Chronicling elusive standard of judgment by 'content of character'

Random thoughts:

Sometimes the news is its own object lesson.

Daily Herald Staff Writer Emily Krone worked for a week and a half to find and interview suburbanites who could speak from personal experience about how life has changed in the 40 years since the April 4, 1968, death of Martin Luther King Jr. Ultimately, she wove six very different stories -- from a white priest who marched with King to an elderly black couple who remembered when black people were restricted by law to specific neighborhoods and now see older people of all races being pushed out of their neighborhoods by the economics of upscale development -- into a small mosaic that showed both advances made and challenges remaining for successful integration in the suburbs.

Less than a week later, a story out of Carpentersville vividly demonstrates the awkward politics and tense, frail ironies that still define race relations in the suburbs -- and elsewhere for that matter. Someday, it might be a sign of successful assimilation that people can apply to their neighbors slang imagery they apply to their own children. But in today's world, Hispanic-American Carpentersville village board member Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski's scolding of African-American neighbor children to "quit playing in the tree like monkeys" evoked a painful history for blacks, set off a national discussion on offensive language -- and led the staff of the Irish-Kenyan-American presidential candidate who grew up in Hawaii and worked the streets of Chicago to discuss the situation with Ramirez-Sliwinski, a Barack Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Ultimately, everyone agreed it was OK for her to remain a delegate.

From the archives Candace Parker's "Basketball Journal" Love letter to basketball Dunking and women's athletics Coaches important off court, too Big crowds make for big fun 2nd state title not so easy A last trip to state in the cards Watching from the stands different

Thus, the reflections of various individuals on four decades of change they have experienced produces one kind of meaningful story, and the immediate actions of other individuals in a contemporary controversy produces another. Both are true. Both are telling. Both remind us that much remains to be reported and discussed before the dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. and millions of other Americans of all races for a harmoniously integrated nation are fulfilled.

In public life in his later years, actor Charlton Heston was a flashpoint for controversy for his staunch support and eventual leadership of the National Rifle Association's positions on gun ownership, often overshadowing his early support for civil rights causes and Martin Luther King Jr., in particular. In death this week, Heston was remembered mostly for the vivid screen images he left on generations of Americans in a broad range of familiar movie roles. You might say, it seemed to me, that he was remembered less for his political views than for the content of his character.

One of my favorite memories of Daily Herald features that have come and gone over the past couple of decades is a column by a bright young Naperville Central High School student that ran weekly in our DuPage County Neighbor editions. Candace Parker's writing career was brief and inconsequential in comparison to her accomplishments on the basketball court -- including her second consecutive national college championship with the Lady Vols of Tennessee and her No. 1 selection Wednesday by the Los Angeles Sparks in the WNBA draft. But I can't help reminding people of it every time I see the budding superstar play. If you want to see how she got to be such a classy spokeswoman for her sport, dig back in our archives a few years and see what a thoughtful, mature, intelligent teenager she was.

Talk about content of character.