Monday, August 21, 2006

 
It's not enough to say that I felt compelled to read the piece by "kate parry reader's representative"(page one of the "Opinion Exchange" Aug 20, 2006 of the StarTribune)which led with "Staff aims editorials not only to comment, but to lead." Good Golly Molly Ivins! That's "reader's"; not " readers' "-she's *my* representative! Where do I sign up to be "led"? -come Iraq-is-hell or Katrina-high waters, recruiting violations or being violated by recruiters-don't matter none to me!
Kate "Crime" Parry thrusts the lucky Reader into the editorial staff inner sanctimoniousarium with a "breach the wall" maneuver quicker than the NYT publishes details of NSA operations by first painting a picture: "Pine trees fringe the shoreline. The lake ripples. A few clouds drift lazily by in a brilliant blue sky..." and then dispels a cruel and false conservatives' illusion of lefty fat cats cuddling in some million-dollar cabin on Lake Wobegon by informing the too-gullible-to-be-anything-but-a-follower sorts that this was an "optical trick"- that is, a successful campaign on canvas in which the artist angled the painting to give an illusion of "seeing the lake through an open northwoods cabin window." The staffers are, in truth, not luxuriating in some Sidney Wolfe's Lair, but are instead, hunkered down(hundreds of feet below ground, one suspects)in a windowless Leftfestung of the RedStarTribune Trompe Tower -safe, no doubt, from reactionary Archie and Ellsworth Bunkembusters
Parry harkens back over a "quarter of a century"(presumably around the time the glorious Age of Carter was eclipsed by the rising Evil Empire of George the Lesser's true father)by recalling "..the long-ago meeting where...I was the only woman in a room of older gentlemen all dressed in white business suits and dark ties[they must have taken off their coats and top hats and time off from grinding the faces of the poor]. Now it's as if I've reached that moment in the 'Wizard of Oz' when the screen suddenly shifts from black and white to color. Susan Albright, the editorial page editor, slips into a seat at the conference table. Her blue eyes crinkle[better check that intraocular pressure, Suz; sounds like your're in danger of imploding like a stalinista opening, say, Gingrich's Ark of the Contract]into an easy smile wreathed by the glint of blond hair. I imagine a power broker sizing up this friendly face and figuring for a pushover. That would be a serious miscalculation.[Right- like calculating President Ahmadinejad's intentions based upon a Mike Wallace interview. Yep, she's a frickin' Mother Bloor; not a "Mother Blond."]She lets the conversation meander as writers pitch ideas and layer on nuances of opinion. There is debate but no real argument among these generally like-minded people." This last may caused many, "Gee, now *that's* a surprise"s to reverberate through the ol' right-wing ironosphere. -and maybe more than a few to struggle to work "pitch", "layer", "fork" and "hip boots" into the same sentence.
Kate Parrys on with, " 'We have concern for people whose voices aren't heard,' Albright said."
Yeah, the voices of those the Strib favors are "heard" no more than that of Islamofascism on Al Jazeera.
K.P.(Parry -not Albright- who. btw., is the Star's Minister of Culture("expertise in art and culture") or "Kitsch Police")limns the nuanced sense of place, if not perspective of "her[Albright's] boss, Keith Moyer" when she writes, "When I asked him[Moyer]to plot himself on a continuum from liberal to conservative, he placed a dot just to the right of the middle for himself and just to the left for the editorial positions." I guess that the color of the sky in Moyer's world is that blue in the painting in the aforementioned left wing furor bunker. Fans of allowing gay couples to "tie the knot" were doubtless glad to read Moyer quoted as, "We're on the side of the angels on gay marriage." FWIW, my stance on gay marriage is not as constant as the Northern Star but varies not unlike Algol, and come to think of it, some of the artistic depictions of angels *do* look a little fruity. Oh, and, Jacob: I wrestled for Jesse Ventura's high school, and if you grappled with someone or some*thing* "until dawn", it twern't wrasslin'.
To see the results of the pitching and blending(I'm thinking pitchblende and Madame Curie's unfortunate fingers here) of opinions and stacking of nuances, one need look no further than the staff editorial, "Welfare reform's unfinished agenda" of the same issue: "The theory seems to be that full-time work is the best antidote to poverty. That's a fine generality, but it's the wrong strategy for a population of poor, single mothers,who are trying to raise small children while finishing vocational degrees, visiting doctors or battling off violent husbands."
Huh?!? And just how might the battles of those "violent husbands" with the "single mothers" sound?: "Bitch, I catch your brats spraying gang signs on my crib again, and I'll put a cap in their sorry asses." Or, "Ma'am, when I got back to my gated community, I found out that the "crack" which your entrepreneurial son sold me was really rock salt. I trust you'll do the right thing here." And what of the wives?:
Wife: "Just *where* do you think you're going with that baseball bat?!?"
Violent Husband: "I'm just going to play a little ball with the boys."
Wife: "At *this* hour?!? Look's to me like you're planning to battle some poor, defenseless single mother again!"
Or perhaps it was the result of having to square something written by a peoples' committee with a desire to acknowledge the need of some mothers to work off the books in the underground economy, as well as the need to self-censor a family(diverse and blended, of course) newspaper, was the deep-sixing of "beating off violent husbands."
The staff editorial concludes with, "In retrospect, the 1990s[the Strib gives sole credit to Clinton]showed that society could move thousands of families from the ranks of the welfare poor to the ranks of the working poor. But if the nation is serious about brighter futures for troubled families, it has to make sure that work meets their needs and rewards their efforts."
Humbug. If we are serious about a brighter future for our nation, we would do much more to prevent the *formation* of "troubled families." I haven't read much by Charles Murray in recent years, but recall that he advocated not changing the rules or whathave you for those already on welfare, but instead legislation that would bar aid to dependent children(don't like it- put them up for adoption- cities will burn?-better sooner than later) something like nine months after its enactment. And a moment's thought should lead to the conclusion that absent something like that, generous incentives for some to leave a state of welfare dependency will also be powerful incentives for some others to enter such a state -if only for awhile -but also long enough to do so without those sometimes violent but maybe-not-so dispensable husbands.