There are dots to be connected that may not be facially obvious, and there are connections between dots that can only be missed if you try very, very hard. The New York Times has mastered the latter skill, as reflected in its headline,

Outrage in Bronx as Barnes & Noble Is Set to Close

This is sad news, for sure, as shown by the touching anecdote used in the formulaic opening to the story.

Every day after school, 4-year-old Nicholai Rose demands that his mother take him first to the park then to the Barnes & Noble in the Baychester neighborhood of the Bronx. There, they snuggle in a corner in the children’s section and, each time, read “I Need My Monster,” his favorite picture book.

In a few months their ritual will end — permanently — when the store closes for good, leaving the Bronx, a borough with nearly 1.5 million people, without one general-interest bookstore. For residents, the closing carries a painful sting the borough knows too well, of being long underserved and overlooked, which persists even as the Bronx is experiencing a renaissance.

Notice a detail missing from the sad anecdote? That’s right, they went to Barnes & Noble to snuggle in a corner and read a book. What they didn’t do is buy a book. It may well be that they can’t afford to buy a book, and it’s certainly nice that they have a place to go read.

But Barnes & Noble isn’t the public library. It’s a business. If it doesn’t make enough money to be profitable, then it closes. That’s how business works. Didn’t anyone explain this to the writer, Sarah Maslin Nir? Or her editor at the Times? Anyone? Are the basics of economics so very hard to grasp that it eluded everyone connected with this story?

Barnes & Noble says it’s shutting down because the rent is too damned high. The place will rented by a Saks Off 5th clothing store.  Is it the greedy landlord? Is it the greedy clothing store? Is B&N trying to make itself look less business-like by shifting its decision onto the landlord’s shoulders, who is also engaged in business and is allowed to charge as much rent as the market will bear?

The decision has provoked another round of outrage, laced with deep resentment and a sense of loss.

Christina Tipiani, 23, a student who lives in the Soundview section of the Bronx, bemoaned the closing as she browsed books with her daughter Gabriella Padilla, 3. “We have enough clothing stores,” she said. “What do you want to teach your children? I want to teach my child actual values.”

That’s very sweet. So teach them the value of buying books. Teach your children the “actual values” of responsibility instead of entitlement.

The loss contributes to a long-held sense that the Bronx is still shunned, even as its years of blight, arson and rampant crime are long past. Property values across the borough have steadily climbed, its population is rising and investment by developers in the South Bronx, once a national symbol of urban decay, hopes to turn the waterfront area into the city’s next hip neighborhood.

But the Bronx remains the poorest county in the state, and one of the poorest in the United States, and it is often left in the cold by retailers.

Is the Bronx being shunned? Nir nails down her proof with fruit.

In October, a consortium of Bronx politicians sent a letter to Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, noting that the Bronx is the only one of New York City’s five boroughs without an Apple store. They asked for one to be built. A spokeswoman for Apple declined to discuss whether the company had plans for a store there. It was reported on Wednesday that Apple had signed a lease to open another store in Brooklyn, in the Fort Greene neighorhood [sic].

How dare the ghost of Steve Jobs hate on the Bronx, even while opening up a new store in that burgeoning gentrified neighborhood, Fort Greene. But this isn’t a matter of shunning, or of politicians wishing businesses would open up in their borough. It’s about profit. Apple is plenty squishy, but the only color it cares about is green. If it can open a profitable store in your neighborhood, it will.

It’s not as if there aren’t libraries in the Bronx. There are. Plenty of them. Yet, the disconnect of the outrage to economics could not be more blatant than this:

The Bronx has 35 branches of the New York Public Library, with a collection of 1.7 million items, an increase of 16 percent during the past 10 years to meet the demand of readers. Standing in the fantasy section at the Barnes & Noble, Kim Laird looked around a place she had been visiting for 17 years.

She said there was something special about owning a book, explaining that since she was little, she had bought about one book every week there. “For me, reading is just an escape, books were my escape to a different world that I would probably never get to see in my lifetime,” Ms. Laird said. “For me, that’s what this store was.”

Barnes & Noble isn’t the library. It’s great that Kim Laird bought a book a week for 17 years, but that’s not enough money to pay the rent, pay the staff, turn a profit. And even in the butthurt Bronx, where people feel that businesses don’t love them as much as they think they should, they still need to turn a profit.

“I really do think that there is a preconceived concept that folks that live in the Bronx, they’re not interested in reading, or that they are going to steal everything,” said Claudette Mobley, 72, a retired nurse, as she browsed the aisles of the store. “We are just as interested in knowledge and reading as anybody else. We just don’t have the access to the things that the rest of New Yorkers do.”

You can “really do think” whatever you like. You can really want the same amenities that are readily available elsewhere. You can have them. All you need to do is pay for them, even though the New York Times seems to believe you’re entitled. Businesses can’t pay the rent with your sad feelings of entitlement, even if the New York Times tells you otherwise.