...at least by our morning daily paper. That’s our answer to the question on the front page of a recent issue - "Why don’t we give the Pacers more love?"
The reporter cites all the good news about this year’s record - including this little gem. "They’re not world famous, but they’ve stayed out of trouble." We suspect that most parents love for their children to stay out of trouble. It might require something a tad more affirmative for the kid to get a gigantic monetary gift every year simply by a teary-eyed claim that last year’s allowance wasn’t enough.
Speaking of front pages, we’ve had trouble the last few days trying to guess whether we were looking at the first section or the sports section. And we do wonder about the editorial leadership of a newspaper which gives the sports editor more front page space than the rest of the staff combined!
The paper prides itself on offering "local" news of importance - especially sports, obviously. (Sometimes it seems only sports.) There are other things going on. For instance, a special commission has been established by the City-County Council to study the establishment and application of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts, including abuses thereof.
The commission has now met four times with no report of any kind in the paper. Not important? Or is there an assumption that the commission is a "front" and that the status quo, dating back a few decades and which the paper has supported, will be the ultimate situation anyway?
But to get back to the stated question, We do have one suggestion for an answer. We’ve heard unhappy comments about the plethora of panhandlers on the downtown streets. Perhaps folks are just getting tired of the downtown, corporate panhandler who regularly collects millions of taxpayer dollars each year.
At least with the 50 cents or a dollar level beggar, we have an option as to the distribution of our hard earned cash. The Pacers go to municipal government, claim to be losing money, and lo and behold, a city with severe budgetary problems - like public safety and public transportation - comes up with multi-million dollar bonuses.
We suppose the difference is that the 50 cents and dollar guys really do have to beg. They don’t have the full support of the media, to say nothing of the power of extortion as practiced by professional sports.