Regarding the Dick Locher cartoon (Sept. 12): With all the problems and bad policies that hang around the city’s neck, why is midnight basketball singled out for attack? Late-night sports may not change kids’ lives, but it will keep some of them off the street during the hours when crime is most likely to occur.
The cartoonist would have us see the children of the poor not as vulnerable youngsters trying to cope but as con artists and two-time thieves-first sticking the rest of us for tax dollars, then just sticking us up.
I hope I’m not the only reader to find this representation of young people nasty, even dehumanizing. Before the Tribune next lectures us on the dangers of “polarizing” political rhetoric, it may wish to examine the messages contained within its own pages.
