Case Closed on the Bus Drivers Strike
Not being a consumer of public transit, it’s hard for me to understand the real affect the bus drivers’ strike is having on those poor souls forced to use this option. Therefore, I must rely on second hand reports for my information. Fortunately, I was able to locate two distinguished commentators on the subject. Between these two perspectives, the truth must lie somewhere.
First, excerpts from the Star Tribune’s Nick Coleman:
No buses were running, so Sam Jenkins and Robert Lee Johnson wound up in adjacent booths in the White Castle restaurant at University Av. and Lexington Pkwy. in St. Paul, having coffee and a doughnut and figuring out their next moves.
... Jenkins is a Vietnam vet who should've been on a bus to the VA hospital, where he was supposed to see someone about his post-traumatic stress disorder. But there were no buses Thursday.
Back in the next booth, Robert Johnson started showing me what he reads on the bus, which he rides most days from St. Paul to Roseville or all the way to Wayzata, just to look around. A lot of the time, the bus is where he catches up on his sleep. He has nowhere else.
Johnson wheeled his bag of books out of the White Castle and started walking west on University, toward Snelling. Jenkins, hunched over his cane, headed east toward Dale. There should have been a bus.
Next, via email, our reader and student of the human condition, Jim Styczinski:
The bus strike is providing a certain amount of amusement for those of us who lack a Coleman/Billings level of compassion and have offices overlooking (formerly) busy bus stops. Several news-deficient souls have stared impatiently down the street searching for busses that are not arriving anytime soon. One eventually glanced at a St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper box, stared at it awhile and then left. Another left after talking to a passerby. My favorite was one pacing around, checking the schedule, and looking down the street for quite a while before disappearing sometime when I wasn’t watching.
What is reality? Is the bus drivers strike tragedy or is it comedy? Who is to be believed?
Nick Coleman is a highly paid newspaper columnist. I’m sure Brian Lambert considers him a professional respecter of the facts. But he’s shown on many occasions that he has a bit of a conflict of interest when it comes to the homeless. He relies on them to establish his own credibility as the most caring man in Minnesota. Therefore, he needs the homeless to be pathetic, nobale victims, no matter what the situation.
Perhaps this is why he also screws them over, time after time. First, not buying them tickets to the Ice Palace, after telling them about how much they’re missing. And now not bothering to drive to a couple of crippled guys to the hospital, instead letting them aimlessly limp down the street, so he and his editors can get their happy ending. This is the editorial equivalent of staging alley fights between bums for a straight to video production. Could he be exaggerating the conditions yet again, for his own selfish purposes?
Whereas Jim Styczinski, he’s a regular reader of Fraters Libertas. Plus, he’s a guy who knows a guy who knows Slim Dunlap. That’s all I know about Jim Styczinski. And I think that’s enough.
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