without the haze of humidity the sun seems brighter, the woods seem crisper, the sky seems bluer. it’s as if the soft-focus filter was lifted and clarity was restored.

tuesday we stopped by our much-loved-mechanic’s shop. littlebabyscion has had a mountain of emissions work done and we wanted to share that it passed the emissions test. (all – money and time and effort and good intention – ironically – in the middle of an administration that could care less about the danger of greenhouse gases while repealing clean air initiatives and gutting the environmental protection agency.)

while there, i noticed a copy of the local newspaper on top of a big toolbox.

i used to subscribe to the paper. i’d read it each day, catching up on local, domestic and international news. it’s been well over a decade now since i have had delivery. having shrunk by leaps and bounds in recent years, it’s about the thickness of my college newspaper these days.

there were several headlines on tuesday’s front page.

one of the minor – minor! – headlines was this: “court lifts immigration operation restrictions”.

i was aghast.

in a 6-3 conservative majority ruling, the supreme court of this united states – that is supposed to uphold the constitution of these united states – decided that racial profiling is a-ok with them – liberally putting a match to all-men-are-created-equal, gutting the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause and paying no heed to the 4th amendment’s probable cause necessity, subjecting the populace to the elimination of constitutional freedoms.

though an AP article reporting on the court’s appalling decision was copied and pasted, the weeny headline penned by the paper intimated – no, completely underplayed – with a light and positive spin for a hugely negative action by the highest judiciary in this land – the people charged with the protection of this democracy, its institutions, its law. a soft focus filter applied to a stark reality.

now, i am not a journalist, but i am a consumer of journalism. and a brief foray into definitions and descriptions of the use of headlines would lead one to believe that a headline will most definitely set the tone of the piece that follows, give the gist of the piece, signal its significance. in real application, however, we see that headlines expose the underlying slant of a journalistic institution. they give one insight to the stance of that institution reporting “the news”.

so…where is the headline “supreme court lifts restrictions on racial profiling“? the headline “court promotes indiscriminate roving immigration patrols and stops“? the headline that blasts out “court ceases constitutional freedoms“??

let us not forget that this decision by this highest court will impact every single person in this country. it is a decision that can be maliciously construed for any population of people.

the headline and article with the largest font and the biggest presence on the page was “hundreds turn out to ride“, an article featuring the town’s electric streetcars.

this may be the reason the paper is barely a paper. daily delivery for this is $60 a month.

this day – today – marks the 24th anniversary of the september 11 targeted terrorism attacks, a time when our country came together to push back against the atrocities of hate.

are not masked “roving immigration patrols” an atrocity of hate within our own country?

where is the paper’s clarity of this perilous moment we are now in? where is their screaming headline?

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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