CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- The challenges of this year have also brought challenges to relationships: the arguments and the social media “unfriending.” A wedge has been driven between people.
Two men who found themselves on opposite sides of the wedge agreed to talk to WBBM Newsradio about their differences and how they’re working to overcome them.
“That’s what frustrated me with Charlie, I was like, ‘man,’ I was like I thought he and I had a great relationship and just because I voted for Trump like this is falling apart? That hurts. It didn’t anger me, it hurt me,” said Brent Payne, CEO of Loud Interactive, who voted for Obama, then Trump, and then Biden.
But it was the vote for Trump that drove a wedge between Payne and his former colleague at the Chicago Tribune, Charlie Meyerson, a veteran Chicago radio journalist and publisher of the daily email newsletter, ChicagoPublicSquare.com.
They’re not really sure who it was that did the “unfriending," but it happened, and it lasted more than two years, during which time there was no contact between two people who genuinely like each other and have for years.
Meyerson recalled when it went south.
“In the thick of some of the worst excesses, the worst anti-journalism excesses of the Trump era I just decided I don’t need this complication in my life and found myself unfrending people whose opinions I thought were misguided," he said.
Payne said he believed then and does today that the media hates President Trump.
Meyerson sees it more as the press calling out a President known for not telling the truth.
“We had some spirited back and forth discussion probably well into President Trump’s administration," Meyerson said, "and somehow or another we became disconnected on Facebook.”
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WBBM Newsradio reached out to Meyerson after he posted on Facebook, "Just had a half-hour chat with a formerly Trump-backing friend who’s had a change of heart—our first words in more than two years. Tears of affection were shed."
“Well, I want to make clear the tears weren’t mine,” Meyerson said half jokingly.
And Payne didn't disagree.
“And yeah, there were tears of affection, whatever you want to call it, I kind of shared with Charlie, this matters to me. It matters to me that we’re where we are today and we need to fix that," Payne said.
Meyerson said he didn't think things ever got personal. Payne doesn't see it that way.
“How does it not get personal if someone is choosing to no longer associate with you?" he said.
And both he and Meyerson can agree that getting beyond differences is important.
"This is a time in our society when I think people who can work with one another should look for ways to work with one another,” Meyerson said.
Payne agreed, adding, "I think a lot of people need to have that type of conversation and say that we do have differences and let’s try and put those differences aside and remember why we’re friends.”
He said it would "help us heal and become united again."