Sunday 'Bune editorial fashion

Perhaps out of Web-related confusion, but more likely owing to general apathy and a dash of embarrassment, the on-line version of the New Albany Tribune does not archive staff editorials and commentaries.

Consequently, you’ll have to trust me when I confide that today’s ‘Bune was unprecedented and epochal, because it included an Amany Ali column that was merely inane and not overtly idiotic.

But wait – there’s more!

Specifically, an editorial by Managing Editor Chris Morris was not on the topic of sports, although it did include a passing reference to Converse sneakers.

AIDS, urban renewal, the breakdown of social security, terrorism, environmental degradation, homelessness … the issues of our time fill the pages of publications far and wide, but here in New Albany, an editorialist in search of subject matter need look no further than the Green Tree Mall, where the baggy fashions of today’s wayward youth simply don’t make sense to aging newspapermen.

It would seem that NA Confidential simply can’t catch a break. Finally we manage to get Chris away from the sports page, and what we get instead is droopy trousers and the age-old generational lamentation that’s easier to explain than the laws of gravity.

To wit: What goes up must come down, and kids will do anything do differentiate themselves from their elders.

Once again, with feeling: The sporting world provides an entertaining diversion, and athletics play a part in society, but they're only one aspect of a well-balanced life.

Basketball does not collect the garbage.
Football does not perform open-heart surgery.
Baseball does not manufacture microchips.
Hockey does not even exist.

Chris and countless others in his position sometimes remind me of the proverbial deer staring into the headlights. Rather than scratch their heads over the puzzling behavior of the next poorly groomed generation, they should be determining ways to persuade these kids to (a) read, and (b) read newspapers.

Or else …

It may seem that lifetime job security is afforded those who work for traditional institutions that are as much a part of the community fabric as high school hoops and temporarily rebellious young people, but as the blacksmith in 1900 could tell us, sometimes things aren’t what they seem to be.