Category: default || By jt3y

Our Fair City (or as we like to call it, "Paris on the Mon") continues to be the center of a media circus, as national reporters hash and rehash the same facts about the Tanya Kach case.

(Warning: If Geraldo Rivera shows up at the Eat'n Park on Lysle Boulevard, watch him carefully. I hear he's a lousy tipper, and he never takes a clean plate when he goes back to the salad bar.)

No new details have emerged, though everyone seems to have had the same reaction to a magistrate's decision to set bond for the man accused of holding her hostage at a phenomenally low 10 percent of $2,000.

And that reaction can be summed up by the legal term, qualis coeunt, or "what the f---?"

That's right. If the suspect had scraped up $200, he could have been free to go to Olympia Shopping Center and say goodbye to the Giant Eagle. District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. convinced the court to hold him for a couple more days until a new bond hearing could be set.

According to the Post-Gazette, the magistrate, District Judge Tom Miller of White Oak, defended the bond, "saying the suspect has ties to the community, a job, a home, no prior criminal record and other indications of stability."

Yes, the suspect certainly had a stable address and home life for the past 10 years. After all, the police are accusing him of holding someone against their will at the same location for most of a decade.

(Note to self: Don't get any speeding tickets while driving through White Oak, because I think I've just lost my case.)

I take it back --- there were some new details, notably the reports that a hairdresser is wanted for questioning. Police believe she may have altered the victim's appearance in an attempt to conceal her identity.

You know, if giving girls bad haircuts is a crime, then most of the beauticians in the Mon Valley should be under arrest. Those convicted of committing "mall hair" should be sentenced to life without parole.

Oh, and what are those national writers scribbling about Our Fair City? Well, we made the front page of the New York Daily News: "The decade-long disappearance of a woman who resurfaced this week after running away as a 14-year-old has baffled cops and neighbors in her gritty western Pennsylvania town. ... Some residents in the steel-mill town are anxious to learn more."

"Steel-mill town"? Yeah, we wish. The economy would be better.

For 20 years, image consultants, branding experts, chamber of commerce nattering nabobs and assorted other yobbos have been spending money (a lot of it from the taxpayers) to change perceptions of the Pittsburgh region.

Nice use of public funds. Real effective. They might as well have taken the money out in cash and buried it, in hopes a dollar-bill tree might sprout.

Why, just once, can't we make the national news for something good?

• "Fountain of Youth Discovered in Grandview; Elderly Woman Was Using It As Bird Bath."



• "Report: Harrison Village Built Over Gold Mine, Residents To Divvy Up Proceeds."



• "McKeesport Man Wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Converting Stupid Pittsburgh Image Rebranding Efforts Into Fuel; Studies Are 'Rich in Manure,' He Says."

What do we get instead? Funeral directors who keep fetal remains in their garages (yes, that's in the news again this week) instead of cremating them properly, and ding-a-lings who microwave, well, ding-a-lings at GetGo. And now, school security guards accused of taking students hostage.

If nothing else, maybe we'll get a nice Lifetime Movie Event out of this. Maybe they'll film it in town, and some local people will get work.

Our luck, they'll make the damned thing in Canada.