This website has received an advance copy of next weekend’s column, penned by the Star Tribune’s editor-in-chief, on topics of interest regarding the newspaper’s operations. Here’s the text:

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The veil of anonymity that much of the world uses to pontificate over the Internet has always puzzled me. We have become a nation of exhibitionists, over-sharers, personal bloggers, self-publishers. Most do that under their own name and often include a stylish photo. But virtually all the rest of online pontificating and commenting is done under pseudonyms.

 

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As I write this at 9 a.m. the morning after election night, the final five precincts, all in St. Louis County, came in, and Norm Coleman has a 726-vote lead over Al Franken. A recount is inevitable. I pulled a near all nighter, hitting the sack at 3:45 a.m., waiting for the race to be decided. The final 100 precincts in central and northeast Minnesota trickled in over the wee hours. The Coleman margin is less than one vote per five precincts.

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Rarely does the Sunday Strib provide as much fodder as this week’s. If you never got to it, I’d point you to three articles, two of them interesting, one just strange.

Topic 1: Starting with strange—There’s little new in Neal Justin’s preview article about the new season of Mad Men— 'cept it's probably the only piece about the show that goes out of its way, repeatedly, to point out actors on the program with Minnesota ties. They’re not the most prominent actors nor are their ties to the state particularly deep or abiding. (Every time The Office’s Rainn Wilson is mentioned in the Strib, it’s noted that he did a tour of duty at the Guthrie.)

Does this matter? Do we care? Why does it make the story any more interesting—especially when the article has nothing at all to do with their connections to Minnesota? Are we such small-minded parochials out here that knowing someone spent a summer at camp in Brainerd raises our interest level? Or is it just lazy writing from a journalism fraternity conditioned to do it?

I’m not trying to pick a fight with Justin, an affable fellow who, like me, is not “one of us,” but is so steeped in this self-referential crap that he can’t help himself. I’m sure I’ve engaged in some of it myself, and my magazine probably does every month. But it’s small-time hackery, and we need to shake ourselves of it.

Topic 2: Met Council Chair Peter Bell’s wise commentary on the Valleyfair criminal rampage is a must read. He insists that there are not enough diversity training seminars in the world to erase the stereotypes engendered by chronic lawlessness and depravity in the black community. He says Twin Cities black leaders, mostly apologists for such behavior, need to focus less on blaming society and more on creating a mentality within their community that decries and ostracizes such behavior. Bell, by the way, is African-American.

It’s these kinds of exhortations of personal responsibility that Jesse Jackson was heard decrying in his notorious comments about Barack Obama. White guilt hasn’t accomplished enough for black social justice for it to still be the modus operandi.

Topic 3: In the same op-ed section. there is an interesting commentary about how the rules governing Minneapolis swimming beaches are so draconian that they have rendered the beaches bastions of boredom. Imagine a rule that small children cannot use blow-up flotation devices to keep from sinking. Welcome to Minneapolis.

The Minneapolis park system runs like a small third-world country with its own elected board and bureaucracy. It engages in pointless and counterproductive rule making while demonstrating abject incompetence on essential projects. Take the rehabilitation of the Lake of the Isles shoreline, which took years too long to complete, met none of the Park system’s own stated timelines, and was to conclude this spring but now will drag into next year because the bulk of the decorative plants and shrubs put in this spring died within days due to improper care.

It’s time to dismantle the fiefdom and put the parks back under the auspices of city government, which doesn’t work well either, but who needs two dysfunctional bureaucracies when you can have one?

Suffering through endless ads on WCCO, constant Vikings minutiae on KFAN, and a boring guest on MPR, I settled on KSTP-AM Monday mid-morning. “What,” host Bob Davis intoned, “what is unsustainable about America today?” His answer was basically nothing.

Listening to KSTP before noon is risky business. Though the station hosts Tommy Mischke and Joe Soucheray, two wonderful radio talents, it also is home to some of the intellectually weakest bombast on the radio. From Willie and Jay to Davis to Dave Thompson, it’s just big bags of opinions unmoored from any coherent intellectual philosophy. Sure it’s shtick as well, but do the people who lean on its every word get that?

Let me answer Davis’s question with a few of my own:

—Is the state of our financial markets, the lack of effective oversight, and the greed-at-all-costs approach of our leading financial corporations sustainable? (See this Wall Street Journal piece, which begs the same question.)

—Is the lack of a national energy strategy sustainable?

—Is a shrinking currency and a national debt being funded by nations whose values we abhor sustainable?

—Is the growing economic disparity between rich and poor and the shrinking middle class sustainable?

—Is the lack of action regarding a planet that every year sets new heat records sustainable?

—Is a crumbling infrastructure and chronically insufficient funds to address it sustainable?

—Is an energy transmission system that can’t meet peak demand in many states sustainable?

—Is an air traffic control and airport network burdened with insufficient capacity and ancient technology sustainable?

—Is a third of the nation without health insurance sustainable?

—Is a nation that has abandoned its industrial base but leads the world in coffee shops sustainable?

—Is a Congress that can only deal in partisanship and is incapable of making tough decisions sustainable?

Trust me, if guys such as Bob Davis speak for the average American, we are in big trouble. Pretending these problems don’t exist out of some selfish desire to avoid sacrifice is not a solution. Neither is trusting in markets and God. That blind allegiance is part of what got us here.

I’m not sure today’s America could dig itself out of the Depression, initiate a space program, or cure polio. And I don’t see how we’re making any progress on any of the questions I begged above. That’s because too many Americans and their pandering elected officials can only work up outrage over taxes, guns, our troops, Muslims, gays, and abortion.

Here’s your answer, Bob. Very little of today’s America is sustainable. And it’s because of guys like you exhorting us to even greater levels of greed and indifference.

Some observations from a few days on the East Coast:

—Everyone in New York City moves fast with a sense of urgency, except the tourists. The average pace of tourists is about the same pace as on the downtown Minneapolis streets and skyways. What does that say about us?

—Passing through Baltimore evoked a credits sequence from HBO’s The Wire: block upon block of boarded-up row houses, streets deserted of cars and people except the odd African-American male. If this isn’t the most troubled inner city in America, it’s the runner-up.

—Anyone who thinks this country has shut its doors to Middle Easterners or Muslims should just spend a weekend in Arlington, Va. Most of the folks I encountered in the town were are immigrants speaking heavily accented English. Assimilating these folks into American culture is going to be a fascinating challenge, one that Europe has failed at.

—If New York is the gateway to America, then New York’s airports are a piss-poor statement to the world. Decrepit, poorly cared for, woefully underbuilt for the volumes of traffic they deal with, and besieged with flight delays caused by airline over scheduling and FAA inefficiency, Kennedy and Newark (LaGuardia has international traffic only from Canada) are emblematic of a nation in decline. LAX and O’Hare are close behind.

—Amtrak has been bashed by idiot Republicans and transportation-ignorant types for decades, but the Midwest can only dream of the dense network of fast, frequent Amtrak trains that knit together the Eastern Seaboard. Imagine taking the train to Chicago in five hours, door to door, with no TSA, no ground stops, no fuel surcharges, and employees who are no meaner than on the plane. Don’t hold your breath.

—New Yorkers like Jesse Ventura and were puzzled that he decided not to run for Senate because of the intrusiveness of the Minnesota media. It’s my opinion that the only establishment more ingrained and mediocre than our state legislature is our capitol press corps, which received Ventura’s contempt and doubled down during his governorship. It says something about Ventura’s toughness that he won’t go toe to toe with the media but never has the coverage of an elected official been as harsh than during his tenure. Ventura’s record as Governor is undeserving of the derision.

—Chain-food establishments, such as Starbucks, now have to post calorie counts alongside their food displays. Good for New York. In a nation lumbering toward collective obesity, obsessed with quantity over quality and perceived value, it’s information people deserve.

I rarely indulge my interest in sports in this space, knowing that this site’s readership is skewed heavily female and the interest in the topic is inevitably limited. I will make an exception because I’d like to clue as many of you who care into the analysis of longtime Twins blogger Aaron Gleeman, now available on Minn-Post.com.

Gleeman’s statistically based (but not number-obsessing) take on Minn-Post is a particularly welcome middle ground for those of us fans who care enough to want the why, but can’t digest tables of stats and newly invented acronyms every day.

Gleeman’s posts, which I have only regularly perused this year (I lumped him in with many of the homer-bloggers who engage in weepy baseball swoons and see Babe Ruth and Bob Gibson in every fresh-faced minor league player at Fort Myers), recently included a debunking of the organization’s approach to hitting and its image as a defensive juggernaut. I find him lacking in caution about the potential of minor leaguers (a chronic disease in this town, our goofy preoccupation with “the kids”), but otherwise offering a nice balance between skepticism and enthusiasm, with little evidence of stenography.

And we need more Gleemans. Unlike the Vikings, T-Wolves, Gophers, and Wild, who are aggressively and thoroughly dissected by the Star Tribune, the newspaper’s baseball coverage is extraordinarily thin. Joe Christensen and LaVelle E. Neal are nice guys, but their work is workmanlike at best, and exceedingly cautious.

Perhaps the mental strain of, and access issues presented by, having to be around players and management for nearly 200 games from February to September (October is not in the cards this year, trust me) has made them gun-shy around an organization that can be sensitive, I hear. After all, this is a newspaper that often values access over insight.

The duo’s coverage is characterized by frequent bursts of optimistic hype seemingly generated by the organization’s front office, an inability to deliver powerful statistical analysis, and an over-reliance on hoary clichés about the Twins’ pluck. Columnist Pat Reusse is the only consistently skeptical voice on baseball, so his recent shot at sports bloggers seems particularly ironic. (To be fair, Reusse has taken several thinly veiled pokes at Neal and Christensen this season. I suspect he might harbor some of my concerns.)

My mantra is that baseball teams with the most loyal and deep fan bases are those whose fans and media expect the most and can be the hardest on their teams. It’s a sign of success, really, because people care deeply. It would be nice if the Strib could employ the kind of rigor with which it approaches football and hockey in its baseball coverage. It has the inches, but does it have the players?

(Disclosure: This website’s parent company publishes the Twins Magazine under contract to the Twins.)

One of the few effective and newsworthy themes Katherine Kersten consistently digs out in her Strib column is the use of the public schools to advance various cultural and religious agendas, notably ones with which she disagrees.

For those of us on the left or center who are skeptical of the idea that colleges are hotbeds of intolerant one-way thought and that the public schools are laboratories of dysfunction and social engineering, the Minneapolis Public Schools’ “Welcoming Schools” curriculum, as described by Kersten, is further evidence that urban public schools have passed the point of nuance and are into blatant social advocacy. I can’t vouch for Kersten’s accuracy, but in broad strokes, as a public school parent, it rings true.

Welcoming Schools is a curriculum developed by a DC-based GLBT advocacy organization, the Human Rights Campaign. MPS is testing the curriculum in three schools as an “anti-bullying” effort.

Now I have no problem with the values Welcoming Schools pushes, namely that families headed by gay and transgender parents are normal and acceptable. We can debate whether they are optimal, but if you believe as I do that homosexuality isn’t a choice and that there are many kids out there in need of good homes, same-sex households with children are helping society, not hurting it.

But I have real qualms about using public school classrooms with kids as young as six years old to so blatantly engage in efforts to shape values that many in our society don’t accept. Not because I want to validate homophobes or endorse parents’ right to be intolerant but because it puts the schools on a slippery slope and ties them to a social movement that on its fringes goes beyond tolerance and understanding to forms of advocacy that even some liberals don’t agree with.

Such advocacy also feeds perceptions on the right that schools have become an instrument of the left, making community, state, or national consensus harder to achieve about funding levels, teacher qualifications, and ongoing evaluation of school effectiveness.

A small digression: My kid is winding down fourth grade at an MPS school. Based on my anecdotal feedback, he has had more classroom instruction about Martin Luther King, Jr. than any other historical figure. MLK was and is important, but his disproportionate salience to the public schools is part of its agenda to empower African-American kids. If the effort is having any success, more power to them I guess, but if it isn't, then my kid’s education has been put secondary to an ineffectual social agenda that is irrelevant to his needs.

My point here is that the right wing’s perception that the public schools are being used to indoctrinate kids in values steeped in multiculturalism and social engineering seems more accurate than not. Multiculturalism has taken on the dogma and emphasis of a religion in academia—it doesn’t take a lot of digging to discern that.

I want my kids to be educated. I hope they learn values in the home by watching us, in religious school by listening to the rabbis and teachers, and in regular school by the enforcement of respect and tolerance.

The problem is many parents have lost confidence in the public schools’ basic efficacy. The Welcoming Schools effort causes me to question whether the schools believe that they now must function as parent and church as well—my guess as to why this curriculum is being tested. (The alternative, pure ideological indoctrination, is frightening, but I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.)

And if the schools must now be parent and church, whose values rule? What then of the kids who don’t need or whose parents don’t want an edgy values curriculum? And what are our kids missing in all that classroom time spent validating?

I watched the first forty-five minutes of the two-hour ABC Democratic debate tonight then turned off the TV. The exchanges encapsulated everything wrong with the American news media as Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos spent the time peppering Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with an unending litany of gotcha questions rooted in meaningless campaign contretemps.

Rev. Wright, the flag pin, the Bosnia exaggeration, the Weather Underground guy . . . belch.

I know what ABC will say after the hammering they are surely taking all over the blogosphere: Democrats are concerned about electability, and these questions explored how these controversies affected the candidates’ electability.

And it’ll be a self-serving lie like it always is.

Bloggers might be drunk on their own influence, but it is only the validation and incessant repetition from the mainstream media that legitimize this crap and mutes discussion of real issues. I know the campaigns surreptitiously push these controversies in the press’s face, but George and Charlie don’t have to bite.

But they’re bored with the issues and in love with the horserace. They are in their own insider bubble, out of touch with what’s afflicting this country and the change in tone Americans crave—even the Americans who are too simple-minded or vulnerable to resist these hot-button manipulations.

So they devote the most-watched portion of a debate capping the unending PA campaign to a recitation of vomit that demeans the election process, disgusts and wearies voters, and turns politics into a cesspool.

Here’s my vow: I will not watch an ABC news or politics program through the remainder of the election cycle. It’s the only way I have to express my disgust at its trivialization of the most important American election in four decades. I urge you to do the same. 

There’s a really interesting analytical article in the current Rolling Stone by political writer Matt Taibbi (articulating better than anything I’ve read or heard) about how the media, with its preoccupation with manufactured controversies, distorts the political process, particularly in the current Democratic race for president.

(Taibbi also appears regularly on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, which is must-viewing for its candor and willingness to hold pols and the media to account.) His prose and commentary is rife with juvenile profanities, which will turn some people off, but look past it because this is, in a nutshell, the story of our culture right now.

“Through scandal after idiotic scandal, the election process has become a painfully prolonged, deeply irritating exercise in policing conventional wisdom . . . keeping the public in a state of heightened, dumb animal panic, and ultimately turning the election itself into a Darwinian contest. . . .

“What we’re getting with all of these scandals isn’t a sober exchange of ideas but more of an ongoing attempt to instill in the public a sort of permanent fear of uncomfortable ideas, and to reduce public discourse to a kind of primitive biological mechanism, like the nervous system of a squid or a shellfish, one that recoils reflexively from any stimuli.”

Taibbi seems to be in Obama’s camp, but this is not merely about Rev. Wright and “God Damn America.” Taibbi also has no patience for the Geraldine Ferarro contretemps and the uproar over John McCain’s end-of-days preacher. And that’s the point—it’s a game all the campaigns play to because they know the media can’t resist.

Taibbi is appropriately critical of the public and the campaigns, but this is a media-driven trend, uniquely exacerbated by talk radio and cable TV networks with hours of “news programming” to fill and no budget to do any real journalism.

Ultimately, our plethora of choices has degraded the discourse, not improved it.