It is about time for Pittsburgh City Paper to take its "Rant" feature out behind the office and put a bullet through its head. When the rest of the columns in the tabloid ask, "Whatever happened to 'Rant'?" they can be told that they've been sent off to the farm to run and play with the other newspaper features that have outlived their usefulness, like columns on contract bridge and "Garfield."
Exhibit A, may it please the court, is this week's "Rant" by Melissa Meinzer. I have no problem per se with Meinzer's opinions, which concern her failure to keep up with current TV trends. (I know that it's in color now, Missy, if that helps, but I otherwise remain pretty clueless myself.)
The problem is that Meinzer is a staff writer for City Paper.
My understanding of the "Rant" is that it was supposed to represent a platform for the voiceless to complain about whatever bothered them --- a sort of screechy, obnoxious vox populi, if you will. Or for that matter, if you won't.
But given that Meinzer is a professional journalist who presumably has a platform every time she needs it, she hardly needs to take over the forum set aside for the simple farmers, people of the land, and common clay ("you know, morons") who supposedly need a "Rant" space to vent their spleens.
It would be like Michael Savage going to Market Square in downtown Picksberg, pushing aside the drunken bums, and beginning to shout his own gibberish. Someone would have to say, "Mike, bubbelah, let the poor unfortunates have this little piece of public space so they can talk about their paranoid delusions. If you want to voice your paranoid delusions, do what you always do, and use your syndicated radio program."
Or take my friend and estimable former colleague Jonathan Potts, who also wrote a "Rant" for City Paper not long ago. It seems to me that his status as one of the leading professional free-lance journalists in the region (hi, Jonathan!) should have disqualified him from participating in amateur competition, but perhaps there was a rule change that I'm unaware of. I'm emailing the International Olympic Committee to ask for their advice. (I helpfully scanned a photo of a $100 bill and attached it to the email, since that's what apparently motivates the IOC.)
What Jonathan and Melissa's appearance in the "Rant" tells me is that the quality of "Rant" submissions has either gotten so poor, or the quantity has become so scant, or both, that City Paper needs hired guns and ringers to pick up the slack. If that's the case, then the "Rant" needs to get it right between the eyes.
Frankly, I find it hard to believe that Western Pennsylvanians have finally vented all of the spleen they had to vent, and are now completely happy and content. There are plenty of things to be angry about, like the possibility that Big Ben might not be able to play this weekend. What would late summer be without a Steelers quarterback controversy?
And there are other things to stay angry about. For instance, it's been more than a week since I mentioned that several of your Mon-Yough area legislators, like state Reps. Ken Ruffing, D-West Mifflin, and Paul Costa, D-Wilkins Township, voted themselves a hefty pay raise this summer, along with state Sens. Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills, and Joe Markosek, D-Monroeville. (Is it too soon to mention that again? Nah, I don't think so!)
More likely, I suspect, is that loudmouth malcontents no longer need to write to the newspaper if they want to rail on against problems both real and imagined. Instead, they launch their own Web sites to talk endlessly about subjects no one cares about. Like I did, for example.
So, City Paper, do the right thing for all concerned. Put the "Rant" out of its, and our, misery. Surely that space could be put to a more valuable public use.
More strip-club ads, for instance.
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The thought just occurred to me: If I had submitted this Almanac to City Paper, instead of publishing it here, I could have had it printed as a "Rant" and won a gift certificate. Curses!
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Speaking of weekly newspaper rants (that's called a "transition phrase," you budding "Rant" writers might want to take note), I never fail to miss The Valley Mirror, the weekly serving Steel Valley and Woodland Hills school districts. It's chock-full of good local newsy tidbits, nostalgia, and photos of just-plain-folks.
My favorite part has to be Earle Wittpenn's columns, called "Earle's Pearls." I have a lot of respect for Mr. Wittpenn, former editor of the Homestead Messenger and founder of the Mirror, which he built up from literally nothing.
But you look at the smiling cartoon man who serves as the column heading, and the cheery, "That's Earle now!" that signs off each piece, and then you read the content in between, and you find just the teensiest contradiction in tone. The content of the typical "Earle's Pearls" column is as sunshiny and light-hearted as a rabid pit bull with an impacted wisdom tooth.
I couldn't wait to see what Wittpenn wrote about the disaster in New Orleans, and he didn't disappoint me at all, hitting all of the required Republican talking points. I would say he represents the opposing viewpoint to my Tuesday Almanac, but that's not quite enough. I tend to be left-of-center, but I'm also a tight-money, fiscally-conservative pro-lifer; while Earle Wittpenn tends to make Louis XIV look like a panty-waist bleeding-heart liberal. A sample of this week's "Earle's Pearls" (sadly, not online):
"Decades of socialist government in New Orleans has sapped all self reliance from the community, and made them dependent upon government for every little thing. ...
"The idea of banding together and helping one another was nowhere to be seen. It was utter chaos. So did Jesse Jackson, Nancy Pelosi, and other ilk among the left wingers stand up to be counted? Not on your life. They began finger pointing even before one person had been rescued. And the fingers pointed only to the President."
Of course Wittpenn cautions us that he's "not a Bush lover." Well, having read his columns weekly for going on 15 years now, I might have a little bit of a quibble, but he's entitled to his opinion, too.
And when he says that the levees in New Orleans failed because the "local levee board" didn't maintain them, I might point out that the levees didn't break --- the flood walls of the shipping canals broke, and those are federally-governed waterways. But I won't.
And when he writes that the President "did his job exactly as required," I might point to a few inconvenient facts recorded in places like here and there, but I won't do that, either. 'Cause everyone's entitled to his opinion.
He's got his platform, and I've got mine. And we don't even require gift certificates to go off on a rant --- we do it for no compensation at all.
That's Jason now!
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Local News You May Have Missed: Speaking of Homestead, Chiodo's Tavern is all but a memory now. As David Whipkey reports in the Daily News (and, come to think of it, as the Mirror reported last week), the demolition is just about complete, and construction of a new Walgreen's drug store will begin by the end of this month.
On another sad note, the co-founder and former owner of Ann's Confectionery, a longtime landmark on upper Fifth Avenue in Our Fair City passed away Tuesday. Jerry Vondas writes in the Tribune-Review that the store had one of the city's first TV sets, which drew crowds of local kids. The candy was probably healthier than the TV, now that I think of it. (Tube City hard hat tip: Jon Potts)
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To Do This Weekend: The Norwin Band-Aides host the annual Norwin Band Festival at 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the high school stadium, 251 McMahon Drive, North Huntingdon Township. The marching bands from McKeesport, East Allegheny, Elizabeth Forward, Serra, Woodland Hills and Penn-Trafford are scheduled to participate, along with those of other schools around the region. Admission is $9 or $5 for students. Call (724) 863-4864. ... McKeesport Little Theater, Coursin Street near Bailie Avenue, presents Neil Simon's "The Dinner Party," tonight and tomorrow at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15. Call (412) 673-1100 or visit www.mckeesportlittletheater.com.
I've decided I'm going to start publishing the Almanac on Tuesdays and Fridays, at least for the foreseeable future. I don't have time right now to keep updating it daily, but I want to retain some semblance of a regular schedule.
Yes, I know. Try to control your grief.
So, welcome to today's Almanac, in which ... I reprint letters from readers! Yes, having cut back to twice a week publication ... I'm using the opportunity to not write anything! What a work ethic!
Anyway, Alert Reader Dave writes:
Jason, thank you for publishing the Tube City Almanac. It is interesting that you have also taken a shot at President Bush. My goodness! Let's also blame the President for untrained potty babies. Friends in the flood plain of WPA tell me how little response they have received from local politicians from last year's tragic event. Someone said that you have not learned from 150 years of recorded local politics. New Orleans has been one of the most politically corrupt cities in the nation with a crime rate to match. Many of the evacuees say they will never return. Isn't that what the people in the Mon Valley say as they pack up to leave in huge numbers? How can anyone blame President Bush without blaming the local and state politicians in Louisiana?
Clinton made disaster declarations even before the hurricane hit. And oh yes, he did something else: He cancelled pleasing vacation plans so he could be at his desk when the hurricane hit. Last week, of course, Bush 43 still lounged in Crawford as Katrina bore down on the U.S. coast; on Day 2, he flew off to make a speech in San Diego even after New Orleans’ levees had breached. (The levees gave way on Monday; Bush flew to San Diego on Tuesday.) No, our cursory review doesn’t make us experts in federal reaction time. But we thought we saw a difference in the way these presidents acted.
All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament, "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence." In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.
A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.
The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months following September 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster, and economic uncertainty.
I wanted to let you know that, in iced tea as in so many things, Western Pennsylvania and Western New York are kissing cousins.
Where I grew up, around Buffalo, a number of dairies marketed iced tea in paper cartons and plastic jugs, along with a variety of colored bug juices. They were pretty common at picnics when I was a kid and later at teenage drinking events. But by the time I worked construction after college, they'd largely been replaced by the little glass bottles of iced tea and buckets of pop. Occasionally someone would pull out a carton of Charlap's or Wendt's iced tea from the front seat of the car, but ever more rarely.
Certainly it is not so ubiquitous as it continues to be around Western PA -- it's something I noticed as soon as I moved to Pittsburgh, and it continues to remind me how many things Buffalo and Pittsburgh have in common.
AUGUST 9, 1929, OPEN STORE TOMORROW: Everything is in readiness for the formal opening of the new Sears, Roebuck and Company retail store at 135 Fifth Avenue ... When the store's personnel was made up over 98 percent of local residents were selected to fill the various positions ... the location was chosen by the company because of its easy accessibility from all parts of the city.
MAY 12, 1930, MAKING WAY FOR NEW BUILDING IN FIFTH: Blair & Mack today began the work of razing the old building at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Tube Works Street, where the contracting firm will erect for the G.C. Murphy company a modern business house.
MAY 14, 1930, START WORK ON NEW STORE IN TEN DAYS: Construction of a new two-story building at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Blackberry Street will begin in about ten days, J.G. Esch of the Esch Construction company of Cleveland said. The new building will cost approximately $75,000 and is to be completed by September 1, Mr. Esch said. It will be occupied by the W.T. Grant company and the Kay company.
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