Condemned With Faint Praise
McCarron followed his anonymous editorial with a signed op-ed piece the next day. Here his views were less preposterous. He conceded in passing that Kamin had given the McGraw-Hill an “A-minus,” but argued that continued development is more important to Chicago’s economy than the preservation of A-minus buildings to its soul.
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And he sounded less preposterous yet when he talked to me. “Even editorial writers pick up the phone,” McCarron said. “I don’t know anyone who thinks it should be a landmark.” His calling around had convinced him the commission was voting an agenda, either appeasing the constituency it had angered by letting John Buck tear down the Arts Club on the block to the north, or giving Mayor Daley the upper hand when Buck and the city work out details of the Nordstrom Buck wants to build where the McGraw-Hill now stands.
When it argues for the eradication of the McGraw-Hill, the Tribune’s own credibility does not stand strong and true. Readers are entitled to recall that the paper’s parent company opposed landmark status for the Tribune Tower–without any doubt an A-plus building–until concessions could be wrung from the city that would leave the company free to build just about anything it wants alongside the tower. Big business hates to see strings attached to real estate.
How, then, to respond to the latest bizarre eruption from the Near North News? One tried and true rejoinder is derision plated with irony. The broadsword in the Hot Type armory, it could be swung like this:
So that’s one way to react to Near North News. Is there an even better way? Well, yes. For lack of a better term, this other might be called journalism’s high road.
Hot Type had responded to Matanky’s original editorial with this column’s house sarcasm, ridiculing the circulation of his neighborhood weekly and alluding to “raving homophobia.” I was not the only commentator to make such a thrust, and Matanky’s “letter” routed us all with one counterstroke.
