More on “the melee:” Today’s

More on “the melee:” Today’s Star Tribune carries a report on the neighborhood that was the site of Minneapolis’s first race riot in ten years on August 22. The story mostly recycles a variety of liberal cliches while focusing on police-community relations and the drug-dealing that blights the neigborhood. The race-based assaults committed by neighborhood residents on journalists covering the police search that triggered the riot go without mention. The Star Tribune’s ombudsman also defends the paper’s writers for calling the riot a “melee.” He says the Strib should be proud of its coverage. For the reasons suggested below over the past several days, we beg to differ.
Other Star Tribune “melee” pieces running on Thursday (editorial), Friday (news), and Saturday (news) add exclamation points to the related crises of thought and governance confronting Minneapolis.
Among other things, the current state of Minneapolis illustrates the perils of one-party rule. Since the demise of the Soviet Union Minneapolis has lost interest in its old Soviet sister city; Minneapolis has lost interest in it because it cannot be used any longer as a stick with which to beat the United States. But now is the time when that city could really be useful and should be called on to help Minneapolis construct a system of multiparty government.