Category: Hardscrabble Mon Valley Watch, Politics, So-Called Radio Humor || By

When you work in radio (even when you have a mediocre career like mine) you never know what to expect when you pick up the phone.

Sometimes it's a listener with a request or a complaint. Other times it's someone more important.

Here's a case in point from my show on Sunday night. I have to give this caller credit: Even though Hillary Clinton is ahead of Barack Obama by double digits in Pennsylvania, this guy is not getting overconfident. He's out there, working the phones ....

Request line call: Sunday, March 16, 2008 (MP3, 1 MB)

. . .

Meanwhile, the international media continues to supply dependable and sturdy "gritty hardscrabble Pennsylvania" cliches in their stories about the April 22 primary ... and beyond!

Here's one from the U.K.'s Independent. I realize the British press is not renowned for its accuracy, but this story goes above and beyond that already low bar:

The reality is that Pennsylvania is much more rural and backwater than you'd think from the Big Smoke in the east. Its shoebox shape has terrain that's not unlike a carelessly thrown blanket, with ripples and wrinkles running its length. These relentless mountains and valleys have been both curse and promise to the state.

Great. So the writer has seen a topographic map. Maybe one of those plastic ones they use in elementary school classrooms.

Watch for deer, which have staged a real comeback, defying the best efforts of trigger-happy hunters in the territory where The Deer Hunter was set.

We're gritty, blood-thirsty, backwater savages. Got it.

At the west end of the state, the towns of Erie and Pittsburgh will muddle your understanding of Pennsylvania again --- they have much in common with the troubled east. So keep a clarity of vision and stick to the middle of the Keystone State, where enlightenment is always just around the bend.

I think I speak for all of Pennsylvania when I say: Huh?

Moving on ... this story from the Great Falls, Mont., Tribune isn't about politics --- it's about the new director of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. But it certainly worked in many of the talking points:

Taylor will arrive in Pittsburgh just as the city appears to have overcome its old reputation as a dirty place full of steel mills and pollution. The Places Rated Almanac named Pittsburgh the No. 1 Most Livable City in America two years in a row. It's traded its gritty steel mills for jobs in health care, education, robotics, technology and financial services, according to Allegheny County promotional materials.

It was a good thing that they finally stopped making steel in Oakland, but personally, I still consider the Carnegie a "hardscrabble" museum.

Back to politics, and a story from U.S. News & World Report, which proves that it's able to scrabble with the best of them:

Interestingly, SurveyUSA shows more difference in McCain's performance against the two Democrats; it has McCain leading Obama 47 to 42 percent while trailing Clinton 47 to 46 percent. This sounds plausible, with Obama seeming likely to be a weaker candidate in gritty west and northeast Pennsylvania than Clinton.

There's that word "gritty" again. Maybe I should have called this "the Gritty Mon Valley Watch." Some people would say that's redundant; to them I say, "Smile when you say that."

Finally, the unkindest cut of all. The Politico, a relatively new online magazine, compares us unfavorably ... to Ohio:

Poor Pennsylvania. As the national media focuses on the Keystone State, it has earned a new and less than admirable moniker: The other Ohio.

Of course, this description also mirrors the hope of Hillary Rodham Clinton for whom the hard-pressed, semi-depressed Buckeye State presented a political field of dreams. Moreover, to be sure, Pennsylvania’s Appalachian string of devastated former mining and mill towns constitutes its own private Ohio.

"The other Ohio." Some how, that doesn't make it as a license plate slogan.

. . .

And Now For Something Completely Different: Let's wrap up with this scene from my favorite TV show you've never heard of, Corner Gas. Any resemblance to tubecityonline.com or any other website is purely coincidental.



My stupid opinions used to be confined to the immediate vicinity. Now, like Hank Yarbo, I put 'em on the Internet so that the whole world can ignore them!