent about 10 weeks a year in Sandpoint for the last three years. I have never seen or heard a racist remark - not from any source.

Second, it is probably true that there are some nutty racist types in Sandpoint. But there are not many, a few dozen in a county of more than 20,000 and a town of about 6,000. From what I have seen, there are far more of them in New York City and Los Angeles than there are in Sandpoint.

It’s fascinating to me that we here in Los Angeles had the worst race riots of the postwar era a few years ago - explicitly racist violence on a staggering scale, clearly aimed by one racial group at hurting and killing another racial group. But no one in the media ever calls Los Angeles a racist hotbed. In New York City several weeks ago, a black racist group picketed outside a Jewish-owned clothing store and called the owners bloodsuckers. Then one of the pickets killed several people in the store - but no one ever calls New York a racist city. Can you even imagine the media storm if some Aryan supremacist started picketing a store in Sandpoint and calling its owners bloodsucking Jews? Sandpoint would be on every network TV show for a week.

In New York City right now, there are clubs that allow only wealthy Christians to belong. They unapologetically keep out Jews and blacks. There are apartment buildings that make it impossible or almost impossible for Jews or blacks or Orientals to live in them. Right now. Today. In Washington, D.C., this minute, there are country clubs that slam their doors to Jews or blacks or Orientals or Arabs, but no one ever calls Washington, D.C., racist.

Some famous media people frequent these clubs. The same media people make sure their kids go to schools where there are almost no blacks. But no one ever calls them racists. There are no racially or religiously segregated clubs in Sandpoint. There are no religiously restricted housing developments. Somehow, the media has missed that.

You have a famous ex-Los Angeles policeman named Mark Fuhrman who is supposed to be a racist creep. But he has not been indicted or convicted for any crime. He has never had the chance to tell his side of the story, and even if he did something bad, he certainly did not do it in Sandpoint. In New Orleans, there are non-white policemen who have been convicted of robbing and murdering businessmen and even other cops at least partly because of their race. But no one calls New Orleans a racist city.

The point is that the entire national discussion about racism is completely and totally hypocritical. As the media see it, you’re a racist if you are not black, want to be with your own kind and are not rich, are a policeman or a manual laborer or small-businessman. You are not a racist if you are black and hate white people. You are not a racist if you are a rich, well-connected white and want to keep away from poor blacks or Jews or any kind of poor people at all.

In other words, Sandpoint is accused of racism by some people and institutions who lack the moral or ethical or journalistic credentials to be taken seriously, at least in their attitudes about race.

Third, and this is a tough one for most media people to swallow, but in America, people are allowed to have whatever thoughts or feelings about race they want to have. That’s freedom of thought and of speech. If the Aryans want to complain about what’s happening in America, the Constitution is meaningless if it does not allow them to do so. If other people want to ask people to live in brotherhood, they’re allowed to do that. Thoughts about race are not illegal, no matter what the are. Violence and threats are illegal - but thoughts and speech are totally allowed. Sandpoint is being crucified in the media because of totally legal, completely protected activities. It’s fascinating to me that the Sandpoint police report that there have not been any hate crimes in the town in many years. Somehow that never makes the news.

My humble advice to the people of Sandpoint: be proud of your town. It’s America the way America is supposed to be: friendly, trusting, accepting, still full of promise of security and happiness for the family. You’re being picked on by people who have a lot less regard for their neighbors than you do. Forget about them and go about your own enviable lives. If they’re too hypocritical to understand Sandpoint, let them stay away. You don’t need them and you never will.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Ben Stein is an actor and writer in Hollywood. He has been a columnist for The American Spectator for 23 years. You might have seen him on CNN, talking politics, or caught him as the monotone-voiced teacher on the “The Wonder Years.” Or seen him as a character actor in several movies. He’s now in a television commercial for GMC Trucks and Friday, he was the Sandpoint Winter Carnival parade grand marshal. He is a frequent visitor to Sandpoint.