When the Red in the Quarterly Statement Was Blood

I see the reasons why liberty is so sacred in the relationships of the churches, of newspapers, guarded by constitutions.  The most sacred part of life was the things that brought us together:  Family, church, newspapers.  It was all about the mortar.  The conflict of all the above was now a part of public policy. 

 

I never realized how sacred the 4^th Estate was until reading the reaction to readers of a column written by a favorite sportwriter yesterday, entitled “Who’ll Gather News When Internet Is All That There Is.”  See http://www.startribune.com/sports/18752054.html.  The vituperations in response to the column are what surprised me, a column about the day that was coming when the local newspaper was gone.  I wonder how often a columnist, a rabbi, a politician, ever wakes up wondering if it all was worth it serving the ignorant masses, people who could not see the big picture.  In this case, it was not about sports. 

 

The financial dilemma, the red in the quarterly statements of newspapers, was not some sluit.  I read the following AP news item, aware of the history of Lebanon over the past 25 years, and I realized that repercussions in a society when the mortar in church, in newspapers, breaks down forever. 

 

Lebanon’s long-simmering political crisis lurched deeper into violent civil conflict Thursday as rival bands of Shiite and Sunni gunmen battled in the streets for a second day and politicians took to the airwaves to denounce each other.

 

We were all too well-educated, and all too ignorant.  

 

 

 

In Search of Scapegoats

I live in a town where since last August 1, 2008 there has been a heightened awareness about crossing a bridge.  One day last November, the oldest business in the state of Minnesota had lost its identity, with little note made.  There is more awareness this week over the loss of the headquarters of a major airline.  And there was awareness over the national convention of one of the major political parties which would be here in less than 5 months. 

 

 

Most residents of the two cities seemed asleep as to whether the Minneapolis StarTribune or the St. Paul Pioneer Press would be around to cover the national convention.  A pending bankruptcy of the StarTribune Company was written about on May 4^th in the New York Post.  It has currently been denied.

 

 

The threat of collapse of either enterprise was not just the loss of a local source of news.  The news could be read elsewhere, without a local taste.  Small towns in Minnesota had been going through similiar change, with consolidated school districts for most of the last twenty-five years.  And that will be the direction of the churches in the archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis, as throughout the country, for the next decade.

 

 

What exactly did they teach in MBA programs where consolidations were supposed to be workable when smaller companies could not survive?

 

 

I had worked in downtown Chicago 18 years ago when I heard a contemporary, a suburbanite, bemoan the loss of identity of the suburb where he had grown up.  He felt that Arlington Heights was suddenly just like any other suburb in Chicago, in America. Without any flavor.  Tasteless.   Or had it been Elk Grove?

 

 

How soon would Minneapolis–St. Paul be just tasteless, without a flavor?  The loss of ethnic identity was having an effect on this generation of Americans.  As people I saw lost a sense of belonging, a sense of anger seemed to be a substitute, to those of the other party who might be responsible for the current state of affairs.  The community already seemed fractured.  But the stress fracture seemed to be getting worse.  A lot like what had happened to those gusset plates in that bridge structure that led to the collapse.