Happy Friday afternoon from my Key West porch — and from a grateful editor.

Been thinking a lot over the past 24 hours about what happened with yesterday’s post and column about the Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh Senate hearing. The post reached at least 2,000 people and garnered more response than almost anything I’ve posted. Readers who followed the link to the website and the whole column drove website traffic higher than any column I’ve written in the past six months.

Clearly, if I were just after traffic and clicks, I’d keep doing national politics on Key West Island News. But, clicks and traffic were never my goals for the Facebook Page or for the website. Nevertheless, with that post and column yesterday, I strayed too far from the mission of Key West Island News. Several loyal readers caught me up short. I am grateful for their reminders.

Here’s a sample of what they said:

Please keep politics out of this post. I love seeing actual island news and happenings in paradise, but this drags you down in the gutter.

I would prefer no politics on your site. Especially when you are so wrong.

I love the keys and really enjoyed this but am really disappointed you turned it political. Just like the NFL- you’re gone too!

It’s a shame that you’ve decided to deviate from KWIN’s stated purpose as a source of island news and discussion to delve into the sorry world of our national politics. These days it seems like no one on either side can resist joining the fray and must drag their politics into every single facet of public interaction. Could we please just have a news site that focuses only on what is important to all of us as Key West Islanders?

Anymore political posts and i will have to forget this site even exists. I love the island news… Not controversial political posts.

Sure, there were plenty of comments agreeing with what I posted, but the real message is this: National politics, whether one agrees with me or not, isn’t my mission. Those folks above are spot on.

I’m not going to stop writing my political columns. I am going to stop posting them to the Key West Island News Facebook Page and I’ll separate them on the website. If you want to know what I’m pondering “off the rock,” so to speak, you can find them on my personal Facebook Page (just follow me; we don’t have to be friends), or you can read them on their own page on the website.

But, they don’t belong on Key West Island News. I get it. I hope you’ll give me another chance.

So, while we’re sharing some time together before happy hour, how about a quick review for you AND for me on what Key West Island News is SUPPOSED to be? This is the shorthand version; get the details on the website.