OPINION: Forty years ago, I fired Doug Wilson; now I'm askin...

I gave him the same four ground rules in place for the other columnists: no calls to violence or blatant discrimination, adhere to deadlines, don't take reader pushback personally and you serve at my pleasure. For about a year, it unfolded as I had hoped. He embraced divisive positions and easily was the most talked about columnist in circulation. People subscribed and canceled subscriptions with equal ferocity based on his weekly utterances. He pushed the envelope. I agreed with little of what he wrote, but that's why I recruited him. I abhor culture cancelers — be they on the right or the left Then he crossed a line. Wilson said homosexuality ought to be made a capital offense and people found to have engaged in such behavior should be executed. Whoa! The collective minds of Moscow and Pullman blew up. As did mine. We parted ways. He may proclaim that sort of thinking on the streets of Moscow and Pullman but not from my watchtower. He didn't urge people to go forth and kills gays, as my first rule forbade. Rather, he ran head on into Rule 4. Essentially, he no longer pleased the editor. Still, I sort of respected the guy. Even though that didn't figure into the termination equation, it continues to bother me to this day. I think of myself as an absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment. You are free to say what you wish. The First Amendment guarantees that one can offer opinions even if the establishment considers them offensive. There can be no prior restraint. I don't regret giving him a chance to articulate his thoughts or helping him launch his public persona. He grabbed the latter ball and ran with it. I am certain he would tell you that with or without that newspaper column, he would have gotten where he is. Likely that's true. Would I give him a column today? No. These days he is quite capable of providing his own mega-soapbox We all have lines in the sand for what is not to be shouted in the workplace, at the dinner table or distributed in the mass media. I had mine. But the real question for me is whether, in hindsight, I ought to have fired him for rendering an opinion most of the community and I thought over the top?