I have previously noted what I called the racism of The Philadelphia Inquirer, and have noted, many times, that unless a murder victim is someone already of note, or a cute little white girl,[1]When accessed in September 21, 2021, at 2:05 PM EDT, the search returned 4,548 results. the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news.
My point about the “cute little white girl” was in reference to Rian Thal, “a party promoter well-known in the city’s nightclub scene” and drug dealer, who was murdered on June 27, 2009. The city was captured by Miss Thal’s killing, and the local media were full of stories about it. The Inquirer and its sister publication, the Philadelphia Daily News, just loved splashing Miss Thal’s killing across their pages. After all, cute white girls sell newspapers!
But, as many times as I’ve used that, it was still twelve years ago, and since then, this year in fact, Inquirerpublisher Elizabeth Hughes stated that her goal was to make the newspaper and its associated website “an anti-racist news organization.” So, wouldn’t the obvious result of that to be not concentrating on cute white girls as the victims of crimes?
Gabby Petito.
A site search for “Gabby Petito” returned 16 articles, the latest at 2:10 PM EDT today, just ten minutes before I made the search. Miss Petito is yet another cute little white girl, one whose disappearance has attracted a lot of social media, and credentialed media, interest.
Sixteen articles, though, to be fair, most were written by other than Inquirer reporters.
A photo taken during a block party last year of Dunkin’ Donuts manager Christine Lugo.
What about Christine Lugo? Miss Lugo was a 40-year-old Hispanic woman, the manager of a Dunkin’ Donuts on Lehigh Avenue in the city’s Fairhill neighborhood. The senseless murder was actually well covered by the city’s media, including the Inquirer, but a site search for “Christine Lugo” at 2:30 PM yielded only four returns, and two of them weren’t about her at all.
A cute little white girl, with no connection to Philadelphia, had sixteen mentions, while Philadelphia’s own Miss Lugo resulted in two.
Boy, it’s a good thing that Miss Hughes was determined to make the Inquirer “an anti-racist news organization,” or Miss Petito would have a hundred mentions, and Miss Lugo still two.
So, while my previous links to the Inquirer’s coverage of Miss Thal, as evidence of the newspaper’s racism, remain, her death twelve years ago, which I remembered from reading the print edition that I used to pick up before work, can be characterized as old news. But the disappearance, and probable death, of Miss Petito is today’s news, and it remains as evidence of what I have said all along: when it comes to their priorities and integrity, cute little white girls are still much, much more important to the very #woke[2]From Wikipedia:
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading journolists[3]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.
I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid. than anyone else.
Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer held a ‘debate’ over the question, “Should Philly get a WNBA team?” Denice Frohman, a former professional, but not WNBA, player, and a “Philly-based award-winning poet, performer, and educator who has featured on national stages from The White House to The Apollo,” wrote in support of the idea.
With the WNBA celebrating its 25th season and playoffs on the horizon, I’m reminded why Philly needs our own team in the most progressive league in major sports.
That isn’t a great start; she is already telling you that her interest is primarily in ‘progressive’ politics more than sports. Miss Frohman’s Wikipedia biography, from which her picture has been taken, doesn’t mention her basketball career at all, but says this about her:
Denice Frohman is a poet, writer, performer and educator, whose work explores the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. Frohman uses her experience as a queer woman from a multi-cultural (Puerto Rican and Jewish) background in her writing. By addressing identity, her work encourages communities to challenge the dominant social constructs and oppressive narratives in place that are currently working against concepts of unity and equity. Her message is about claiming the power to be who you are. She was born and raised in New York City, and earned her master’s degree in education from Drexel University.
Miss Frohman is all about the politics, and any basketball she played is simply incidental. After seven paragraphs, including the one quoted above, she gets into this:
Beyond the metrics, when I think of what it would mean for Philly to have a WNBA team. I think about how players have championed social justice in a league comprised of nearly 70% Black women athletes, and how that would resonate in a city undeniably shaped by Black women’s leadership.
I think about the night Philly voters helped turn Pennsylvania blue in the last presidential election, coinciding with Atlanta Dream players’ successful campaign to elect Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock—the first Black senator in Georgia’s history—ousting former Dream owner and incumbent Kelly Loeffler. I think about WNBA player Angel McCoughtry spearheading the idea for players to wear social justice messages on their uniforms last year (an idea the NBA borrowed).
Philly needs no introduction to the national stage, but having a WNBA team can say something powerful about who we are and who we believe in. It can speak to the women and girls from Norris Square to Southwest about what is possible when you dream out loud.
Screen capture, Philadelphia Inquirer website sports section, September 21, 2021, 9:10 AM EDT.
I suppose that this is typical for the oh so #woke[1]From Wikipedia:
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue readingPhiladelphia Inquirer, the notion that basketball is primarily a political thing. I am reminded of Pavel (Pasha) Pavlovich Antipov’s, Strelnikov’s, statement in Dr Zhivago, “The personal life is dead in Russia. History has killed it.” Perhaps the editors ought to ask the question of who would actually attend WNBA games?
Miss Frohman wants a WNBA team in Philadelphia for political reasons, in her case, left-wing political reasons. I doubt that many people reading the sports section of the Inquirer, which is where I found it, are going to find those reasons good ones for putting a WNBA team in the City of Brotherly Love.
Kerith Gabriel, “a former Daily News sports writer and currently a digital editor at the Inquirer“, was assigned the task of writing the opposing view, and in his first paragraph, he apologized for being a man writing it:
I already knew writing as a cisgender man to say that a WNBA franchise won’t work may subject me to cancellation, or at least dismissal that I’m just some guy who doesn’t like women’s sports.
LOL! But, after his initial apology, Mr Gabriel does that most horrid, horrid! of things, he writes about the economics, the capitalist concerns of a Women’s National Basketball Association team.
Let’s start with the numbers. According to an online survey conducted by national statistics firm Statista, interest in the WNBA is around 28% for men and just 18% for women. Further segmented, only 9% of men surveyed and just 4% of women considered themselves avid fans.
The WNBA has always focused on appealing to a younger generation, attempting to capture the horde of young hoopers who could look at legendary basketball players like Sue Bird and Tamika Catchings as idols. It’s a smart strategy considering that the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) pipeline, in which young kids are trained for serious basketball (and other sports), is big business. Even in the Philadelphia area, there are well over 100+ AAU teams, many of them girls-only leagues.
But again, according to 2021 numbers from Statista, the WNBA is the ninth most popular sport among Gen Zers. In terms of live games? The WNBA ranked 13th in a survey of American favorite sports Americans enjoy watching live before the pandemic. That means more young adults would rather watch cars go around an endless circle for two hours (NASCAR, 26%), than watch a women’s professional basketball game.
Heaven forfend! Mr Gabriel isn’t talking about the politics of having a WNBA franchise, but on how such a team would do something really radical like support itself. He concluded with:
Until they do, Philly won’t be ready for them, no matter how much we like the game.
If you look at the viewer guides for ESPN and the NBA Network, you’ll see that, even in the summer, even in the off-season for the NBA, those sports networks would rather show reruns of old NBA and other men’s sports games than live WNBA games. Those network executives aren’t doing so because they hate women’s sports, but because they believe they will earn more advertising revenue from those choices.
Me being very politically incorrect, I’ll note the women’s sports the sports networks do show: NCAA volleyball, beach volleyball, gymnastics and ice skating. Why? Because those are the province of pretty white women, while women’s basketball, as Miss Frohman noted concerning the WNBA, is nearly 70% black. Even The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the rest of the city’s media, do the same thing, as I have frequently noted in mentioning that the Inquirer only cares about murder victims when they are cute little white girls like Rian Thal.
If the Inquirer editors are so concerned about women’s basketball, maybe they ought to increase their coverage of NCAA women’s basketball, in a city which boasts several collegiate basketball teams.
Commenting on Inquirer.com was long ago hijacked by a small group of trolls who traffic in racism, misogyny, and homophobia. This group comprises a tiny fraction of the Inquirer.com audience. But its impact is disproportionate and enduring.
The one place they do still allow comments? In the sports section! But for this “Pro/Con” opinion piece in the sports section, reader comments were not allowed, because the editors knew that this was far more of a political debate than a sports question. This isn’t journalism, but journolism,[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading the embedding of a political argument in the sports section. Of course, that means a lot of Inquirer readers will never see it, because a lot don’t bother with the sports section.
Me? I don’t care one way or the other whether the WNBA puts a franchise in Philly. I don’t live there, so the chances I would ever attend a WNBA game in that city are virtually nil. I don’t attend NBA games, either; the only one I ever attended was on October 8, 1971, when the Kentucky Colonels of the old American basketball Association lured — with money — the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played for them, to Louisville’s Freedom Hall for an exhibition game. I am far more likely to watch a college basketball game on television than a professional game. But the Inquirer’s ‘debate’ isn’t about basketball at all; it’s about liberal politics, and basketball was merely their platform.
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.
I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
I normally avoid photos that might be under copyright, but this one tells a tale that ought not to be avoided, and thus falls under ‘fair use’ standards. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:
SEPTA has a deficit of 105 bus operators, a lingering effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to delays on many of the agency’s bus routes. Alejandro A Alvarez, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge. Photographer
The transit agency is down 105 bus operators, officials said. Austerity measures during last year’s coronavirus shutdowns, including a four-month hiring freeze, have hampered SEPTA’s ability to keep up with attrition.
As a result, thousands of frustrated riders wait longer at bus stops.
And when operators scheduled for duty call in sick or have family emergencies, regular occurrences in a workforce of more than 2,600 people, managers in SEPTA’s nine bus garages have to scramble.
There’s more at the original, but the telling part of the photo is the sign on the front of the bus: “A mask or face covering is required on SEPTA”. You can click on the photo to enlarge it, and see the bus marquee more easily.
We have previously reported on mask mandates for certain jobs, including bus drivers, pushing people away from those jobs. People just don’t want to wear a diaper over their faces. But the only reference to that in the Inquirer article was this:
The transit agency is down 105 bus operators, officials said. Austerity measures during last year’s coronavirus shutdowns, including a four-month hiring free(Nat Lownes, of the Philly Transit Riders Union) said some of his friends who are bus operators tell him they’re worn out with the demands of the job, which include enforcing federal mask regulations and often dealing with irate riders. “It can be brutal,” he said.
The Inquirer article didn’t have a single word about bus drivers themselves not wanting to wear masks, and while some passengers don’t want to wear the silly things for a thirty-minute ride, the drivers are required to have them on for an eight hour, or longer, shift.
An actual journalist would have reported on that, but the editorial position of the Inquirer is to support mask and vaccine mandates, and the credentialed media just don’t like reporting on things with which they disagree.
I remember when columnists had a 750-word limit, but with the coming of the internet, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, who is so far to the left that he makes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez look, if not sane, at least less wacky, got in 1,345, in which he tells us that he has no flaming idea about his topic. Nevertheless, I’d have expected him to understand something about politics!
The self-centered, greedy West Virginia senator is a poster child for everything wrong with U.S. politics. So what is the Joe Manchin workaround?
by Will Bunch | Columnist | Thursday, September 16, 2021
As the summer of 2021 comes to an ignominious end this week, millions of Americans will remember these blazing hot months as a time of dashed hopes on ending our life-altering pandemic and growing alarm about the floods and fires fueled by climate change. But in Washington, D.C. — the place where solving these problems needs to start in the U.S. — both the hellish season and what it might mean for future generations will be recalled as “Almost Heaven,” the well-equipped houseboat owned by West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin where the nation’s leaders spent a moonshine-soaked summer lazily floating past the crises. . . . .
Will Bunch, from his Philadelphia Inquirer author photo.
So, who is Will Bunch? His first-person Inquirer biography states, “I’m the national columnist — with some strong opinions about what’s happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.” I’ll admit it: whenever I see #woke[1]From Wikipedia:
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading phrases like “social justice” and “income inequality”, I know I’m dealing with someone who has no flaming idea about real life. People are different, and different people means different outcomes for people. Sadly, the Inquirer staff are eaten up by wokeness.
Mr Bunch’s Twitter header photo shows him walking away from a dilapidated Appalachian (?) home, but it seems that he has little understanding of the people who live in Appalachia.
But with autumn closing in, Washington seems hopelessly adrift on Biden’s ambitious plans for working families and fighting climate change, and any forward progress will likely depend on what comes out of Manchin’s bandaged brain in the coming weeks. In a slew of TV appearances, the West Virginian has made it clear he will use his deciding vote in the 50-50 Senate to shrink Biden’s plan from $350 billion a year to only $100 billion to $150 billion — he’s failed to truly articulate why — and he’s also managed to downsize the ambitions of a do-or-die-for-democracy voting-rights bill, even as he insists (for now) he won’t end the filibuster to pass even that. Whatever happened on that houseboat, the brief chance to end American kleptocracy may be sinking.
Indeed, analyzing Manchin and his motives — both politically and psychologically — has become something of a cottage industry in the nation’s capital. I’ve already written about how Manchin’s pro-billionaire austerity politics are wildly out of step with the real-world needs of voters in poverty-plagued West Virginia, suffering from pothole-laced highways, climate-worsened floods, and opioid abuse. Instead, the senator and former governor sees promoting his personal brand as his path to winning elections and wielding power.
And here we have exactly what I would have expected from a big-city liberal, the self-assured knowledge that he knows what’s best for rural dwellers in a different state.
In the 2020 election, President Trump carried West Virginia, beating Joe Biden 545,382 (68.62%) to 235,984 (29.69%), Mr Trump’s second strongest state, percentagewise. In only one county, Monongalia, did President Trump get less than 50% of the vote, 49.45%, which still beat Mr Biden’s 48.21% there. Mr Trump got over 80% of the vote in nine separate counties.
This is the part Mr Bunch just doesn’t get: Senator Manchin, the only statewide elected Democrat in office, is doing what his constituents in the Mountain State want him to do. He is acting like the moderate Democrat he campaigned as being.
Mr Bunch has a long section, which I have not quoted, in which he tells us what a self-centered, greedy political hack Mr Manchin is, before telling us what he thinks is needed.
After 2022, the only way for the United States to get where it wants to go is not through Joe Manchin and his tired political hackery, but around him. West Virginia may be a very Trumped-up place right now, but voters here in Pennsylvania, as well as Ohio, Wisconsin, and other key states, will get a shot next fall to build a Senate majority that is actually controlled by Democrats and not the Chamber of Commerce. Metaphorically speaking, we need an infrastructure bill with a 10-lane superhighway of American progress, that bypasses West Virginia altogether.
It doesn’t seem to occur to Mr Bunch that perhaps, just perhaps, not all Americans agree with him as to where the United States “wants to go”. You’d think that he ought to have a clue, given that, while Mr Biden carried Pennsylvania by 81,660 votes, it was because he carried Philadelphia by 471,050; President Trump carried the rest of the Commonwealth by 390,445 votes. Perhaps, just perhaps, with 378 homicides in just 259 days of the year, for an average of 1.46 per day, on track for 532 for the year, Philly isn’t exactly the model of modern life that the rest of the country would see as great.
Ahhh, but, then again, perhaps he does realize that, given that he wants to “(bypass) West Virginia altogether.” He’d probably throw Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky in that same category as well.
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.
I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
And this morning we hear from a newspaper I frequently call The Philadelphia Enquirer:[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
After a year-plus of pandemic-disrupted learning, persistent bus woes have kept some students out of school completely and left parents and school staff scrambling yet again.
Most days, the yellow bus that’s supposed to take Denise Madre’s kids from their Germantown home to school in Roxborough doesn’t show up at all. A bus did come on one of the seven days school has been open so far — nearly four hours late.
That happened after Madre, who doesn’t drive, paid for an Uber to get Jonan and Braylee to Shawmont Elementary, and also after the time the children — both of whom have autism — were left waiting at school for hours because no bus ever came to take them home.
Philadelphia School District officials warned the community about worsening school bus driver shortages this summer, and shifted start times over community and school objections to streamline operations. The district is even offering families $1,500 annually to drive their children to school instead of putting them on a yellow bus.
But the transportation reality has been much worse than anyone had braced for, affecting schools across the city, leaving some students stranded and others on buses for hours or dropped off in the wrong neighborhoods. After a year-plus of pandemic-disrupted learning, persistent bus woes have kept some students out of school completely and left parents and school staff scrambling yet again.
It’s a fairly long story, primarily filled with the horror stories of children not picked up, or dropped off at the wrong location, including one girl who is legally blind. But, far down, is this paragraph:
(Danielle) Floyd, the transportation general manager, said the district is working on offering bonuses and paying for trainers for its own drivers, which represent about 20% of its driver workforce; vendors are also generally offering perks and upping salaries. But in this employee market, it’s been especially difficult to find workers who can get their CDL licenses, pass physicals and drug tests, and make it through safety training.
Having been in the ready-mixed concrete industry for thirty years, yeah, I can testify as to the difficulty of finding drivers who can pass the drug test. But Kristen Graham, the article author, never mentioned the elephant in the room, that some potential drivers simply won’t take the jobs because they don’t want to wear face masks.
In Pennsylvania, some drivers aren’t coming back to work because they don’t want to mask and others are concerned about the health ramifications of being around large numbers of people, said Ryan Dellinger, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Bus Association.
How, I have to ask, did the article author miss that part? Or, more probably, why did she choose not to include it?
The answer is simple: the Inquirer’s editorial position is that masking is a universal good, and noting that the mask mandate has the ‘unintended consequence’ of keeping those people who refuse to wear the infernal things away from such jobs undercuts the newspaper’s editorial position.
The impulse to downplay inconvenient outcomes of one’s own position has been in full force throughout Covid, and with the school reopening + Delta, it’s gotten even more extreme. I keep hearing, for example, that wearing a mask is no big deal and anyone who complains about masking is probably a Covid denialist reactionary. This is pretty weird, because it seems to me to be obviously, demonstrably true that wearing a mask is an inconvenience and a personal and cultural sacrifice — it means you can’t fully read other peoples’ facial expressions, it impedes basic human interactions, it makes you break out, it irritates your face, it fogs up your glasses,[3]In the only place I will wear a mask, at Mass, because our Bishop has mandated it, I have to pull it down to read, because it fogs up my reading glasses in seconds. Being partially deaf, I read the … Continue reading and I find that when I wear one I start to feel a little disoriented after a while, especially inside under bright lights. Wearing a mask sucks! But it sucks far less than giving someone else Covid, or getting Covid yourself. And so of course, in scenarios where people are not all fully vaccinated and infection rates are high, we should continue wear masks inside. I wear masks inside and I think indoor mask-wearing for essential activities should be mandatory (I also think vaccines should be mandatory for inessential activities, like dining out).
I really wanted to get back to my spin class. And for a couple of months, I did just that. Exercising at home for the past year was fine, but nothing beats a 45-minute spin class for leaving one red-faced and sopping wet with sweat. But it’s that “sopping wet” part that became a problem this week when the gym sent out a memo bringing back their indoor mask mandate. This isn’t a 5-minute jaunt in a grocery store with a mask. Exercising with a sweat-soaked mask is like being waterboarded. So I canceled my class and sent a polite but angry note to my gym.
If these leftists can combitch about wearing masks, why would it be a surprise to anyone that some people would choose not to accept what Mrs McCormick called “an inconvenience and a personal and cultural sacrifice,” and opt not to take a job that required wearing one? If you have a Class B CDL, what you need to drive a school bus, you could also drive a dump truck or a concrete mixer or a box truck, and not have to wear one of the infernal things. The left simply don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, that some people take their personal decisions based on things that the left think unimportant.
The credentialed media don’t outright lie as much as they simply don’t report information that would hurt their editorial slant.
RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
In the only place I will wear a mask, at Mass, because our Bishop has mandated it, I have to pull it down to read, because it fogs up my reading glasses in seconds. Being partially deaf, I read the readings from the missal before Mass, to help me understand what the lector is going to read, and to get a heads up on the responsorial psalm, because I don’t always hear it well enough to catch the individual words.
I have frequently referred to ‘journolists’ as opposed to journalists at The Philadelphia Inquirer. The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias. I will admit to also using it to refer to reporters who just don’t look at all of the facts.
The unofficial end of summer didn’t slow a record year of gun violence. Between Friday and Sunday, at least 13 people were shot in Philadelphia, two fatally.
Forty minutes feels like an eternity when lives are on the line.
That’s how long it took Brandon Collins to get home from work Friday evening after his sister called frantically: Someone had sprayed bullets right outside their home on the 1500 block of South Cleveland Street in Point Breeze. And Collins was terrified for his 58-year-old mother’s safety.
She was physically unharmed, but Collins was left shaken. “Things happen in a split second,” he said.
Police said two men had been shot and were hospitalized in the incident — a 33-year-old hit in the arm and hip, and a 24-year-old struck in the foot. An SUV that belonged to an uninvolved resident was riddled with bullet holes. No one was arrested, and police haven’t determined a motive.
That was how Labor Day weekend began in Philadelphia as the city’s unrelenting gun violence crisis continued. Even as the Made in America festival packed Center City and some residents bolted for the Shore, others across the city were left fearful for their family’s safety, or their own.
You have to get down to the ninth paragraph, past two large photographs and two ads, before you come to this part:
More than 1,500 people have been struck by bullets in Philadelphia this year, and the city has recorded 358 homicides, most by guns. Police officials said during a news conference last week that 179 people were shot over four weeks in August, a 23% decrease compared to the previous four weeks.
But that decrease was from a historically high level of gun violence in July. And the 186 shooting victims in all of August was more than in any month between 2015 and May 2020, when shootings spiked dramatically.
Journalists know that the further down in a story you get, the fewer readers who began it are still reading.
The Philadelphia Police Department reported that, as of 11:59 PM EDT on Labor Day, September 6th, there had been 363 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year. With 249 days of the year having elapsed, that gives Philly an average of 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.
As we reported on July 9th, the city then had a rate of 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. Thus, even with the really, really bad part of the year in teh statistics, the ‘projected’ homicide total for 2021 has dropped by thirty souls.
But there’s more. Over the last 1½ months, the murder rate has really dropped. There had been 314 homicides as of July 22nd, the 203rd day of the year. Since that time, 46 days ago, there have been ‘just’ 49 murders, a rate of 1.0652 per day. With 116 days left in 2021, if that rate were maintained, there would be ‘just’ 124 more killings, for a total of 487 for the year, 12 fewer than last year, and 13 fewer than 1990’s all time record of 500. If that number was the final one, it would be 75 fewer homicides than the math had projected just two months ago.
Which raises the obvious question: why has the homicide rate decreased? After all, mid-July through Labor Day is part of the long, hot summer, when killings seem to be at their peak. Did a really bad gang or two just get completely wiped out? Did a few gangs come up with a truce? Whatever happened, this ought to be a question real journalists would attempt to investigate.
In the city that booed Santa Claus, and which piled heaps of scorn and abuse on Carson Wentz and Ben Simmons after every bad game, Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer Marcus Hayes wants to blame 76ers point guard Ben Simmons and (former) Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz for wanting to leave.
They should have spent the summer on their knees, begging forgiveness, promising to improve. Instead, they sabotaged their trade value and put your teams in peril. They completely warrant your wrath.
Sometimes that anger is misplaced, as Jayson Werth can attest. But, in this moment, every ounce of Philadelphia’s fury directed at Ben Simmons and Carson Wentz is justified.
They should have returned to the Eagles and Sixers, rehabilitated their images, and enhanced their trade values. They could not, and cannot. They fear competition. They abhor accountability. They see themselves as victims. So, instead, they sabotaged their trade values, which crippled the Eagles, and which probably will cripple the Sixers. That, on its own, should infuriate fans, even if the pair’s dismissiveness didn’t.
Wentz and Simmons should have spent the summer of 2021 down on their knees, begging for your forgiveness, working on their flaws, willing to accept whatever role their bosses decided would best help the team. They should have apologized to their teammates for their shortcomings and for the distractions they caused. They should have pledged to, in the future, actually earn the millions of dollars that you lavish upon them — paying to watch them on TV, online, or in person; parking your cars and buying beers at the stadiums; purchasing their jerseys and shoes online.
There’s more at the original.
Mr Simmons grew up in Australia, where people aren’t treated the way Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, treat sports stars. Mr Wentz grew up in North Dakota, where people aren’t, you know, [insert plural slang term for the rectum here], yet somehow, some way, people there expect them to have Philly thick skins.
Of course, there are a lot of Philadelphians who don’t have such thick skins, which is why people keep getting shot in the City of Brotherly Love, but I digress.
Mr Simmons is an incredible athlete, but he has one glaring weakness as a basketball player: he just can’t shoot. So, with all that he can do, Philadelphia fans, and sports writers, had to jump on his biggest weakness, and forgot about all of the good things he can do. Philly fans, and sports writers, wanted him to play beyond his skill set, and trashed him when he couldn’t. Even before the playoffs, there were plenty of articles in the Inquirer about him taking very few three point shots. (I remember one in which it was noted that, at the time, Shaquille O’Neal had more career three-pointers than Mr Simmons.)
The pressure got to Mr Simmons, and he had a terrible series against the Atlanta Hawks, shooting just 33.3% . . . from the free throw line! Then, with just 3:30 left in the game, and the 76ers trailing by two, Mr Simmons, who is 6’11” tall, passed up a wide-open dunk over 6’1″ Trae Young. The game, as the announcer said, had gotten in his head.
Mr Simmons was rightly criticized, but Philly fans, and sports writers, went way, way overboard.
Mr Wentz? He was well appreciated, until last season, when he played behind a destroyed-by-injuries offensive line, had no rushing game, and second-quality receivers. His top target, Zach Ertz, was out for five games, yet Philly fans, and sports writers, expected Mr Wentz to be Superman anyway. I wasn’t a particularly good football player, but even in high school I knew that there were eleven guys on the field, all of whom are necessary to make plays, and it doesn’t matter how good your quarterback is, if his receivers aren’t getting open, and his line isn’t keeping the defensive rush off of him, he’s not going to have a good game. Even Tom Brady can’t make great plays when he’s underneath a 260 lb blitzing linebacker.
The article was all about Messrs Simmons and Wentz having no loyalty to their Philadelphia teams, but, in reality, Philly fans, and sports writers, had no loyalty to those players. Mr Hayes is like the abusive husband who gets all urinated off and blames his wife for filing for divorce.
When I think of the homicide rate in Philly, which actually has been coming down of late, it seems to me like the Inquirer sports writers, writ large. People getting pissed off, for reasons that really aren’t that important, and overreacting in the extreme. Mr Hayes, of course, is being paid to overreact, even by the very #woke[1]From Wikipedia:
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue readingInquirer, but, in his own small way, he is contributing to the attitude which so frequently spills out onto the city’s mean streets. Through the end of August, 357 people had been murdered in Philly, which means that there were more murders there than any entire year from 2008 through 2019.
Is that fair to Mr Hayes? He might not think so, but the homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love is, in the end, an issue of culture, and the Inquirer is, and wants to be, both an element of, and contributor to, the culture of the city. When published Elizabeth Hughes wrote that the newspaper was trying to become “an anti racist news organization,” she was saying that she wanted her newspaper to become a leader in the community, to make the city a better place in which to live. Thus, it has to be asked: do columns like Mr Hayes’, in which he wrote of Messrs Simmons and Wentz, “So yes, this pair warrants your wrath,” lower the rhetoric, dampen down the anger, reduce the tendency to violence? When he wrote, “Ben-edict Simmons and Ginger Jesus are Philly sports’ version of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,” wasn’t he asking for an extreme reaction? If players like Messrs Simmons and Wentz, who have virtually nothing to do, personally, with the vast, vast majority of people in Philly, deserve the “wrath” and “fury” of Philadelphia fans, then doesn’t the guy down the block, who stole your girl, or dunked in your face on the playground, or cut you off in trying to grab a parking space, or sold drugs on your corner, deserve your “wrath” and your “fury” even more?
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.
I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
Do reporters for The Philadelphia Inquirer read their own news paper?
Inquirer reporter Harold Brubaker, who specializes in the business side of health care and nonprofit sector, reported on the Keystone State’s attempts to revise nursing home regulations, but somehow he managed to miss the elephant in the room:
Anne Clauss hates to imagine what her mother would have endured at a nursing home in Langhorne if she or another relative hadn’t visited daily during her stay from 2017 to 2018.
One evening Clauss found her mother at the end of a hallway facing away from her room, where she had been stuck for a few hours, another resident told her. Other times, staff — whom she called underpaid and overworked — forgot to bring her mother her meals.
“I hope regulations can be updated to help our elderly live out their lives well cared for and treated respectfully,” Clauss wrote to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, which will review the comments and eventually hold a public hearing. It’s not clear how quickly the commission will act.
Let’s tell the truth here: nursing homes are dreadful places, facilities in which to warehouse the elderly who can no longer care for themselves, but who can, and do, live on with nursing care and physical assistance. It’s a truth all of us know, but no one is willing to say out loud, because so many people fear that they will one day have to warehouse their aging parents in such a facility.[1]My family has been fortunate in that regard; such a decision was never one we faced. And I cannot imagine that any of us do not dread the thought of having to be in a nursing home themselves. I’m very thankful that I’m very healthy, but who can know what the future holds.
There’s a lot more at the original, and Mr Brubaker did a thorough job in his story, save for one thing. He noted that nursing homes have real difficulties in attracting staff, and that Medicaid payments for patients work out to roughly $8.00 an hour, which is significantly less than certified nursing assistants are paid. To provide more hours of patient care, more nursing staff would have to be hired, but there’s simply not enough money paid to nursing homes to do so. For the details, read Mr Brubaker’s original.
The effort is coming to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic in which over 13,000 people have died in Pennsylvania’s nursing homes.
This is where Mr Brubaker’s story fails. He mentions the COVID-19 panic just this once, and that’s it. But, as we previously noted, and as Mr Brubaker’s own newspaper has reported, Philadelphia’s Acting Health Commissioner, Dr Cheryl Bettigole, has mandated that all health care workers in the City of Brotherly Love must be vaccinated against COVID-19 by October 15th. Dr Bettigole has noted that more than a dozen long-term care facilities in Philadelphia have less than 50% of their staff vaccinated.
If you’re more committed to not getting the vaccine than to the safety of your patients, it’s time to do something else. Health care is not for you.
This is something that Mr Brubaker should have mentioned: not only are patients in nursing homes getting fewer hours of care than they should, Dr Bettigole and the city of Philadelphia want to fire the CNAs and RNs who refuse to get vaccinated.
Oh, they won’t put it that way — though the Commissioner came close — but that’s the result of the policy. The city obviously wants to force the reluctant to get vaccinated, and some will probably concede, but if over half the staff have resisted vaccination, in an industry which has been continually pushing for it, it has to be expected that at least some, quite probably a significant percentage of them, will continue to refuse to comply.
As of last night, there were 102 people waiting for an ICU bed in the greater Houston area.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo told Begnaud that she was prepared to open a field hospital, but as of Friday morning, hospitals in the Houston area were telling her they had extra beds — but not enough nurses. Seven hundred nurses arrived last week, but it’s still not enough to meet the demand.
Of course, that article, too, failed to address the elephant in the room:
DALLAS (AP) — More than 150 employees at a Houston hospital system who refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine have been fired or resigned after a judge dismissed an employee lawsuit over the vaccine requirement.
A spokesperson for Houston Methodist hospital system said 153 employees either resigned in the two-week suspension period or were terminated on Tuesday.
The case over how far health care institutions can go to protect patients and others against the coronavirus has been closely watched. It’s believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. But it won’t be the end of the debate.
It’s not a case of some health care workers may quit, or may be fired, for refusing vaccination, but that some have already quit, some have already been fired.
I get it: the editorial position of the Inquirer is strongly in support of vaccination, and perhaps noting that the city’s vaccine mandate will actually cost the city’s nursing homes employees isn’t something a biased newspaper like the Inquirer wants to report.[2]I take publisher Elizabeth Hughes opinion piece as an admission that the Inquirer has, and will continue to have, a bias toward the left. But for an article like Mr Brubaker’s to fail to note the potential loss of nursing home employees, just as he is noting that the Commonwealth might require more, is simply poor journalism. It wasn’t just a missed point, but ignoring a very, very large elephant in the room.
We have previously noted the recent decrease in the number of homicides in the City of Brotherly Love. We noted, on July 9th, that there had been 291 killings as of 11:59 PM on July 8th. 291 ÷ 189 days in the year, = 1.5397 homicides per day, for a projected 562 for the year. If I recall correctly, that 562 number was my highest projection for the year.
But then, as of the 221st day of the year, 325 homicides had been recorded. 325 ÷ 221 days in the year, = 1.4706 homicides per day, for a projected 537 for the year. That number stayed fairly consistent, as a week later, with ‘just’ 339 homicides in 228 days, Philadelphia was seeing ‘only’ 1.4868 homicides per day, which works out to ‘just’ 543 over the course of 2021.
As of 11:59 PM on Sunday, August 22nd, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there had been 345 homicides in the city. 345 ÷ 234 days = 1.4744 per day, or 538 projected for the year. The big news is that, over the past 31 days, a full month, if not a calendar month, there have been ‘just’ 31 homicides, ‘just’ 1.00 per day. With 131 days remaining in 2021, if that rate could be maintained, there would be ‘only’ 476 killings in Philly for the year. If The Philadelphia Inquirer has noticed that decrease, I haven’t seen it mentioned. It certainly doesn’t seem as though their Editorial Board has noticed.
January 2nd was the only day in 2021 in which no person was shot in Philadelphia.
by The Editorial Board | August 23, 2021
If you’re looking for ways to quantify the depths of the gun violence crisis in Philadelphia, there may not be many bleaker statistics than this: There’s only been one day so far this year — Jan. 2 — when not a single person was shot in the city.
Gun violence drives Philadelphia’s murder rate, which is on pace for a record this year, but it’s essential that the city also address three other factors if officials hope to stem a seemingly unrelenting tide of killings — increasing the rate at which murders are solved, fostering more cooperation from witnesses in criminal prosecutions, and rooting out corrupt officers whose bad practices later lead to convictions being overturned.
In Philadelphia, murderers have a better chance of winning a coin toss than being arrested. Last Wednesday, during the most recent briefing on the city’s response to gun violence, the police presented data showing that through Aug. 15, only 43% of homicides this year led to an arrest. That homicide clearance rate, or the percentage of killings that lead to an arrest, is on par with recent years.
Am I wrong in thinking that the Editorial Board ought to be noting that fewer people are being killed?
But it’s not just that fewer people are being killed. According to data provided by the city, there were 272 shootings during the 31 days of July, and ‘only’ 145 through the first 22 days of August. If that rate of 6.59 shootings per day holds up for the rest of the month, there would be 204 total shootings in August, a 33.33% decrease.
There’s more at the original, but, if you remember when publisher Elizabeth Hughes said she was going to make the Inquirer “an anti-racist news organization“, you won’t be surprised that the Editorial Board turned quickly to a Larry Krasneresque condemnation of the Philadelphia Police Department, noting Mr Krasner’s ongoing attempts to overturn what they claim are false convictions.
Philadelphia’s twin crises of gun violence and homicides are multilayered and intertwined. To reduce the number of unsolved murders in the city, the homicide clearance rate needs to go up. For the homicide clearance rate to go up, witnesses need to have faith that the system is actually seeking justice — not simply trying to improve its statistics by throwing another person in prison.
I’m trying to figure out how the Editorial Board are trying to give witnesses “faith that the system is actually seeking justice” by continually slamming the performance of the Police Department, and so far, I’ve got nothing. When the Board say that the Police Department needs to be “rooting out corrupt officers,” the impression the #woke at the Inquirer are giving — and, I suspect, trying to give — is that most of the city police officers are corrupt.
My point about the “cute little white girl” was in reference to Rian Thal, “a party promoter well-known in the city’s nightclub scene” and drug dealer, who was murdered on June 27, 2009. The city was captured by Miss Thal’s killing, and the local media were full of stories about it. The Inquirer and its sister publication, the Philadelphia Daily News, just loved splashing Miss Thal’s killing across their pages. After all, cute white girls sell newspapers!
A cute little white girl, with no connection to Philadelphia, had sixteen mentions, while Philadelphia’s own Miss Lugo resulted in two..jpg)
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