Everyone's complaining about something

From schools to the sea, from local neighbors to foreign diplomats, everyone is complaining about something in today’s news.

A New York Times article today draws the nation’s attention to the Tuscaloosa, Ala., school district, where complaints of racial segregation have emerged from families in the city. The article begins in general terms, noting Tuscaloosa’s earlier history of segregation at the University of Alabama and mentioning the redistricting that has caused many black children to return to all-black schools inferior to those they were attending. The No Child Left Behind Act forms the basis for parents’ claims that their children are being moved unjustly, but the article lacks any comment on this from the Education Department. After discussing the redistricting in purely numerical terms at the start of the article, the reporter ends by making the matter more personal with the inclusion of one student’s story.

In the Washington Post, a different issue of resettlement is described even more transparently. After receiving a copy from Human Rights Watch of Iraqi Ambassador Ryan Crocker’s cable to the State Department, the Post discloses information to suggest that bureaucracy is slowing down the process of resettling Iraqi refugees in the U.S. One of the best pieces of evidence of this included in the article comes in the form of a letter from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that places the blame for delays on the State Department’s partner, Overseas Processing Entities.

A far more trivial problem causes local annoyance, as the Boston Globe reports on the injustice of noisy leaf blowers in the suburbs. On the Globe’s homepage today, top news stories around the country—such as President Bush’s anticipated Attorney General nomination—and the state—such as the possibility of raising highway tolls—are covered by news services. Apparently, Globe reporters have more important issues to cover. The description of parents who take their toddlers and run when leaf blowers rev up on Cambridge Common paints a laughable picture. The audio recording of the blowers spliced into a reading of the article is a nice touch, although seemingly unnecessary: if so many townspeople are running in fright from the blowers, do readers really need to “Click the play button below to hear how loud leafblowers [sic] are”?

Meanwhile, the MetroWest Daily News picks up a Patriot Ledger story today about poor business for lobster catchers in Massachusetts. No one seems to be sure what exactly is causing the decline in the quantity of lobsters caught in the waters of the Commonwealth, but several in the industry stake their guess on the influence of the “HubLine” gas pipeline that runs from Weymouth to Salem and the burden of rising gas prices. One has a little more sympathy for the daughter of a lobsterman who says in the kicker that her family cannot afford to eat lobster for dinner this year than for the complaining neighbors of leaf blower owners, but the article still leaves unanswered questions about why Massachusetts lobstermen are faring so much worse than their New England neighbors.