Is lack of Federal Funding to Blame for Flooding Along Bray's Bayou? The New Mrs. White, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)
(They're going to charge you $3.50/month for this dreck)
The catapult is back, officially.
Back when I was the author of the lightly regarded Lose an Eye, It's a Sport, blog I coined the term "Mrs. White's Catapult" based loosely on the old IBM commercial that poked fun of the ridiculous tendency of business consultants to throw money at a problem to fix it and the tendency of the Chronicle Editorial Board to call for the same.
After the flooding it seems that the Catapult is back, and in a big way.
The idea that man can contain nature is nothing new. Much to King Canute's dismay, the tide would not stop rising at his command. This story has become something of legend, and is probably not entirely true, but it is recited as a cautionary tale in regards to Man's hubris in the face of nature.
Mrs. White has become a modern day Canute, thinking that by standing and commanding the water to stop, by hurling money from the catapult at the problem, she can have an effect on flood plains that have existed in the region for centuries.
It's this kind of backwards thinking that leads to the only conclusion possible: The Chron Editorial Board should be shuttered and the staff and resources either let go or redeployed to the news room.
The Chronicle needs to stop ignoring the tide of change that is sweeping through newspapers across the country and start making some needed changes to improve the product. One improvement would be less silly opinion from an unaccountable editorial board and more hard news coverage that impacts Houstonians lives.
Of course, by asking the leadership at the Chronicle to realize this I understand that I'm playing my own Canute role as well. Newspapers are largely in the mess they're in because they steadfastly refuse to change, they are as unflinching in their march toward irrelevance as the tide is in it's march up the beach.
And so it goes.
