Category: default || By jt3y

Copeland has a provocative take on the Washington Post's profile of Teresa Heinz Kerry:

Please don't mistake this as a partisan post. ... This is, frankly, more of an indictment of the Washington Post, which in at least three articles over the past 12 months has bought fully into the "new" Pittsburgh myth. The laziness of reporters at one of the country's top newspapers, their inability to scratch beneath the surface and the stack of brochures presented by the Chamber of Commerce upon their arrival, and their inability to find any contrarian sources is appalling.

I happen to be a big Post fan --- I buy it almost every Sunday --- but I agree.

It's always interesting to see the way media outlets report on stories of which you have personal knowledge, and I'm astonished at how often the national media and TV news get it wrong. They do too little preparation and too little background research; they dive into stories with preconceived conclusions and work backward to the questions.

To some extent, I blame editors who assign stories based on their own biases, and then order reporters to go out and confirm their biases. Reporters share the blame for not standing up to their bosses and saying "no" --- but then again, good reporting jobs aren't easy to get, and we all need to eat.

In any event, is it any wonder that people don't trust the media?

Take some of the other stories about Teresa Heinz Kerry, particularly in light of her flippantly dismissing questions from the Tribune-Review's editorial page editor, Colin McNickle, with a brusque "shove it." Here's USA Today, weighing in with a lengthy profile (especially by USA Hooray standards):

After Heinz's death, his widow declined Republican offers to run for her husband's Senate seat. Instead, she devoted most of her energy to philanthropy, using the family foundations to support several environmental and educational programs. In western Pennsylvania, it's often said that she is known as "Saint Teresa."

Who in the name of Adlai Blessed Stevenson has been calling Teresa Heinz Kerry "Saint Teresa," besides Mayor Smurphy? I searched three computer databases for all of the stories about Teresa Heinz Kerry that have run in the past five years, and the only person I can find calling her "Saint Teresa" is Hizzoner da Mahr of Picksburg, who used the phrase in a 2002 Washington Post profile. His quote was picked up by several subsequent profiles, and reused without attribution.

(By the way: Having interviewed the Mahr on a few occasions, and spoken to him informally on other occasions, I have a strong feeling he called her "Saint Teresa" in jest, not literally.)

But to USA Hooray, which no doubt searched the same databases that I did, that one reference was enough to conclude that in "Western Pennsylvania" she's "often" referred to as "Saint Teresa." It says here in Tube City Almanac that's bull.

None of this is to belittle the Heinz family's contributions, or Teresa Heinz Kerry's guidance of those foundations over the past few years --- it's just to say that no one is actually calling her "Saint Teresa." It's fiction.

Besides, I can't imagine she wants to be viewed as a living saint, either. Who needs the pressure? All the posing for prayer cards and bumping your halo on door frames ... to heck with it! Personally, I much prefer mortals --- even those who tell journalists to "shove it."

Oh, and I've finally seen the video of the "shove it" incident, and read the transcript of Teresa Heinz Kerry's remarks beforehand. She clearly used the term "un-American," and then denied it a few minutes later when McNickle (politely) pressed her for an explanation.

Apparently the Clinton years taught these folks nothing; they cast the bullets and then get mad when people shoot them back at them.

Elsewhere, municipal mergers have been the topic of much conversation in Western Pennsylvania. Not much action, but a lot of conversation.

Over near Johnstown, two boroughs merged into a new municipality called Northern Cambria five years ago, and some people are still crying and moaning, according to the Tribune-Democrat:

(To) municipalities considering consolidation, Northern Cambria's problems leave them befuddled over what a merger would mean to them. "The Northern Cambria experience set back consolidation efforts by 20 years," said Bruce Brunett, who opposes the proposed merger of Portage township and borough.

"We look at discontent in Northern Cambria and say, 'Hey, we don't want something like this,' " he added in a telephone interview from his Ebensburg business.

But county and state officials said the Northern Cambria consolidation was for the best. "There is a mindset of parochialism around here," said Ron Budash, executive director of the Cambria County Industrial Authority. "The problem in Northern Cambria is that they're still playing the Spangler-Barnesboro baseball games every weekend."

According to the T-D, the main critic of the Northern Cambria merger is upset because the county promised to build a recreation center there --- it never happened --- and closed a branch library. Neither of those problems were the fault of the merger, so why doesn't he blame the county?

Other people in one of the former boroughs are ticked off because they have to pay for new water lines for their old rivals --- which again gets back to that old governmental principle of ubi est mea: "Where's mine?"

One borough worker summed it up best for the T-D (anonymously, of course): "The outspoken people now are the ones who are totally bitter because they lost their plum of a small piece of power, like a seat on a government body. ... They are going to Johnstown and Portage meetings and stirring the waters against consolidation because they are bitter."

Ain't human nature grand?