[Re: “Shoot the Messenger” by John Greenfield, March 30]
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When I left the [bike messengering] profession in December of 1999, it was during a media circus surrounding the Union Station incident, which was the cherry on top of a shit sundae of a year. Many of the same issues raised weakly in the book of contention [The Immortal Class by Travis Culley], along with the others expressed more strongly by many of the folks Mr. Greenfield interviewed, quoted, or cited, were on my mind, all of them to do with the downright fucked-up conditions and hazards basic to the messenger profession. As a mere two-and-a-half-year veteran, bowing out for personal reasons rather than political ones, I felt it wasn’t my place to be the voice for all the personal injustices I have witnessed committed against my fellow messengers, including my spouse, because I was not an impersonal judge of all the conflicting information and points of view. As a compromise, I tried to find a sympathetic and impartial ear in the press, to tell the facts as I knew ’em, and provide contact names of people who knew the score better than me, so that a counterpoint to the plethora of Killer Bike Messenger stories and editorials might be given to the general public.
Professions engaged in thankless and dangerous tasks always have their own cults of personality, and when these cults are dissed it only creates further dissension and resentment when what is needed most is some basic solidarity. I’ll probably never read the offending book, as I got enough stories of my own, thank you, as well as knowing a lot of the anecdotes pilfered by the author, having heard them from the sources themselves. What’s sad to me is that what could have been a vehicle for greater understanding from the public was first turned into a self-serving document for a shrewd opportunist in activist’s clothes and then into a public chest-beating display that was as impotent as it was probably boring to read by most of the nonmessenger public. What’s sadder still is that members of your own staff had the resources to do a much better article, using all that “journalistic objectivity and integrity” y’all always talk about, and due to their laziness, we get this gruesome display. I honestly don’t know whether to be horrified or amused or both.
PS: How funny is it that corporate media giant Tribune Media were the only ones at the time to do fair and unbiased newspaper stories and local TV news “human interest stories” about the other side of messengering? What do you people do all day? Sit around and find new contexts to use the word “trope”?
