To the editor:
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Rather than criticize Shiller on issues, Gray sarcastically goes after her looks (which are actually not bad), says she has no conscience (that’s a good one, coming from the likes of Gray), and hints that a so-called Reader endorsement of Shiller was what influenced Michael Miner’s August 20 Hot Type column about Tribune writer Ray Coffey’s incessant Shiller-phobia (though, as far as I know, the Reader has never printed its own endorsement of Shiller or anyone else). Gray even attacks Miner’s job history at another paper, as if that has to do with anything except Gray’s own bile. Yet Gray has the nerve to say Shiller isn’t “classy” enough.
As for the 46th Ward’s concentration of social service facilities and parolees who so horrify Gray: the concentration predates Shiller and goes back to the days when the ward was far more poverty-stricken and decrepit than today. Much is different now, but social change takes time, the people affected aren’t disposable commodities, and planned development has its limits. Economic forces are greater than any alderman or block club. When the housing and retail markets decide that the 46th Ward will become another Ravenswood, Lakeview, or even (perish the thought) Lincoln Park, that’s when it will really happen. Politicians and community groups can do only so much to help it along or retard it–though incessant whining about how bad the 46th Ward is probably won’t help.
