September 03, 2004

Selected Short Subjects

I'm not saying that he is, but I'm not saying that he isn't.

It's just that I've never seen Don Rickles and Dick Cheney in the same room together at the same time, and I don't know for certain that they're not the same person.

You can judge for yourself by examining the photographic evidence assembled by the Tube City Almanac's crack investigative team (or is that the investigative team that's on crack?):



All I'm saying is, don't be surprised if the next stump speech that Cheney makes starts with the words, "Hello, dummies."

...

Speaking of photographic evidence, Martha Rial's photo of Laura Bush in the Post-Gazette the other day creeped me out. I'm not sure what was creepier; the Orwellian vibe that the President's giant floating head gave me, or the thought that Dubya might be ready to swallow the First Lady whole.

...

Speaking of creeps, would you cross the street to see Bill Clinton?

I'm sorry, that was a really cheap shot. And I might cross the street to see Clinton, but I don't know that I'd wait in line in the rain to buy his book --- which by most accounts is too long and yet short on insight.

(On the other hand, I waited in the rain to see Mike Dukakis at Kennedy Park in Our Fair City back in '88, and we know how well that turned out.)

Lots of people did brave the weather, though, when Hillary's husband dropped into Barnes & Noble in Homestead the other day, according to Brandy Brubaker in The Daily News:

Jean Bohince of Level Green bashfully admitted she skipped her kids' first day back to school to wait for the former president. She arrived at 6:15 and was shocked to find herself far back in the already impressive Clinton crowd.

"I've never seen an American president," Bohince said. "Bill Clinton is intelligent and dynamic."

Pat Brown of Elizabeth Twp. was just a little ahead of Bohince in line. She already had her game plan.

"Maybe if I faint, they'll let me stay a little longer," Brown joked. "I would walk miles to see Bill Clinton --- and I have."

There's also, naturally, a write-up about Clinton's visit on the front page of this week's Valley Mirror, which must be sending former publisher Earle Wittpenn into apoplexy. I enjoy Wittpenn's column, "Earle's Pearls," and I've followed it for years, but he sometimes comes off as slightly to the right.

To the right of Generalissimo Francisco Franco, that is.

...

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, by the way. And if you get that joke, you're older than I am.

...

McKeesport City Council has unveiled the official portraits of the late Joe Bendel, former mayor of Our Fair City. Pat Cloonan's story in the News has several nice touches:

(One of the portraits) is a family picture taken for Joseph and Rosemary Bendel's 20th wedding anniversary, but abandoned four years ago in the old Carter DeNino studio along Shaw Avenue and Huey Street in downtown McKeesport due to damage from at least one footprint.

"We were in there with the Historical Society," Councilwoman Ann Stromberg recalled. "The place was in a shambles. We were ready to leave, and found it in the kitchen. There was a footprint on it."

But, the councilwoman said, city Administrator Dennis Pittman took it upon himself to restore it.

...

The Democratic Party of Georgia has crafted a fairly decimating response to Zell Miller, that shrinking violet, which hoists him with his own petard. You need a Flash player to view the short video.

Conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan calls the President's remarks Thursday night the "second best speech I have ever heard George W. Bush give," but characterizes Zell Miller's speech on Wednesday as full of "slurs," "smears" and "calumny," and Cheney's speech as one of "bromides and denial."

...

I exchanged some very nice email with Professor Michael Madison, author of Pittsblog, regarding his column about Pittsburgh's image and my subsequent critique. Frankly, I was rather flattered that he felt I was worth responding to.

When you see the amount of bile that gets spilled on the Internet, it's nice to know that there are still diamonds among the lumps of coal.

And of course, it's nice to know that there's still lumps of coal, like this rebuttal that was posted on Madison's Web page about yours truly:

Micheal, I wouldn't worry about this maniac's opinion. Quite frankly though his thoughts are pretty much par for the course in Pittsburgh. And the reason newcomers have problems in our city is because of freaks like this. The guy read what he wanted to read in your post. Summary? The gene pool in Pittsburgh is stagnant. Mike

Let's see: Ad hominem attacks? Check. Name-calling? Check. If only he had dropped Kerry's name a few times, I would have thought this was Zell Miller. And for good measure, Mike apparently has spelled his own first name wrong. His rhetorical skills leave me spellbound.

For the record, I'm not what's wrong with Pittsburgh. I'm what's wrong with Our Fair City. My research indicates that Mrs. Adele Spritzhaven, 78, of 713 Reifert St., Bon Air, is what's wrong with Pittsburgh.

...

Speaking of Our Fair City, some of you have wondered what's up with this affectation. Well, it's all part of my secret plot to improve Our Fair City's image by increasing its ranking on search engines.

So far, it's meeting with some success. Searching Google.com for the search string "Our Fair City" now returns the City of McKeesport home page as one of the top 30 choices.



Bwwaa-a-a-ha-ha-ha!

...

Alert Reader Arden informs me that the Man from Lake Wobegon is still on the warpath over the President, as evidenced by this opinion piece that originally appeared in the liberal magazine In These Times:

The party of Lincoln and Liberty (has) transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk.

Ooof. Paging Mr. Keillor, Mr. Garrison Keillor: Zell Miller is waiting for you in the lobby. With dueling pistols.

...

For those of us with a comic strip jones, "Josh Reads The Comics So You Don't Have To" is a very funny site.

Also, I stumbled some great online editorial cartoons (also very liberal) by David Craig Simpson at his Web site called "I Drew This."

Maybe I'm late to the party, because David Simpson apparently has been doing a Web comic strip called "Ozy & Millie" for several years; a quick search of the Internet turned up a devoted legion of fans.

Well, you know us Pittsburghers; we're always late for everything. The gene pool in Pittsburgh is stagnant, after all.

...

To do this weekend: It's the traditional last week of operations at (cue Andy Vettel Jr. voice) "The One and Only Roller Coaster Capital of the World!" My alma mater's marching band appears in tonight's "Fall Fantasy" parade on the Kennywood midway, along with bands from Carrick High School, Schenley High School, Perry Traditional Academy and Forest Area High School. Croatian Day is Saturday.

Kennywood will also be open for "bonus" weekends through Sept. 19, while "Phantom Fright Nights" run Fridays and Saturdays in October. Call (412) 461-0500 for details.

Also: Clairton NAACP holds its Labor Day picnic from 12 noon to 8 p.m. Monday at Clairton Park Lodge.

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
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September 02, 2004

White Elephants on Parade

Today, in honor of the Republican National Convention, we're going to talk about White Elephants.

Ha, ha! I slay me.

Seriously, the White Elephant I refer to is the old nightclub of that name that was located on Lincoln Way in White Oak. It was also known at various times as "2002" and "Dynasty," and began life as the Hotel Belvedere. An Alert Reader whose name is being withheld writes:

I just came across your Web site while doing an Internet search for information about the old White Elephant ... (My dad) used to always tell my brother and I stories about the heyday of the Elephant, where he spent a good portion of his teen years. I'm pretty sure the nightclub burned down, but I was wondering if you knew of anyone or anywhere I could buy pictures, or memorabilia, from the club. This would be about the best Christmas present ever. Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

I've purposely obscured the writer's information in the slim chance that her dad might stumble across this and find out what his Christmas present is.

The only White Elephant "memorabilia" of which I'm aware is an Itzy Records compilation CD called "Pittsburgh's Favorite Oldies: At the Hop Volume II." It's got a sketch of the White Elephant on the front, and it ought to still be available in local record stores or over the Internet. Unfortunately, I don't think the CD has anything about the Elephant inside, and the sketch is fairly crude.

The club itself did burn down a few years ago; it was located next to the present White Oak municipal building. The outlines of the building's foundation and pieces of concrete can still be seen in the old parking lot.

Does anyone out there have other leads on White Elephant items that my emailer can use? Or would you like to share your memories of the White Elephant --- or the Twin Coaches, Ben Gross', the Vogue Terrace, and other Mon-Yough area hot spots?

Email j t 3 y at dementia dot o r g with your stories.

...

An Alert Reader who works in radio liked my riff on Rick Moranis' "Stairway to Heaven" story:

My favorite question is always something on the order of, "what time is the '70s at 7 on?" Well, duh.

And then there are the people who call in with something like this: "I heard a commercial on your station last Tuesday for the Renaissance Festival, and I'm not sure exactly what time it ran, or even if it was on your station, but I need the details and directions, can you get them for me?"

Feel free to tell those people complete misinformation: "Oh, that's at the sanitary landfill in Forward Township. Drive out Route 51 as far as Payday's, and then follow your nose." And make sure to give them your competitor's phone number and call letters, so they know where to lodge the complaints later on.

Besides, if they're going to the renaissance festival, they deserve every bit of abuse you can heap on them.

...

Fan mail comes from Nancy in Laurel, Md., who writes:

I stumbled upon your webpage and have been reading your blog every work-day at lunch. I can't tell you how much I enjoy your humor and appreciate having some information that my Mom may have missed in The Daily News. I live in the land of politicos and nit-wits (Maryland) and it's refreshing to hear a home-town voice. Somedays you really crack me up. So, fear not, there are probably more ex-pat's out here listening to what you have to say (and mostly agreeing) ... you have an audience!

I appreciate the kind comments, but I'm not sure what I find more disturbing: The thought that I have an audience, or the thought that people read this stuff while they're eating.

...

Now, back to our continuing coverage of Pittsburgh's image, or lack thereof, as Professor Pittsblog has a response to my Tuesday and Wednesday rants that's well worth reading:

I happen to like Pittsburgh, a lot. I think that it's a terrific place to live and that it's terribly underappreciated, especially by a lot of people who were raised here and who still live here. I also happen to think that Pittsburgh has a lot of undeveloped potential -- economically, socially, and culturally. To my mind, the notion that we need to get past steel is consistent with both statements. "Get past steel" doesn't mean that we should ignore or undervalue the contributions of steelworkers or the steel industry; it means that the future of the city and the region doesn't and can't depend on them. It's terrific to recognize, remember, and respect the past. It's not terrific to stop there and to believe that respect for the past is enough to sustain Pittsburgh into the future.

I didn't mean to imply the Professor himself was a snob, but I have heard similar arguments from people who definitely were looking down their noses at Pittsburgh and the Mon-Yough area. Perhaps I'm hyper-sensitive, and I saw snobbery (snobbishness? snobberism?) where it didn't exist.

I agree with the Professor to some extent, especially on this point: "I certainly didn't intend to provoke such a visceral reaction, but the fact I did suggests to me that there is something here worth talking about."

Anything that stimulates discussion on the topic of Western Pennsylvania --- where it's been, where it is, where it's going --- is useful. If Pittsburghers (and McKeesporters) have had one serious fault, it's been too often allowing "institutions" --- the newspapers, the foundations, unelected civic boards, corporations --- to set the agenda and the tone of public discussions. Jon Potts makes much the same argument in The Conversation today.

Over the last half-century, too many ideas have been imposed on Western Pennsylvania from "above," and have been placidly accepted by the voters and taxpayers. Not enough ideas have been generated in the communities by the people, nor have the people elected leaders who felt it was their responsibility to listen to the communities!

Meanwhile, Dave Copeland makes an excellent point: "(Perhaps) Pittsburgh's biggest problem is the perception of the people who live here. The people who s--- on it, the people who travel and are ashamed to admit where they come from or the mayor who cracks jokes in The New York Times about it being 10 years behind the times."

First, we need to shake Western Pennsylvanians out of their complacent, negative attitudes; and then we need to get them to do something about it, instead of accepting things as "fate."

I'm open to suggestions on how to do that, because I'm convinced we can't look to our elected officials for leadership.

...

From the Tube City Almanac National Affairs Desk comes this quotable quote: "Republicans sold us out with a generation of trickle-down economics that blew the deficit sky-high, drove poverty through the roof, and squeezed the middle class like a lemon at a county fair. They gave themselves the goldmine, and they gave the rest of us the shaft."

Now, who said that? Yawn Kerry? Teddy Kennedy?

Nope; it was Zell Miller, eight years ago.

Oh, I see. And Kerry is the flip-flopper. Gotcha. Check. Kerry flip-flops, but Zell "Bombs Away" Miller is just principled.

Senator Miller, speaking to Chris Matthews later yesterday on MSNBC's "Hardball," sounded like a man who has stripped his gears --- especially when he offered to come over and challenge Matthews to a duel in the street. (Tip of the hardhat, by the way, to Eric Zorn.)

And then, after Zell's tirade, along comes the mortician-in-chief, Dick Cheney, who makes Don Rickles look like Mr. Congeniality, to say that "a senator can be wrong for 20 years, without consequence to the nation. But a president, a president always casts the deciding vote. And in this time of challenge, America needs and America has a president we can count on to get it right."

Someone who thought that more tax cuts aren't the answer, and who is disgusted with the apparent lack of a strategy for winning the peace in Iraq, and who's concerned with the Bush Administration's complete lack of regard for transparency in government and civil rights, might say that's an excellent argument for voting for Kerry in November.

And another thing: Comparing the war in Iraq to World War II, as both Miller and Cheney tried to do, just doesn't cut it, in my estimation. In World War II, we had two large industrial powers --- Germany and Japan --- who were disrupting our shipping lanes in the North Atlantic, causing devastation to our allies in England and the European mainland, and who launched a sneak attack on one of our bases. In the most recent Iraq war, we had a corrupt dictator, weakened by 10 years of sanctions and bombing runs, who was a threat mostly to his own people.

Yes, yes, remember Sept. 11. I don't have to be reminded; I was in Shanksville that day. I also was at the memorial service a few days later. But Saddam Hussein, evil megalomanic that he was (and still is), wasn't responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. The people who were responsible are still running around Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, and they're being funded by our good friends, the Saudis. The war in Iraq changed that not one iota --- except to make the angry Islamic militants just that little bit angrier.

These kinds of speeches make great television, of course, and I suspect few viewers are going to take the time to parse this stuff out, except for those who are already politically active. Kerry is killing himself because he makes these layered, nuanced, deliberative speeches --- they read well, but on television, they look like so much dithering. Worse, his constant qualifications and his willingness to look at the opposite side of every issue give his enemies plenty of ammunition when they label him "indecisive." (What's the definition of a liberal? A guy who won't take his own side in an argument.)

By comparison, the arguments that Cheney and Miller made in their speeches seem strong and substantial on TV, but so do movie sets. Get behind them, and it's clear that they're flimsy and made of props that are designed only to look good on camera for a few minutes. They don't stand up to any close inspection.

Unfortunately, how many people get a chance to closely inspect a movie set?

Besides, most people wouldn't want to: It would spoil the illusion. I suspect a lot of people don't carefully examine political speeches for the same reason.

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
Filed Under: default | three comments | Link To This Entry

September 01, 2004

Upon Further Reflection

Was I a little bit testy yesterday? Eh. Maybe I'm due for my distemper shots. Maybe, as Dick Skrinjar of PennDOT once told O'Brien & Garry, I need more fiber in my diet.

It could also be that I have a bad taste in my mouth from reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. In the book, which made The New York Times' best-seller list, the author takes low-paying jobs as a hotel maid, a waitress and a Wal-Mart clerk to see if she can survive on minimum wage.

Surprise! She really can't pay for rent, food and utilities on $5.15 per hour for 40 hours per week. This should come as no shock to anyone except the large corporations (I'm looking at you, Wal-Mart and McDonald's) who have successfully lobbied to keep the minimum wage low.

The book is ostensibly sympathetic to people who work in minimum wage jobs, and I'm sure Ehrenreich is; unfortunately, what really came through was that she holds manual labor jobs in contempt. The underlying theme of the book seems to be: "I'm too good to be cleaning toilets" or making beds or stacking things for sale. By extension, in my opinion, then she holds the people who do those jobs in contempt --- after all, they should be smart enough to know that their jobs suck, and should get better jobs, right?

I find that attitude insulting and unrealistic. In fact, it's not very different than the conservative philosophy that people who work in minimum-wage jobs deserve their lot in life --- that if only they had a little ambition, they could pull themselves out of the lower-income bracket and out of their minimum wage jobs. (But, you know, don't give them any help in the form of grants for college, and don't help them with their health care. The private sector and charities will take care of that.)

It never seems to dawn on Ehrenreich that someone needs to clean the world's toilets and empty the world's garbage cans, and that they deserve a little respect and dignity --- just as it never seems to dawn on conservatives that some people are born without the natural abilities to go to college or start a business. Does that mean they have no worth? Should they be condemned to live miserable lives?

Either way, it's economic elitism, and I say to hell with it, whether it's on the left or the right.

So, maybe that's why I'm aggravated by the attitude that Pittsburgh could amount to something if only it could get some mythical steel monkey off of its back. By extension, it's another kind of elitism: If only it wasn't for all these damned old, poor people, Pittsburgh wouldn't be half-bad. Never mind the fact that it's those damned old and poor people who built Pittsburgh in the first place, let's marginalize them --- and one way to do that is to tell them that steel doesn't matter, and in fact, it never did.

Well, maybe if we all wish hard enough, we can turn Pittsburgh into Berkeley, or at least Madison, Wisconsin! C'mon, Tinkerbell, you can do it! And we can all sit around drinking white wine, voting for the Green Party, and discussing Marxist philosophy and modern art!


Please. Pittsburgh is what it is. Take that, and build on it. Yes, we need to move forward, and we need to get over our historic suspicion of outsiders.

But enough with the historical revisionism; without its history, Pittsburgh is just a tired old midwestern town without any of the "character" that people supposedly find so "charming" in places like Bloomfield or Lawrenceville.

...

Speaking of living in the past, work on the Diplomat continues to lurch forward, and I do mean "lurch." I don't give my cars cutesy names, but if I did, the Diplomat would be "Puddles," because that's what it's leaving all over my garage floor. I recently stopped a really bad leak in the transmission by replacing the pan gasket, only to find that there's a separate transmission fluid leak at the speedometer cable.

The valve cover gaskets are also leaking, or at least I hope they are; if they're not, then the rear main seal is going bad. For those of you who know something about cars, the rear main seal is the gasket that keeps oil around the crankshaft, and it is installed between the engine and the transmission. For those of you who don't know anything about cars, just envision dollar bills with wings, flying away from your wallet; that's what happens when the rear main seal goes bad.

With help from a friend, I've installed a new electronic ignition and distributor on the Diplomat which (hopefully) will fix its uneven idle. Before I did that, I had to make sure I wasn't doing anything that would make the car unable to pass state emissions inspection. Luckily, I wasn't, because the thought of trying to repair the vintage-1984 Chrysler "computer" that was (badly) controlling the ignition system filled me with dread.

If you have questions about what the state emissions program tests ... and what it doesn't test ... visit the state Department of Environmental Protection's Drive Clean PA Web site. I found it useful. It even includes a history of emissions testing in Pennsylvania, and links to the stations offering the lowest prices on tests!

I wanted to get the Dippy street-legal by this fall, but the driver's side window still isn't working properly --- the gears are stripped --- and on a little late-night "shakedown" cruise to see if the new carb and power brakes were working properly, the gas gauge decided to stop working. Groan. I don't see any legal requirement that the fuel gauge gauge work, but it seems logical to me that it would be consider "necessary" equipment.

After all of this work, I expect that the Diplomat will be a valuable collector car someday. By then, of course, the water engine and perpetual motion machines will have been perfected, which will make the Dippy seem positively quaint, don't you think?

...

Rick Moranis, in an interview with a trade magazine called Sound and Vision, talks about being a radio DJ in Toronto:

Back in 1976, I had a conversation with a listener that taught me more about listeners and listening habits than anything else I came across in radio. The most requested song was "Stairway to Heaven." And every time I answered the request line, it seemed, the request would always be "Stairway to Heaven." ...

One day, I was actually playing it on the radio, and I picked up the request line and said, "CHUM-FM." And the guy on the line said, "Yeah, can you play ‘Stairway to Heaven'?"

I said, "I'm playing it."

And he said, "I know. Can you play it again?"

I said, "Let me ask you a question. You love ‘Stairway to Heaven,' right?"

"Yeah, it's my favorite song."

"And I bet you own a copy of it, don'tcha?"

And he said, "Of course I own a copy."

So I said, "Well, why don't you just put it on and listen to it?"

And he said, "Because I want to hear it on the radio."

As someone who has occasionally answered radio station request lines, I can sympathize. In fact, I think I talked to the same guy a few weeks ago. If we didn't have "Stairway," he said, "Freebird" was acceptable.

Another of my favorite listener questions is: "Can I make a request? What kind of music are you playing right now?" Well, duh, since you're obviously not listening to our station, sure I'll play your request, dipwad.

A personal highlight was the lady who called and asked, "Do you know the request line number for (our competition)?" Yes, and I'm sure Sears will gladly give you the phone number for your nearest Target store.

Here are some more stupid listener questions, courtesy of KRUD.com.

...

Tomorrow: Reader mail, including a request for information about the old White Elephant nightclub out in White Oak.

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
Filed Under: default | two comments | Link To This Entry

August 31, 2004

Hamsters Steel Themselves for Election Battle

As a big fan of "Bloom County" back during the late paleozoic era, I've been faithfully reading Berke Breathed's new Sunday-only comic strip, "Opus" (it runs in the Post-Gazette locally), in the hope that it would eventually be funny. I had almost given up until this week's episode, when Pittsburgh's favorite press critic made an appearance, along with Dick Cheney ... in a hamster suit, no less. I actually laughed out loud.

Give Breathed credit; unlike Garry Trudeau, he actually draws caricatures of the people he's lampooning, and not waffles or feathers. In this case, by the way, it wasn't so much a caricature of Teresa Kerry as it was character assassination.

There's more on Yawn Kerry and his daughter's hamster at the Hamsters for Kerry Web site.

A tip of the Tube City Online hard hat for the Hamsters for Kerry info to StuntViolist, who asks, "What if rodents were involved in American politics?"

What do you mean, if?

...

Speaking of hard hats, I respect Professor Pittsblog, but he's talking out of his hat. He was piqued recently when a guest speaker at a professional association was given a Steeler hard hat as a token of gratitude:

Here's what I see when I look at the Steeler hard hat ... I see a tribute to two industries --- steel and mining --- which have their best days behind them. I see an idealization of Pittsburgh's history. Does it hold Pittsburgh back to say that this is still a steel town, even metaphorically? Ask your friends around the country and around the world about their impressions of Pittsburgh. Are they good ones? I hope so. Are those positive associations based on the history (and continuing presence) of steel? I'd like to know the answer, but I'd wager that the answer is no.

Well, here's what I see when people tell Pittsburghers to "put steel behind them": "Yes, steelworkers and all that, look, that was a long time ago, and really, who wants to associate with such a group of lower-class ruffians like steelworkers, much less commemorate them?"

That's one small step up from "Those steelworkers were a bunch of blue-collar greedy buffoons," which I heard a lot when I was growing up. And that's just one short step removed from, "Those dumb ignorant hunkies, who do they think they are?"

Sorry. Maybe I'm over-reacting. But it gets my Irish (or is that Hungarian?) up. You're telling me that what my grandfathers and father did to build America wasn't worthwhile, and that they didn't do anything to make this country great, and that I should forget about it. I take that very personally. Setting aside the obvious --- that Pennsylvania steel built the great buildings, bridges and ships of the world for nearly a century --- the leadership of steelworkers and coal miners made possible such "radical" concepts as overtime pay, paid vacations and holidays, and health insurance. Those didn't exist until men and women struck for their rights, often at great personal risk to themselves. And don't forget the impact that Big Steel had on the northern migration of African-Americans to Pennsylvania in search of a better life; the steel companies pitted whites and blacks against one another, hiring blacks to break strikes by white steelworkers and helping to solidify racist attitudes that still exist to this day.

We're supposed to get past that? We're still living with the consequences of decisions that happened 50, 75 or 100 years ago. How can we expect to move forward without understanding what happened in the past?

Remembering history, and understanding it, is not the same as "idealizing" it. I'd agree that too many Pittsburghers live in the past --- the continued success of classic rock radio stations is evidence enough of that --- but too few of them remember their history. That history includes steel and coal, just as the history of New England includes the American Revolution (or should we rename the New England "Patriots," too?), and we should be doing a better job of teaching it to our young people. Right now, most young Pittsburghers have little more than a vague awareness that there was such a thing called the steel industry, but no real memories of what life was like in the days of Big Steel. Maybe they think the decaying buildings on the riverfronts in Duquesne and Our Fair City were built as ruins.

Good on the Rivers of Steel Heritage Project for what it's doing in Homestead to teach people about the impact of the steel industry. It's a shame that the Carnegie Museums have been so busy over the years building monuments to their wealthy patrons that they never thought to build a museum explaining how the patrons got wealthy in the first place. Instead, they built a museum for Andy Warhol --- whose most creative and groundbreaking period lasted about 15 years, and whose art will be all but forgotten 100 years from now, when Pittsburgh steel is still holding up bridges and buildings around the world.

That doesn't mean "idealizing" the steel industry; just because I think the era of big steel was crucial to Western Pennsylvania and American history doesn't mean that I'm pining for the days of choking smog and rivers that ran thick with pollution.

But without steel and coal, Western Pennsylvania would still be wilderness. Telling us to "get past" that is like trying to conceal the unpleasant parts of history because they're inconvenient, and frankly, I find it a little snobbish.

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
Filed Under: default | No comments | Link To This Entry

August 30, 2004

Bumping and Grinding (My Teeth) To The News

(More of my tedious, namby-pamby, couch-potato views on national politics here; skip to the end for local stuff.)

I swore I wasn't going to become the kind of whiny liberal who works himself or herself into a foaming, teeth-gnashing frenzy every time Dubya shows up on television. (For one thing, I'm not that liberal ... although I am plenty whiny.) But lately, I've noticed myself tensing whenever the President begins to speak on radio or TV.

I used to root for him: "Come on! You can do it! You can finish that sentence!" Now, I just want to yell at him: "Stop smirking! What's so funny, anyway! Stop it!" This morning, I woke up to AP Radio News on WMBS; they were playing excerpts of the President making a campaign speech in West Virginia. I almost fell out of bed, diving for the off switch.

As I got dressed, my reaction started to bother me, and I couldn't figure out what quality of his voice was annoying me so much. We've had Southerners in the White House before --- Carter and Clinton, for instance --- and their accents didn't bother me like this. It isn't necessarily the content of what he says, either; I can listen to Cheney and Wolfy and Rummy and Condi (good Lord, I don't remember who pointed this out first, but it does sound like the cast of the Little Rascals), saying the same things as Dubya, and not get aggravated. And I can read excerpts of the President's speeches without grinding my teeth (usually).

So what about the sound of Dubya drives me to the brink?

A friend finally put his finger on it for me this morning: "His tone is condescending."

Eureka. That's it. He speaks with the cadences of an impatient Sunday school teacher trying to explain the story of Noah and the ark to a roomful of fidgety, slightly-stupid fourth-graders. He speaks in short, declarative sentences, and he bites them off at the end abruptly, as if to say, "This is so simple, if only you weren't too thick to understand."

You can tell me almost anything, but don't talk down to me. Nothing brings me out of my cage snarling and clawing like someone talking to me as if I'm daft.

Aw, maybe I'm reading too much into this. I probably am. I know this much: I usually like to listen to KQV and NPR during the day, but with this being the week of the Republican National Convention, I'm sticking to music at work, and CDs in the car and at home. I don't know if I can take a week full of smugness.

My dental work will thank me.

...

Update: I made the mistake of listening to the 1 p.m. news, which had a soundbite from the President saying that we can't win the war on terrorism. Here's the quote, courtesy of NBC News, which aired an interview with the President on the "Today" show: "I don't think you can win it. ... But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."

Now, who was it going around saying that the war on terror could be won with "decisive action"?

Oh, yes. It was the President of the United States, during the 2004 State of the Union Address.

Flip-flop what?

Now you see why I'm trying to avoid the news this week.

...

While we're on the subject: The second headline today on the official White House home page is "President George W. Bush's Record of Achievement: President George W. Bush's first term has been among the most consequential and successful in modern times."

Pardon the heck out of me, but should my tax dollars be spent to promote the re-election of incumbent office holders? There's not much about that headline or the qualifiers "most consequential and successful" that's value-neutral.

Of course, I'm also not sure that the official White House home page should have a photo every day of the President's dog, Barney, but it does.

At least Barney doesn't talk down to the audience. Oh, he may whiz on a few trees now and then, but don't we all?

...

Dave Copeland is trying to drum up traffic and interest in his new project, Freelance Daily, a spot for tips and leads about freelance writing.

Nice try, Copeland, but Tube City Almanac doesn't dish out links quite so easily! Ha ha!

...

Also via Copeland: Do you have your Halloween costume yet? How about sending you child out dressed as a pimp or a prostitute? (Maybe the Prez has something after all when he talks about promoting "family values.")

The one I found truly amusing was the costume described as "nutty tourist." It apparently consists of a Hawaiian shirt, baggy shorts, straw hat, and a plastic lei.

No offense, but if you can't scrounge those items up without paying $31.99 for a Halloween costume, you shouldn't be allowed to operate a toaster without supervision, much less a computer.

...

Fallowfield Township supervisors have voted 2-to-1 against continuing negotiations with Charleroi and other communities about a Mon Valley regional police department, reports Scott Beveridge in Friday's Observer-Reporter. (The O-R's links expire quickly, so you'll have to search for the story if you want to read it yourself.)

...

Thursday's edition of The Valley Mirror had a story about the history of Chiodo's Bar in Homestead, and its predecessors. The building, according to Linda and John Asmonga, dates to 1895, and the original owner was Frederick Trautman, who operated a bar and hotel there. Trautman's Hotel had a reputation as one of the best on Eighth Avenue (there were 45 hotels in Homestead in 1906, the article says.)

During Prohibition, the building operated as a speak-easy, the Asmongas write. With 57 years of service, Chiodo's Tavern is the longest operating business in the building ... and it looks as if it will be the last.

(The Mirror doesn't put stories online; you'll have to go get a "DTE" --- "dead tree edition" --- in one of the Woodland Hills or Steel Valley communities to see for yourself.)

Posted at 12:00 am by jt3y
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