Let the Sun Shine, You Hypocrites

These are a fraction of the SF Weekly stories that have elevated San Francisco public life. Yet the Guardian has argued that by spending this kind of money on journalism, SF Weekly somehow sought to cause harm to the less fortunate. This is a perverse idea of social justice.

"Who bloody cares? Tempest in a teapot!! Does anyone actually read these rags? Let's save a few trees. A plague on both their houses," was a typical reader remark on the Chronicle story announcing the Guardian-Weekly verdict.

Who indeed?

If, two decades from now, Alameda County children are not brain-damaged by lead exposure, nobody will wonder why. If there are no unusual clusters of cancer of the skin, lungs, urinary tract, bladder, and kidneys of the types typically caused by arsenic, it's doubtful anyone will pause to reflect on the stadium's worth of toxic dirt that filled a convoy bound for a safer repository in 1999. That's old news.

But to my admittedly biased way of thinking, it's news that deserved to see the light of day.