Category: default || By jt3y

I'm working on a couple of rally cries. Anyone want to help?

"Say it loud! I'm a yinzer and I'm proud!"

"Let your yinz flag fly free, jagoffs!"

"We're here! We're yinzers! Get used to it n'at!"

"If it says yinzer yinzer yinzer on the label label label, you will like it like it like it on the table table table!"

(That last one needs work.)

At the risk of unleashing an avalanche of angry email and comments (given the size of the Almanac's audience, it would be more like a "shovelful"), I'm going to stand up and embrace the "yinzer" label.

The world of online correspondence and essaying ("blogging," a word I despise, sounds like something you do after drinking 12 bottles of Stoney's) is insular enough as it is, so I don't like to write too much about things that are happening at other people's websites.

But Professor Mike Madison, proprietor of Pittsblog, got shellacked last week after he used the word "yinzer" in a headline about the Steelers. ('Scuse me ... the Stillers.)

Instantly, the great vengeance and furious anger of the Stiller Nation swooped down and smote (smited? smat?) Madison:

Mike, I guess I shouldn't expect you to know this, but many Pittsburghers consider "yinzer" to be a classist, offensive word. It's a pejorative word that makes "jagoff" seem tame in comparison.

I'd equate Yinzer with Hick, just with different colloquial attributes. Neither's nice, so I prefer 'Burgher.

(Almanac aside: "Burgher"? Oh, spare me. That's as dumb as the idiotic "It's a 'Burgh Thing" ad campaign done by Iron City Beer a few years ago. Perhaps you've heard their new campaign: "Not paying your sewerage bill? It's a 'Burgh Thing.")

I once met someone who was from Mt. Lebo, who upon hearing where I was from, said, "Oh you really are a yinzer". For what it's worth, I didn't take it as a compliment.

How does it make you feel that your most commented on post is regarding a regional term for rednecks?

For what it's worth, I've never heard anyone use the term "yinzer" in a complementary way.

I would like to point out how inflammatory it is to people from Pittsburgh to call them Yinzers. I feel as if this is similar to in communities of Compton or Bed-Stuy where if you drop the N word and are not one you get shot -- the same should be said in Pittsburgh with the Y word.

On that last one, now, really, please. You're being sarcastic, right? If not, let's try a little experiment. Let's take a trip to a bar in Our Fair City or Duquesne or Munhall some night and talk to the people inside. I'll call someone a "yinzer" and you call someone an "N-word."

But first, let me know where you'd like your remains sent.

Do you ever get the impression that Picksbergers are just a teensy, weensy, itsy-witsy bit too concerned with their image? Is there a major metropolitan city more obsessed with its marketing perception than the Picksberg area (some of us consider it "Greater McKeesport")?

Evidence? Some columnist from Denver shot off his typewriter about Picksberg, and people didn't react to the obvious fabrications and errors --- they got incensed that he didn't like their town. Boo-hoo! They sent him insults and death threats.

An economic development guy from Detroit (economic development in Detroit ... ha! ha!) said the Motor City is "a lot closer to the lattes and laptops of Seattle than to the Rust Belt of Pittsburgh" --- and was forced by angry Steelers fans to apologize.

(By the way, I'm a regular reader of two fine online journals by Detroit-area residents --- one by the anonymous writer known only as "Detroitblog" and the other by former newspaper columnist Nancy Nall. If what they say is true --- and I suspect it is --- than Detroit is "close to the lattes and laptops of Seattle" like the Versailles Borough Building is close to the Palace of Versailles.)

And then there's the yinzer tempest in an web-pot.

...

Picksbergers, get a life. Why do you care what someone who's never been to this area thinks of it?

Businesses looking to relocate somewhere are not turned off of this region by the lack of an effective image campaign, or by its steel-making heritage.

Oh, they may be turned off by our 19th century transportation system, our patchwork quilt of competing municipalities and economic development agencies, and our byzantine tax code, but the fact that some schmuck from Denver, Detroit or Dubuque slags off Pittsburgh isn't the deciding factor as to whether an entrepreneur decides to locate a business here. (If it is, the entrepreneur isn't much of one.)

And you know what? All of you people upset because the guy from Denver called Pittsburgh "butt-ugly"?

Well, take a look at some of the litter tossed out of car windows by Pittsburghers --- not by residents of Denver --- along the major highways leading into the city. I have never seen so much litter anywhere else but Western Pennsylvania, with the possible exception of along the New Jersey Turnpike leading into New York City --- and that is not a flattering comparison.

Take a look at the weeds and dirt that have accumulated along some of our local bridge ramps and overpasses (the mess under the Whitaker side of the Rankin Bridge, for instance, is appalling).

Or take a look at the abandoned houses and buildings that dot the neighborhoods of the Mon-Yough area.

You know what I call those things? Butt-ugly. Instead of writing nasty letters to newspaper columnists, how about a few (not nasty) letters to your elected representatives?

Instead of calling Fred Honsberger to vent on the radio, how about calling the Allegheny County Department of Public Works or local PennDOT district office?

And instead of going to Steelers rallies, how about attending your next borough council or township commissioners' meeting? (Don't know when or where it is? Email me, and I'll find out for you. 'Cause that's the kind of public-service minded guy your Almanac editor is.)

Personally, I wonder how many people are offered a job around here, fly into town, and have to stare at piles of trash along the Parkway East, or have to drive past boarded-up, burned out buildings on Eighth Avenue in Homestead, and think that's Pittsburgh, and go home thinking, "There is no way in hell I am moving here."

In other words: You want to improve Pittsburgh's image? Then improve Pittsburgh. No amount of chamber-of-commerce puffery is going to pick up the empty pop cans and coffee cups along Lysle Boulevard.

...

As for the "yinzer" label, I first heard that 15 years ago in college, used as a playful insult by people from Noo Yawk and Noo Joisey. I just helpfully pointed out that if anyone knows about talking funny, it's people from Noo Yawk and Noo Joisey.

Geez, people, develop a thicker skin. Do people from Noo Yawk get enraged when outsiders don't like Noo Yawk? Gedoutahere. Fuggedaboutit.

As a yinzer, I don't mind being called a "yinzer." Heck, as a person of Slavic descent, I don't even mind being called a "hunky."

So, I refuse to get agitated about "yinzer." As a matter of fact, I take it as a matter of pride that Pittsburgh has a unique regional dialect. Few metro areas can claim that --- what's the regional dialect of Columbus, Ohio, for instance? Or Indianapolis? Or Seattle? You've got to be playing in the big leagues, like Noo Yawk, Chicago, Philly and Detroit, to claim your own regional accent.

By the way, if the experience of comedians like Jim Krenn and Buzz Nutley is accurate, then most Pittsburghers fully embrace their yinzerdom. Writes Scott Mervis in the Post-Gazette, nothing makes Pittsburghers laugh harder than jokes about Pittsburgh: "'You can never go wrong with jokes about the accent,' says local comic Auggie Cook. 'Just look at how well Jimmy Krenn has done with [his character] Stanley P. Kachowski.'"

Besides, there are many worse things to be called than "yinzer." "Clevelander," for instance. (Rimshot.)

...

P.S. By the way, I mentioned that columnist from Denver. It turns out that the Almanac has helped wrangle a sort-of apology from the Rocky Mountain News, according to Westword, an alternative weekly in the mile-high city:

There are so many things wrong with "Shot-and-Beer Pittsburgh Froths at Mouth," a January 18 effort by Rocky Mountain News columnist Bill Johnson, that counting them all would require a calculator with the power of a nuclear reactor -- but one stands out above the rest. Johnson described driving past a dude wearing a dress and holding a sign reading "I BET AGAINST THE STEELERS," but it turns out that this scene, which starred Pittsburgh-area resident Mike Gerrity, took place before Johnson was even in town. He actually saw it on a television news broadcast, as the Rocky acknowledged in a February 3 correction. ...

Several of Johnson's online detractors considered this part of his narrative to be a straightforward fabrication, and it's tough to dispute their logic.

Johnson doesn't bother to try, at least not in this venue. He sent Westword an e-mail stating that he had "nothing to say" beyond comments already provided by Rocky editor/publisher/president John Temple. For his part, Temple believes that the correction was an "appropriate" way to address Johnson's actions, which he sees as "sloppy" rather than devious. "I take it very seriously," he said, "and Bill does, too."

And nobody takes it as seriously as us yinzers! Today we redd up Picksberg, tomorrow, we redd up journalism! Because let's face it: It needs cleaned-up.