EDITORIAL: Can’t defend Nelly

An idiom ballooning in usage in recent years goes something like: “That didn’t age well.” With the growth of the internet and its so-called long memory, “aging well” is a reference to an expressed opinion that no longer fares well under the light of contemporary events.

Consider the editorial in the Sunday edition entitled, “Don’t fear the rapper.” The article suggests that our community is paranoid about “communist lovers” and “God haters” for opposing the use of taxpayer resources for Nelly, an internationally known rapper, at a family-friendly county fair generally better associated with cowboy rodeos and 4-H youth. But this is Trump country. And the 78% who voted for him in Kootenai County have heard this dog whistle before. What the editorial subtly implies is the r-word. Yes — we are a bunch of racists.

But the ink wasn’t even dry on The Press editorial when a shooting at the fairgrounds in neighboring Oregon was reported on national media Saturday evening — just hours before the Sunday Edition was going to print. The rapper preparing to the take the stage couldn’t have been Nelly — could it? Why, it would be racist to think that an obscene “artist” would attract a crowd of degenerate gangbangers… right? Yes — just as The Press was posting their 10,497th “this town is racist” editorial, they ended up with egg all over their faces. To put it mildly, their editorial has aged very, very badly.

JEREMY MORRIS

Hayden