Increasingly, the Kansas City “community” has morphed into a circle of the like-minded. The astute
African-American social commentator Shelby Steele refers to this circle as the “zone of decency.” Those within find redemption by decertifying those without. The decent are quick to call their preferred media outlet when the seemingly less-decent breach the zone with a rogue opinion, which is how Ruckus got cancelled, literally.
By the most generous of definitions, The Star is a for-profit enterprise. It makes no marketing sense to decertify half or more of the newspaper’s red-state market, but that is the publisher’s right. The taxpayer-funded KCUR and KCPT do not have that right. They exercise it nonetheless. These entities no longer even fake objectivity. Together, they exert substantial pressure on the corporate and nonprofit community to follow the party line. Those who march to the beat of their own drum or even question the orthodoxy du jour can quickly find themselves shamed, decertified, cancelled.
None of this portends well for any genuine sense of community. “I often admired the infinite art with which the inhabitants of the United States managed to fix a common goal to the efforts of many men and to get them to advance to it freely,” said Alexis de Tocqueville, explaining the unique genius of America. The critical word here is “freely.” In Kansas City, as in many such cities, freedom has yielded to intimidation. We have already cancelled J.C. Nichols and Andrew Jackson. Can Harry Truman be far behind?
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