Once a year we open up a page to answer your most pressing
questions. And then, every spring, we do this thing, apropos of nothing.
Dear Managing Editor,
It must be very challenging in this day and age to keep
producing a newspaper. How do you compete with the fast cycle of information
churned out online. Why would you bother, even?
Seti: Paahhhh! Kill me! Please!
Dear Managing Editor,
I’m curious about your take on the scandals that just keep
emanating from the Murdoch empire. What do you think of the allegations and the
practices used by the now defunct News of the World and their minions? Do you
think the public trust in old-fashioned print media has been sullied to such a
low point that it’s barely above the same type of gossip mongering we’ve come
to expect from most online sources that are still struggling to get beyond
their own echo chambers? What will corporations currently at the helm of most
media outlets in the United States have to do to both compete locally and
abroad in an increasingly confusing marketplace blending fact, fiction and
political agendas?
Seti: You could be the one! There’s a stake in the
corner of my office. Please! I’ll leave the door unlocked. I won’t fight you!
I’m ready!
Dear Managing Editor,
In one of your recent columns (“Will someone please drive a
stake through my heart?,” Street Roots, March 24), you overlook a clear
imperative that if we are to get at the bottom of the controversial sidewalk
ordinance, City Hall, the police and media like yourself will have to begin
unwrapping the package of deserving and undeserving folks on the streets.
Stakeholders will have to find a way to peel away the tattered old arguments
and expose the heart of the matter once and for all. That is the only way this
problem will finally die.
Seti: Yes! Yes! Whatever it takes, for Ra’s sake!
Peel away!
Dear Managing Editor,
I question whether you truly understand what’s happening on
Portland’s sidewalks. Obviously, you’ve never walked downtown before.
Seti: Seriously? Kill. Me. Now.
Dear Managing Editor,
I’m very disappointed in you. In a recent column (“I’m not
angry anymore, so will someone please rip my bones apart?” Street Roots, March
17), you suggested that laws that sweep the streets of one class of people will
undoubtedly push another off their already tenuous grid. Really? You think
people would slip out of our concerns if they were removed from the downtown
corridor? Like they would cease to exist in the collective mind if we removed
them from a few sidewalks? We’ve had sidewalk laws in play for more than a
decade and we’ve never seen so much progress on the homeless front. Portland
cares about people regardless of whether they’re sitting on a bench in Tom
McCall Waterfront Park or on the pavers at the corner of Third and Stark. Why
don’t you get off your high Horus and talk about the good work being done in
the name of sidewalk sweeps?
Seti: Did you just say “high Horus?” Really? Is
that supposed to be funny?
This article is part of Street Roots' annual satire edition released each year for April Fools Day.
