[Mpls] How Local Media Impoverishes Political discussion (part 2)

[Gary Hoover]

(Note: I wrote the following late Sunday night.  Discussion of the Strib's coverage very much still applies. Will the Strib continue to uphold the "wall of separation between "news" product and the environment".... Will other media dare to challenge the validity of our sacrifice to the Gods of Sacred sport?  And, how many Hummers can we park on the head of a baseball bat?  Will our Mayor or challenger McLaughlin dare to mention "the wall between urban infrastructure development and the environment" or "the wall between public policy and the environment"?  Read on, if you dare!)

But wait, there's more!  Tens of thousands of words have been dedicated to baseball, billionaires, and budgets for stadiums.  This teapot tempest has been presented as though a stadium is "today's special"  on a coffee-shop menu: "Is this what I want to consume?" Or are we adding equipment to make our city more competitive?  "Should we order this item to become more competitive with other cities, or something else?"  But there are crucial questions never asked.  No words are written about how our urban infrastructure choices relate to ecological degradation, resource depletion, geopolitical disruption, economic dislocation, or resource wars.  None.  Not one word.

Where does a stadium fit into our priorities when we consider that Minneapolis exists on a planet with an ecosystem in crisis? What role do we play in continuing or changing urban living patterns which cause geopolitical conflict, resource wars, resource depletion , global warming, watershed pollution and myriad other kinds of local environmental degradation? How does funding a stadium make sense at all?

Many scientists and even a few brave politicians and business people warn us to make immediate decisions to alter our infrastructure and consumption patterns before we cause an ecological, geopolitical, and economic crash that will make this stadium teapot tempest seem like the insane distraction that it is.  Building a stadium wastes resources on infrastructure that adds to our problems.  We need to invest in sustainable urban infrastructure to solve these problems.

Our species now grows like yeast in a barrel.  Yeast in a barrel consumes nutrients at an exponentially increasing rate until the yeast hits the limits of the barrel and dies off.  Can Dr. Pangloss describe how good that is for us?  Or why we should remain dumbed-down consumers rather than citizens who leave their children a better world rather than a wasteland?

Our local political conversation needs to be about an entirely different set of issues.  We deserve better coverage from our local media.  Are we citizens of a great city, state, and nation?  Or are we dumbed-down consumers of carefully contrived "news" product designed to make us consume ever more?  Our local media impoverishes political discourse. Will we ever get news and analysis, or simply manipulative "news" product which leads us like lambs to the slaughter?

-- pedaling for peace and ecojustice -- from Lynnhurst for now -- Gary Hoover