posted 2006/08/04 at 19:35
I've mentioned in the past how I went to school with the children of the family that runs the local cable system here in Toledo, and the insight that's given me whenever we have problems with our cable or our cable modem. (Okay, maybe insight isn't the right word, but at least I have a better idea of who to get pissed at, and why they deserve so much scorn, than other people here in town.)
Anyway, said family also owns our big local paper, The Toledo Blade, which in spite of said ownership has produced some outstanding content over the past few years. The thing is that the management of the paper is currently negotiating new contracts with most of its unions, which historically have done well for themselves. (Toledo has always been a strong union town thanks to its historical ties to the automotive industry, especially when so much corporate transportation was done by ships traveling through the Great Lakes.) Of course, the paper wishes they could have more money, ostensibly for the purpose of reinvesting in the paper but in all likelihood to just fatten the wallets of the owners. (I know how cliché it is for a liberal like me to say something like that, but like I said, I know this family.)
The reason I bring this up is because over the past few weeks, when I've had the television on, I've been "treated" to commercials where The Blade argues its case at least once every half-hour. The joys of owning the cable airwaves in town, eh? The inundation of the paper's posturing would be bad enough as it is (not just because I disagree with them but because I think this case is a microcosm of why large media ownership -- even on as small a scale as Toledo's piddly operations -- is dangerous for society), but these commercials are absurdly stupid, basically trying to argue that unless the unions cave in to The Blade's demands, Toledo will become a ghost town because no other company will want to do business in a place where average workers actually make a decent wage and fat-cats like the owners of the paper have to buy their kids Jeeps for their sixteenth birthdays instead of Lexuses. No, dipshits, the reason why businesses don't come to Toledo is because this city fucking sucks.
Don't get me wrong, there are things to like about this city, and more and more I find myself of a mindset that I'd kind of like to stay here after I get my MA and teach locally. The people who own our major newspaper and cable system just aren't one of those things to like, and now that they're working so diligently to take away one of the biggest things to like here (the strong union base), they're steadily rising up my shit list.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon