rant, rant...rave, rave

I have issues with this article in the 'Style' section of the Post today. In a nutshell the article praises shade as the glorious alternative to summer's blistering sun. Stylistically, it weaves its message in a semi-poetical, semi-philosophical, semi-I'm-writing-an-essay-for-my-CreativeWriting101-class sort of way. All that is well and good.

Two things:

1)They use the following quote:

"Shade is a big-time thing these days," says Michael Jones, a federal government
worker, mopping sweat from his brow in Lafayette Park yesterday afternoon. He
watches a game of blitz chess at one of the concrete tables set up around the
park's walkways, standing about three feet out of the sunlight. "There are days,
over in Dupont, where we'll actually pay one of the homeless guys to move from a
chess table in the shade."

Are you F'ing kidding me! First of all, nobody should ever think that, let alone say it. Secondly, the Post printed it! If you can convince me the editor/author was making a subtle point about the arrogant demeanor of that man, and maybe by extension the typical DC professional in relation to 'homeless guys', perhaps i'd support it. But reading through the rest of the article doesn't leave that sort of impression. Instead, I think they printed it simply to try and relay the degree of sweltering summer heat in DC. It's not right to print that line in this context. It focuses on him saying 'it's hot' and ignores the fact that he's an ignorant, arrogant bastard. I don't want his quote representing me or anybody else melting in our swamp.

2)They make it sound like the shade actually does offer respite from the heat! That's the worst part of summer here: There is no escaping the heat. You can run for shade all you want, it's not going to do much. The humid heat literally swallows and suffocates you. I went running at 11 PM last night, after a thunderstorm came and supposedly booted out the evil heat spell we've been slowly rotting under. Granted it was cooler. Ten minutes into my run, however, i was dripping in sweat and overheating like a furnace. You just can't get away from it, ever. I strongly recommend that anyone who doesn't have towering political ambitions-or a return flight-avoid DC like the plague during summer months...even N. Virginia offers a pleasant escape.