Category: default || By jt3y

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.