The Rake Magazine

There's going to be another inquiry into why the bridge fell. On top of the NTSB, the Legislative Auditor, and the Governor Pawlenty-hired consultants, we're going to have the Minneapolis law firm of Gray Plant Mooty looking into things on behalf of a bi-partisan State House-Senate committee.

One wonders why we need another such investigation. But it's not too hard to figure out if you read the comments of the politicians who oppose its formation. One needs to look only as far as our head politician for the answer. Governor Pawlenty said that the purpose of the investigation was "to make political hay out of a tragic situation."

I agree whole heartedly with the governor, but not because it's wrong to make political hay here, but because it would be wrong not to. Here's why: the bridge didn't fall because we didn't know that it needed repair. The bridge fell because we knew it needed repair and someone made a political, or, to be generous, a budgetary, decision not to make the repairs. That's what I'd like to find out: who made that decision to play dice with the chances with the lives of the thousands of people who drove over that bridge every day?

Applying Occam's Razor (which is a principle of investigation which states, in essence, that the simplest possible solution to a problem is most often the correct one) I'm going with Pawlenty's appointment of Carol Molnau, an anti-transportation, anti-tax ideologue, as transportation commissioner as the proximate cause.

That political decision trumped all the engineering and maintenance recommendations that might have saved the bridge. And that's hay that should be cut, baled and stacked for all of us to see every time we drive over a Minnesota bridge.

NY Times media columnist David Carr told a sad tale today. It started out with him telling how the city of Chicago had just paid out $20 million to settle lawsuits by four former condemned men who had been tortured by police.

He mentioned that, in essence, because of these men being tortured into confessing capital crimes, the death penalty for Illinois had been put on hold in Illinois by former Governor George Ryan.

And he told the story that these men, and others like them, had been freed based on the reporting of John Conroy of the Chicago Reader.

And then, Carr reported that Conroy and three others had just been laid off by the new owners of the Reader. The Reader's companion paper, The Washington City Paper, where Carr was once editor, had also laid off five newsroom reporters. Declining revenue and the need to cut costs were cited, as usual.

Good thing it happened last week, instead of a few years ago, or those men would be dead, and several Chicago police would have gotten away with murder.

Now it's journalism that's on death row. It's been put there by readers who don't demand investigative work, and advertisers who don't want anything to do with any story that involves more in depth reporting that asking people where they get their favorite hamburger.

It's only a matter of time. Soon we'll have nothing but insipid city mags and so called newspapers whose business model doesn't include any editorial that doesn't pander to the lowest expectations of readers and the highest ones of advertisers. Add that to all the advertisers being sucked away from the actual content providers by the likes of Google, and it won't be long until even more publishers push the plungers on their staffs.

You know, this is just too easy.

In case you missed Kersten today, the topic is "Why St. Thomas University is going to hell in a handbasket". The short answer is, (and I'm only telling you this because reading the column will just cause you to think ill of thoughtful Catholics) because they don't have the archbishop of St. Paul as an automatic member of the university board of directors any more.

But, in good conscience, I can't spare you the punch lines.

Number one:

Who remembers that Macalester and Carleton colleges were founded, respectively, by the Presbyterian and Congregational churches? Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago were also originally church-affiliated institutions. But academics often view religious affiliation as incompatible with elite university status, and believe that it interferes with their "academic freedom."

Number two:

Because the widespread secularization of religiously affiliated colleges destroys true diversity in education. There are plenty of schools where students can learn professional skills and how to look out for Number One (and planet Earth).

We need a few places where they can be called to pursue something higher: a transcendent vision of faith and morality.

From number one, are we to infer that the two best colleges in Minnesota, and three of the best universities in the world are not as good as they could be because they eschew religious affiliation? (Disclosure: I was a religion major at Carleton. The former editor of The Rake has a masters in Divinity from Harvard. Those two things might explain a lot.)

One other thing of note regarding Catholic universities in the United States: the recognized leaders in that category are Jesuit schools. Georgetown, Fordham, Holy Cross, Boston College are names you might recognize. The thing about the Jesuits is that they exist outside of the traditional church hierarchy. They report only to their own superiors, who report to the pope. The local bishop has no authority over them. (If you want to check into an interesting bit of local history, ask yourself why, until this year, the Twin Cities was the lone U.S. metropolitan area of any size without a Jesuit school. The answer: Bishop John Ireland didn't want the insubordinate SOBs in his diocese. You can look it up. This is why we have St. Thomas instead of say, Georgetown.)

I should of course mention Notre Dame, too. Notre Dame is not Jesuit, so they're not as institutionally insubordinate as they could be. However, the bishop of the diocese of Fort Wayne/South Bend, Indiana does not sit on the board of trustees of Notre Dame.

So, I guess Notre Dame also fails the Kersten test and you can lump them and the Jesuits in with godless Carleton, Harvard and Yale and decry their failure to inculcate morality and transcendence in their curricula, too.

While you are at it, be sure to remember that, according to punchline two, concern for "Planet Earth" is also inconsistent with "a transcendent vision of faith and morality."

This is truly funny stuff.

I made a mistake the other day and accidentally tuned in to KTLK and whatever right-wing boob they have on during the late morning. With a little checking after I got back to the office, I found his name is Dan Conry, and he has, like so many of his ilk, the IQ and eloquence of a doorknob…or of Katherine Kersten, whichever is higher.

For he was haranguing about Kersten’s column of Monday, in which she asserted (surprise) that the government was out to take your kids and brainwash them.

The impetus for these two nitwits with access to the media was the recent hearing before the state Supreme Court of the case of Gerard Fraser.

Here’s the case in a nutshell: Gerard, 12 years old and 195 pounds (for some reason the Strib thought his weight was relevant) is the son of Shawn and Natalie Fraser, who are described as “devout Christians.” Gerard was (surprise) rebelling against his parents’ devout Christian discipline. Shawn and Natalie tried to communicate with Gerard grounding him and withholding privileges. They even went so far as to paste Bible quotes on the refrigerator. When this didn’t work, the devout Christians did what any devout Christians who are steeped in Deuteronomy would do, they paddled Gerard—36 blows with a wooden paddle.

Subsequently, Gerard ran away. He was picked up by police as he was walking along the road. He told the police his parents were hitting him. Surprisingly, police (as they are required to do when there is an allegation of child abuse) turned it over to Hennepin County, who removed Shawn and his brother from his parents’ home while they investigated.

Somehow, none of these details made it into Kersten’s column. Of course, if there had been any explanation of how Gerard came to the county’s attention, it might have undermined the impression Kersten was trying to leave--that Big Brother was watching and waiting for any excuse to swoop in and snatch your kids.

Anyway, as Kersten then wrote, the Frasers sued the county to get the kids back, and were “finally vindicated” when the state Appeals Court (which is packed with Pawlenty appointees) returned Gerard to his devoutly Christian parents. Gerard, by the way, is now shipped off to a devoutly Christian boarding school in Utah. According to Kersten, the tuition at this school is $50,000, which is more than Harvard. The Frasers raised the money by refinancing their house.

I can only hope the Frasers can’t make the payments when their full interest rate kicks in and they end up homeless, just like Jesus. I wouldn’t mind the same fate for the Strib editors who uncritically let Kersten inflame the rabble with this drivel, and don’t even demand that she include the very basic question of how this kid came to the attention of the authorities in the first place.

I was walking around the office the other day and overheard one of the Rake's ad reps telling two more reps that he'd just sold an ad contract. I opined, in passing, that his customer must be a very perspicacious sort. That, of course, brought the conversation to an abrupt halt.

"What the hell does that mean?" he asked. So I told him wise or perceptive, and that it was from the Latin perspicio, which means to see through or to see thoroughly, and that perspicio, in turn came from per (through) and specio (to look) and that someone who could see through things tended to be wise, hence the connotation.

"Perspective comes from the same roots, and you can change the inflective prefix and come up with introspective, inspect, respect, aspect, and so forth," I continued.

Of course, by that time, the group had moaned, much like my children do when I go all Latin on them, and had gone back to their offices to sell more ads. At least I hope so.

I thought of all this when I noted that on the NY Times today, the most emailed story was A Vote for Latin. The article is a good read, and makes a good argument for studying Latin. I am basically of the opinion that, if Thomas Jefferson thought is was worth knowing, it probably is. After all, as far as presidents go, he was the very summit of perspicacity.