The Star Tribune seems to have gotten the memo from CNN on the riots and looting in Kenosha. In its lead editorial yesterday, the paper summed up the festivities this way: “Another Black man is shot by police — this time in Kenosha, Wis. Another night of mostly peaceful protesting devolves into violent damage to property, buildings and vehicles.”
I can hardly wait to see if the editors pull off a comparable take on the scene a few blocks over from their offices in downtown Minneapolis. So far, however, they are resting on their right to remain silent. Like Jack Benny in the old joke, they are thinking about it.
Over on the paper’s news pages, however, Reid Forgrave lends a hand in a painfully long riot of excuses. Forgrave “reports”: “As the video of [George] Floyd’s killing inflamed May’s uprising, it stood to reason that video of Wednesday’s suicide could cool the night’s heated emotions.”
Forgrave continues: “But that was not fully the case.”
“Emotions” reappear when Forgrave purports to explain the rioting and looting:
[O]n Wednesday night, even as a man with a megaphone shouted, “We have the video — the man killed himself!” emotions morphed into violence. A group looted a nearby Target. A man sat on the hood of a squad car, and two police officers shoved him off and sprayed him with mace, dousing several bystanders. Some tossed garbage cans to the street, and a few took the lids and smashed windows of businesses in IDS Center. They broke windows to Nordstrom Rack, climbed inside and then left with stolen merchandise.
“Emotions” really got out of hand at Target, Saks, and Nordstrom. The Center of the American Experiment’s John Phelan recounts in some detail just how emotional it got at downtown retail outlets.
Forgrave quotes an apologist toward the end of his story: “Looting, he said, isn’t about stealing; it’s about lashing out at the power structure that otherwise won’t let them in.”
After such knowledge, what Forgraveness? The Star Tribune itself sits at the heart of the Minneapolis power and embodies the civic irresponsibility that has devastated Minneapolis. Forgrave’s bald apologetics in story form present a clue to the ills that plague Minneapolis.
