Why You Should Be Reading Steve Rhodes

Even if you're not from here.


Even of you never went to a show at the Granada when it was in its prime...



Or hustled pool at the little Greek joint next door as rats and pigeons ate

the Granada's hulking corpse...

Or watched that block-long terracotta House of Usher come down in a whoosh of ghosts and melancholy to be replaced with office space, a parking garage and a Radio Shack.

Even if you have no idea what I'm talking about and only know about Chicago from Red State Update


and reruns of the Untouchables

you should still know about Mr. Rhodes.

Because he is one of those members of the working press who apparently never learned which cocktail spoon one uses to gently cradle the yam-sacks of the powerful, who lives and works just outside the national spotlight, and who regularly writes stuff like this (from "The Beachwood Reporter"):

The [Wednesday] Papers
Posted on October 7, 2009

By Steve Rhodes

Is youth violence really like a disease?

That's what the Tribune would like you to believe. And the paper marshals all the usual evidence about brain development and interventions and the sort of thing that organizations like CeaseFire talk about too.

And maybe that's something Arne Duncan and Eric Holder will discuss today while they are in town for their dog-and-pony show.

But here's the funny thing about not only youth violence but crime on the whole: It's inextricably linked with poverty.

As I wrote at NBCChicago.com earlier this morning, kids who attend New Trier aren't killing each other.

And that's not because they are predominantly white. It's because they are predominantly rich.
...

But we are not allowed to discuss this. We are not allowed to discuss an economic structure that keeps those on the bottom at the bottom - on purpose.
...

When the unemployment rate, for example, gets "too low," the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to slow down the economy.
...

You can blame the schools, but why do all of the nation's schools work pretty well except those in the poorest districts?

You can blame the parents, but why do most of our parents do a decent job except those with the lowest wages?
...

Nobody talks about poverty anymore. Nobody talks about economics, except the stock market and porked-up stimulus bills that don't stimulate.
...

Read the whole thing here.

We don't talk about poverty or class because that kinda talk makes rich people nervous.

Instead we talk about race.

Or, rather, we tell ourselves that we talk about race -- we promise ourselves great, cleansing dialogues about race -- but we almost never do it. Instead, the public conversation about race in this country consists pretty much of the Right playing linguistic Tiddlywinks with the English language so they can continue to run in ever-angrier and more hysterical circles screaming barely-camouflaged proxies for "N*gger! N*gger! N*gger!" at the tops of their lungs without, y'know, actually Saying. That. Word. Itself. Out. Loud.

Because that would be racist.

All while the media sops it up with a biscuit, and eggs the Left on to jump into the sewer and make it a proper pig-fight.

All of which, unsurprisingly, perfectly serves the interests of people who don't want to talk about poverty and class.

So here we are with actual, acute national problems -- with the future of our country literally riding on how we fix them, or how we fail to fix them -- and the ones who are supposed to be our alarm bells in the night get rich frittering our national attention away on junk news and establishmentarian stenography devoted to driving honest discussion the hell out of the public square, all because our media is a gazillion dollar entertainment machine that nothing must be permitted to disrupt.

And just about the only thing keeping the whole, glorious mess from going over the cliff for good are the occasional, smartmouths like Steve Rhodes over at the Beachwood Reporter who are both willing and skilled enough to spend their valuable time slugging fair-sized holes through that smothering white noise, day after day after day.

So go.

Read.