The June 2 front page was stacked with five stories around a large weather photo.
They reported partial settlement of the nurses strike, a legislative agreement on racial profiling, the end of automatic promotion in St. Paul schools, the toll of AIDS in Africa and the story of Holy Angels High School graduate Kelly Kranz.
The “news inside” item at the bottom of the page reported the death of Hank Ketchum, creator of the “Dennis the Menace” comic strip.
On Page A8 was the story of 17 deaths in a Palestinian suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
Mort Silverman asked why it wasn’t on the front page.
He noted that it was the lead story on the New York Times cover.
It also was on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Boston Globe.
Silverman compared the placement with a June 11 front page “news inside” item headlined, “3 Palestinian women buried in Gaza strip.”
He had no quarrel with that.
“But,” he said, “to not have any representation on the front page of a horrific attack on innocent civilians seemed strange.”
Comment: Not even a close call. The suicide bomber story belonged on the front page in some form.
A harsher meaning
A May 27 front-page headline said, “Some may get the shaft from tax shift.”
Ralph Hoffmann said he first heard the phrase in the Army in World War II, and said, “It does not belong in polite conversation.”
It didn’t amuse Wayne Aldrich, who recalled that the shaft related to an anatomical location unacceptable in civil conversation.
Neither Webster nor the American Prestige dictionary recognizes the smutty nature of the phrase.
Webster defines “shaft” as “to be cheated, tricked.” The Prestige says “shaft” is a “scornfully, satirical comment, a barb.”
Comment: Meanings of words do change with time, but dictionary editors don’t comprehend that World War II vets have memories.
Did it on their own
Monday’s front-page picture caption said, “The view looking east down W. 78th Street in Chanhassen, below, is far different than it was in 1984. Tax increment financing (TIF) helped build a downtown nearly from scratch.”
The centerpiece of the picture of W. 78th Street today was Axel’s Steakhouse.
The inference, inescapably, was that the restaurant was built with tax increment financing.
Owners Charles Burrows and Linda Young said they received no TIF assistance.
Comment: The caption was misleading.
