Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 22:15:01 -0500 From: "Dr. Bob Klein" <drbob@troop111.org> Subject: Outside Magazine ArticleSelden,
I see you included some responses to Adam Goodheart's article (in Section 9). I sent the following as a "Letter to the Editor" to Outside Magazine, but it was not published. If you think it's worthwhile to include on the website, you're welcome to it.
- Dr. Bob Klein
As an 8 time Philmont trekker soon to undertake my 9th trek, it was with surprised delight that I opened my November edition of Outside Magazine to find a feature article on the Ranch ("Thrifty, Clean, and Brave," p 86.) Unfortunately, my anticipation quickly turned into anger and ultimately into complete disgust as I finished reading author Adam Goodheart's wretched and pathetic mischaracterization of Philmont and the Boy Scouts of America. Given a golden opportunity to feature Scouting's ultimate adventure - a wilderness-inspired boy-to-man transformation undertaken by over 600,000 Scouts over the past 60 years - Mr. Goodheart instead stitched together a farcical, negative caricature, mocking and denigrating virtually everything he portrayed, and capping it with a gratuitous cheap shot detailing an aberrant evening of drinking, smoking pot, sex, and pseudo-homosexual shenanigans by a dozen atypical staff members assembling just off the Ranch on their free night. This "investigative reporting" was important in introducing the readership to the Philmont experience? Where were the counterbalancing descriptions and interviews of any of the hundreds of other dedicated staffers who bust their butts night and day to make Philmont an incredible experience? Why, with some of the finest Philmont Advisors in the entire country residing in the Washington, DC area (Mr. Goodheart's home), did he select such an obviously inept, dispirited, ill-trained and poorly conditioned Crew out of Pennsylvania to follow? (the better to belittle and ridicule?) Where were the contrasting pictures, descriptions and interviews of any of the thousands of Scouts who underwent genuinely life-altering experiences this past summer? Among dozens of overt insults, I could only find two compliments in the entire writeup - one marveling at the lack of graffiti and tree carving in the backcountry, and another surprisingly noting that "along the way, Camper Timmy had disappeared." Was there nothing else? Anything at all? What, exactly, was the point of all this???
Those of us who are privileged to have been to the Ranch multiple times have an expression describing people like Mr. Goodheart: "He missed Philmont." Unfortunately, as a result, so did all of Outside Magazines' subscribers. You owe a sincere apology to those who will now never know what Philmont is all about, but instead have been deceived that it is some sort of para-military Boy Scout Banana Republic, populated with apathetic teenagers who were forced or tricked into coming, staffed by counterculture freaks, and mismanaged by fat, right-wing, religious martinets strutting about in glittering Uniforms. Will you ever set the record straight? - or were you merely pandering to those members of the liberal left who you knew would take high delight in reinforcing their already intolerant, narrow-minded opinions of the BSA?
I note that this was Mr. Goodheart's first article for Outside Magazine. I sincerely hope it is the last time you will allow him to write on any topic on which he is so ludicrously misinformed and manifestly biased. Perhaps you should direct him to join some tabloid that specializes in furthering counterculture agendas via yellow journalism. If you ever publish another such distorted, anti-Scout attack by Mr. Goodheart, you can simultaneously cancel my Troop's 30 subscriptions. For shame!
Dr. Robert F.X. Klein
Scoutmaster, Troop 111
Arlington, VA