A More Balanced Portrait

The following letter was received by e-mail:

In response to Dan Knauss’s Current Media commentary, “A Crock of Crocker:”

Hello, Dan –

I was visiting the Riverwest Currents site looking for an electronic version of the article on the Milwaukee Bike Collective by Peter Schmidtke that I could email to my son, Ian. He’s traveling right now and would like to see the article.

While looking for the article, my search turned up your response to Crocker Stephenson’s [Journal-Sentinel] article about Ian. I had not seen it before, and I want to thank you for writing it. Stephenson certainly overlooked a number of opportunities to raise some serious issues about our society, and instead poked fun at a young man who hardly deserves such treatment. The tragedy of the article is not so much his inaccurate portrayal of Ian, but the lost opportunity to air the issues Ian has made central to his life. Thank you for seeing Ian with clearer eyes and writing that excellent article.

As Ian’s father I have a natural bias, but I do support the way he lives his life and his commitment to his principles. He has influenced me to examine my own life and re-commit to ideals that are difficult to keep in the face of modern popular values. It disturbed me to read Stephenson’s implication that my wife and I are any less than fully supportive of him. It is nice to know that others like yourself saw the article for what it was. Better still that you took the time to rebut his remarks in print, and offer a more balanced portrait of my son. Thank you, Dan.

Tom Fritz

Riverwest Currents - Volume 1 - Issue 10 - November 2002