Newark -- Laugh or Cry?

In this morning’s N&O was a column by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, talking about late-night host Conan O”Brien’s mock-feud with Newark (NJ) mayor Cory Booker. O’Brien talks about Newark’s health-care program, which, he says, consists of a bus ticket out of Newark. Jokes like that.

Comedians always need something -- some place -- to joke about. Philadelphia used to be the butt of the jokes. Did you hear about the contest where the second prize was a trip to Philadelphia? And the first prize was you didn’t have to go.

I’m always interested to read about Newark. I was born there, and I spent my childhood in Belleville, an adjacent town, where we were just a half-hour bus-ride from downtown Newark. My pals and I used to ride the bus to Newark to go to Saturday-morning programs at the Newark Public Library and sometimes to a movie, with occasional side-trips to places like Bamberger’s Department Store (where we once -- unbeknownst to our parents -- got into trouble trying to run up the down-escalator). Newark in those days was safe enough that our parents had no worry in letting us go downtown unaccompanied.

As I’ve delved, more resently, into family history and genealogy, I’ve discovered that some of my ancestors were among the founders and first settlers of Newark. When I was growing up, the best-known hotel in Newark was the Robert Treat Hotel, which I now know was named for the early Connecticut governor who led the first expedition to Newark (though he stayed in Newark only long enough to get it established, and then returned home to Connecticut six years later). Newark (like other Newarks in Delaware and Ohio) was named -- depending on which account you want to believe -- either as the “New Ark” or the “New Work.” In any case, it was a Puritan religious settlement, intended (like so many early New England settlements) to return to the purity and virtue which the founders thought were being lost in the older settlements they came from.

But all that’s a long time ago, and Newark has undergone several cultural transformations since.

And what has happened to inner cities isn’t a laughing matter. Herbert goes on to express the hope that all the joking will result in some serious focus on the real problems of Newark and other cities -- he talks about Camden and Chicago, and we know the same problems confront other cities as well. Problems of poverty, unemployment, poor schools, high drop-out rates, high crime rates, and high incarceration rates.

He juxtaposes two ironically similar numbers: the proposed 40,000 increase in the troops sent to Afghanistan, and the 40,000 teachers laid off in the past year -- what does that say about our priorities? If we can afford to fight multi-billion dollar wars abroad and not worry about the cost, then cost should be a minor consideration when we contemplate the wrong we do to our most needy citizens and the damage we do to the country by ignoring these desperate needs.