The Aerie

Whatsa Mater With St. Francis?

St. Francis is my alma mater, I graduated from St. Francis high school, back in 19-mumble-mumble. At the time, St. Francis was a desolate little farm town, which thought nothing of investing in extra athletic facilities, but skimped on the educational funds. Call me biased, but when I grew up there, I thought I was surrounded by thugs and hicks and knuckle-draggers.

I expressed this opinion in response to a story on the Star Tribune website, garnering a response from a friend of mine who has lived up there for the last couple of decades, assuring me that things have changed for the better.

But some things never change.

KSTP TV had two "crazy St. Francis" stories in a row tonight. I normally do not watch KSTP TV, as it is also populated by thugs and knuckle-draggers: specifically the Hubbard family which owns the station, and is trying to turn it into a little Fox News of their own. (To their credit, however, they are the station which broke the story about the missing explosives in Iraq back in 2004.)

Anyway I'm flipping channels and see the face of some lunatic shouting into the camera about how he won't be kept silent any more.
Turns out he's an insane St. Francis city council member, featured on camera ranting like a madman. I couldn't find the story on the KSTP website, but I did find this.

"When he finally had a chance to response, Schaffer yelled at the top of his lungs. There are no witnesses that he ever drank in his life, said Schaffer, who’s voice grew louder with every word. “I resent the aspersions on my character,” he said. “I resent it very much.”"

KSTP went to some lengths to point out that Schaffer is a member of the Green Party, despite the fact that St. Francis city council positions are not partisan. I'm sure they would have been delighted were he a Democrat, and utterly silent were he Republican.

The second story was about the high school semester being ended early because of racist death threats against the school's (still) ridiculously small black population.

St. Francis officials said 18 African American students attend their school of 1,800.

Let me do the math. I graduated from St. Francis, so it may take a while. Let's see, 1800 students, 18 black, that would make... 1%! One measley percent of the school population is black, yet that's too darned frightening to some racist troll at the school. While small, that is approximately nine times more black people at the school than during the Sevent... er, the years I was there.

No, not much seems to have changed in St. Francis over the last thirty... er, several years since I graduated!

Posted by Albatross at June 9, 2008 10:22 PM | TrackBack