The gentleman pictured above is Brent Larkin, the editorial page editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In this capacity, he wrote the unsigned editorial in yesterday's paper entitled "Supersurprise". This link is to a copy of the editorial, because access from cleveland.com will disappear after a couple of months, and I think it's important for this particular piece to be remembered... along with the individual who wrote it.
I've made this copy only for "fair use", of course. What use could be fairer than to file it away -- with Larkin's name written across it in big red letters -- to be pulled out and passed around in a year or two, when more neighborhood groceries are closing (like, let's say, the Dave's at Arbor Park) and people are looking for someone to blame?
Plain Dealer reporter: "Mrs. Jones, how do you feel about losing your local grocery store and who do you think is responsible?"Perhaps you think this is too personal. Mr. Larkin is just doing his job and expressing his opinion, right?
Neighbor on the street: "I'm really upset and I blame your newspaper, especially Brent Larkin. Here's this editorial where he beat up City Council to get Wal-Mart selling groceries down in the Flats, even though he admitted it would 'surely hurt some city merchants, including grocery stores'. What he meant was my neighborhood store, so don't come around here acting sympathetic now. Your Brent Larkin and his Wal-Mart buddies closed this store!"
But Larkin knows better. He understands the power of naming names.
That's why he attacked Councilman Joe Cimperman so personally in another anonymous editorial on the Wal-Mart issue in February -- the one that scared Council away from its original big box ordinance, weeks before Wal-Mart sent its letter of tactical withdrawal from Steelyard Commons. (That editorial has long since vanished down the cleveland.com memory hole, but here's my entry that described it.) And it's why he made a point of clubbing Cimperman personally again yesterday... not just for proposing a law to limit big box grocery sales in the first place, but for "ineptly" failing to pursue it once Wal-Mart no longer seemed to be in the picture.
The idea, you see, is not just to argue and win a debate, but to identify, isolate and discredit your opponent. Make em crawl. Control the narrative. That's the kind of power that counts.
Of course this is not the rational, decent citizen's idea of a democratic community debate. And contrary to media wisdom, the real community debate about a Steelyard Commons Wal-Mart is not over. It may really have just started. Yesterday's editorial may someday seem like a nasty little yelp in the darkness before the dawn.
But keep a copy anyway. And remember who wrote it.
P.S. Brian Cummins emailed me to point out that older PD articles can be accessed through the Plain Dealer database of the Cleveland Public Library. Here's the database link for the February editorial I mentioned above. You'll need a local library card (CPL itself, or a cooperating system like Cuyahoga County).
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