A Bit Too Far

Dear Randi Goldklank:

I am an avid consumer of our local news broadcasts. (I am also an avid consumer of pork rinds sold at highway convenience stops, which may be the same thing. I don't know.) I was struck, therefore, while watching the Channel 7 newscast over which you preside as station general manager shortly after the tragic collapse of that highway bridge in Minneapolis to see your own Dan Hausle there, standing in front of the rubble with a look of Grave Concern. I was even more intrigued while reading in this paper that you felt compelled to send Your Dan out to the Twin Cities so that "we can bring it back locally." I am not encouraged by this. Setting up Dan Hausle with his Channel 7 microphone and his look of Grave Concern does not bring Minneapolis "back locally." Minneapolis stays pretty much where it is. It's Dan that moves. By this logic, I could be having a cool brew at a logger's saloon in Brown County, Wisconsin, and talk as if I were drinking in an Irish pub in Allston. Boston doesn't go with me when I go to Green Bay any more than Green Bay comes home with me when I return, unless I catch the flu out there or something. Is this going to be a regular thing? There's an earthquake in California and, as long as Dan packs up his microphone and look of Grave Concern, Lodi is in Middlesex County? Hostilities break out in Tajikistan and there's Dan, and suddenly, people in Dushanbe can root for the Sox, deplore the T, and vote for Tom Menino? Look, West Roxbury is local. Mattapan is local. Minneapolis is not local, Dan Hausle or not. We are not the world. We only think we are.

Charles P. Pierce
pierce@globe.com