- Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times
- Legal guns are not Chicago’s real gun problem.
Some say the editorial page is a newspaper’s Department of Futile Gestures, as the opinions expressed therein turn a nifty phrase or two a lot more often than they turn public opinion. There’s even a word by which journalists celebrate this futility, Afghanistanism—which is two-fisted advocacy in the service of remote corners of the earth that readers haven’t the slightest interest in and the paper hasn’t the slightest influence over. Alas, Afghanistanism isn’t what it used to be. Since 2003, America has actually thought about Afghanistan.
The New York Times editorial is the one that caught my eye as a conspicuous example of Afghanistanism. The lead editorial in the May 30 Times, it ran under the headline, “The Arms Struggle in Chicago.” Why should New York care so much about street violence in Chicago? I wondered. I don’t think New York does. The Times had points it wanted to make about the “misguided” Supreme Court and about “obstructionist politicians” responsible for Congress’ “disgraceful surrender to the gun lobby.” Chicago’s “sensible efforts” were worth mentioning because unless something is done about the courts and the gun lobby those efforts won’t do Chicago a lick of good.
