In our hour of despair, at a time of recession or slowdown or bailout or rescue or bottoming out or Obama and McCain boring us half to death, hard decisions must be made; priorities must be set.
We must focus on essentials. Forget about food and health care and home heating oil and the rest of the frills you spend money on when times are flush. We’re talking core principles here.
First, preserve the newspaper columnists. Without them (some, more than others, of course, especially if, like, you know, the one you happen to be reading right now is really, really great), you will be thrust, naked and alone, into the marketplace of ideas, where Obama wants the big, bad health insurance companies to stop actually underwriting and other irresponsible stuff; and McCain wants to buy up every lousy home mortgage so they can be displayed in the Smithsonian, at the Government Is Your Momma exhibit.
Without columnists, for instance, this newspaper would be forced to fill up the empty space with stories about Hartford’s exciting Front Street development project. Is that want you want? Huh? Huh?
What’s Nonessential?
Once the inventory of columnists is secure, the nation can move on to protect fragile resources that need protection — and whack nonessential services. In Connecticut, for instance, we can do without police and lieutenant governors and the guy at the Department of Motor Vehicles whose job it is to tell you that you’ve been standing in the wrong line for two hours.
What must be protected at all costs, even if it means issuing bonds that nobody wants to buy, is the state’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women. As unimaginable as it might seem that such a vital piece of government apparatus might be vulnerable, remember that this is an economy in which the Bank of America has just changed its name to Bank of Western Wyoming, Except for the Parts Where the People Live.
Nothing is safe, unless we commit to preserving it. For instance, in Nebraska, its Commission on the Status of Women recently disappeared, when no one was looking; another victim of the economic crisis. The commissioners started drifting away out of sheer boredom and nobody bothered to replace them. The staff started dribbling away. No one seemed to care. And one day, when no one seemed to be there to confer on the status of women, the joint just shut down, like some sort of unregulated investment bank or something.
Do you want that to happen in Connecticut? Do you want your daughters roaming the suburban streets, dazed and confused, uncertain about their status because no commission exists to reassure them? It would be worse here than in Nebraska, where all the girls are craggy and plow fields and stuff, thereby knowing pretty well what their status is.
Magnet Schools
And finally, the “magnet schools” in Hartford must be protected against any budget ax-wielding maniac who thinks it is more important to have a fire department. The laws of God and man have ordered up these magnet schools to trick suburban white kids into attending school in Hartford. That is a worthy goal that cannot be sacrificed to the irresponsible Gods of Mammon on Wall Street.
The Hartford Magnet School for Eastern European Romanesque Particle Physics and Sports Management is but one example of the kinds of specialized curricula that bring black and white and brown together voluntarily in an important effort to juggle the numbers and report on the success of “desegregation.”
And if we still haven’t yet reached the bottom in this time of trouble? Dump the editors. Columnists don’t need editors.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
