Let’s see. Last week I asked how you were enjoying third winter, and since then we’ve been lucky enough to experience fourth winter. And by “lucky,” I mean “cursed.” I’m not saying I’m fluent in Avian, but early on Monday morning I distinctly heard a bird shout, “WHAT THE ACTUAL F—K!”
I get it. Pittsburghers like to whine about three things: weather, Hunt’s ketchup and offensive coordinators. It’s cliche and tired and okay, fine. Yes. But, my God, when the laws of meteorological science cease to exist and I’m driving through blinding snow on April 18 and I am not in the Canadian wilderness, I reserve the right to whine until Mother Nature gets her whole shit together.
It will be near 90 this weekend. Up from a low of 29 this morning. If you do the subtraction, that is a SIXTY-ONE DEGREE temperature swing.
Future potholes right now:
All our cars are going to die. I’m going to see if the military surplus store has any tanks. I assume my driver’s license works with those?
Let’s get to it!
1. Today only! TRAGEDY!
Right off the bat, I’m going for the big stuff. The stuff that makes me throw my arms in the air. The stuff that makes me just wildly gesture all around myself all, “Can you believe this shit?!”—much like the birds the last few days. Today, my [flails] is directed at KDKA-TV.
It’s no secret I have a huge beef with KDKA’s social media practices because they are, in a word, trash. KDKA long ago realized that controversy rewards them with engagement, and every social media manager will tell you, it’s the engagement numbers that matter. Impressions. Interactions. Shares. So, KDKA, knowing this, has gotten into the habit of intentionally phrasing tweets in a way that generates controversy and hate in the replies. They will report and share stories that don’t have local connections simply because the subject matter is sure to create political fights in their replies. They love to say, “Sound off in the replies!” on news items that should have replies disabled just so they aren’t fostering an atmosphere that allows hate to germinate, sprout, and grow. I simply don’t see this happening on the WTAE or WPXI social media pages they way it does with KDKA.
This week, in the aftermath of the devastating mass shooting incident at the AirBnB on the North Side that took the lives of two teenagers, KDKA did something really gross—they used the story to push promoted tweets.
Yes, that’s Jim Lokay, the former KDKA reporter calling out his one-time employer.
This was another that showed up in my feed as promoted:
This gives me the same feeling as when brands put their logos on images commemorating 9/11 or other horrendous events. Exploiting a tragedy in order to generate social media engagement is incredibly sleazy. These young men lost their lives. Dozens and dozens of our local teens are now going to have to deal with the trauma they experienced when the shooting began and they were caught in a terrifying bottleneck. Report the traumatic news. Do it with compassion, decency and accuracy, and let your good reporting on the incident be the thing that pushes your stories out further into the world, not a damn PROMOTED tag on tweets about the violent deaths of two of Pittsburgh’s young sons.
I know I say this quite a bit to our local media outlets, but, KDKA, … do better.
2. Maulers coach lol chicken pizza wutttt
Why is the title of this item “Maulers coach lol chicken pizza wutttt?”
Because when I added it to my list of things I wanted to talk about in this week’s newsletter, that is how I wrote it down, awash in sheer incredulity and drowning in my hilarity. This is a habit I have even when I take notes for my research papers for school. Look at what I wrote as an actual notation about Andrew Carnegie* while researching my capstone about him:
So yes, the title of this item is the eloquently stated by a grown-ass writer with the best words, “Maulers coach lol chicken pizza wutttt.”
If you remember from last week, The Maulers are Pittsburgh’s newest professional sporting team, this one in the forthcoming and certainly doomed USFL. The Maulers’ head coach, Kirby Wilson, in a wild show of power, released running back De’Veon Smith from the team for… [checks notes]…wanting to eat pizza instead of chicken salad.
See! Right now you are saying, “Maulers coach lol chicken pizza wutttt!!!” That is the correct reaction. Here’s the story as it appeared on a Fox TV show about the USFL:
“I didn’t say anything disrespectful. He said, ‘Is that going to be a problem?’ And I said ‘Yes,’ and that’s it. I walked away,” Smith says. “I didn’t think that was disrespectful, me saying yes. I don’t eat chicken salad. And I was like ‘Is there another option?’ [He] walked in with pizza and I was like, ‘Can I get a slice of pizza?’ He said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Is that going to be a problem?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ That’s all I said. I didn’t say no cuss words. Nothing. That’s all I said.”
Wilson, a former assistant for the Steelers, listens to Smith’s comments, thanks him for his perspective but then tells him “it’s done” before wishing him luck and walking out of the room as Smith exhales deeply while covering his face with his hands in frustration.
Here’s the clip:
After the deserved thrashing on social media, Wilson defended himself and let me just pull some snippets here (and yes, this man is clearly attempting to sound like Mike Tomlin):
"I have a set of standards that we go by as a football team," Wilson said. "Those standards weren't met...”
“These are life lessons. They have nothing to do with football. You're trying to teach people how to respect other people, no matter how you see or view them. He had immediately reached back out, apologized, committed to trying to be a better man, a better person from the incident. But we have already moved on.”
Here’s my hot take on that: One, respect is a two-way street but you’re under the mistaken belief it’s a one-way cul-de-sac that leads to your sense of alpha power. Two, yes this does too have to do with football?????? You cut a football player from the football team not for displaying Antonio Brown-like behavior but for being a bit childish about what he eats. That speaks more to the unrestrained and undeserved ego of the coach and less to the maturity, or lack thereof, of the player.
“We have a very, very high standard of football. It wasn't met. When we have a player that steps out of line, with what we believe in as a staff, it must be dealt with. I didn't think twice about it."
Maybe ya should have, buddy?
Also?
The Pizza/Chicken Salad Incident is 100 percent my new band name.
3. Two more down
In COVID news:
Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald and Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey announced Friday that they have tested positive for COVID-19. Both officials said they were grateful for the vaccine's protection.
This is not great news for Pittsburgh, where cases are on the rise once again, but super great news for me who is currently attempting to be the last person in the city to get COVID.
And just by writing that, I’ve doomed myself, haven’t I? Somewhere, the Karma Boomerang just went
Such a consistent bitch.
4. MY NAME IS ASHLEIGHANNE BRICKLYNN SMITH JONES AND WHERE ARE ALL THE WHITE BOOKS, I ASK YOU!
This week in book-banning we take a look at some Franklin Regional parents’ attempts to not only ban the graphic novel Persepolis (the true story of the author’s upbringing during the Iranian revolution), but also books about minorities in general. TOO MANY BOOKS ABOUT PEOPLE WHO AREN’T WHITE is their complaint.
McGee said stories her children have been assigned “seem to be heavily weighed on one side of peoples’ views.”
“One of the StudySync books has six out of 10 stories related to ‘oppressed minorities,’” McGee said. “I believe this sends a message to the children without something as drastic as lining up white kinds on one side of the hall and Black kids on the other, and having the white kids apologize to the Black kids.”
First, what is the “other side” of “oppressed minorities?” You’re FOR the oppressors?
Second, to be able to say such a thing and not understand how incredibly racist the thing you said was is honestly fascinating to me. Maybe Gretchen needs me to to explain what is wrong with what she said, so here goes. And please keep in mind I did advanced diversity studies for my history degree so I can speak to this with some validity. [Ahem]:
DID YOU EVER ONCE COMPLAIN THAT TOO MANY OF THE STORIES WERE ABOUT WHITE PEOPLE? DID YOU EVER ONCE CLAIM THAT READING STORIES ABOUT THE STRUGGLES OF WHITE CHARACTERS WAS DIVISIVE?
No? Then take several seats in the back of the room and sit there and stew in the putrid scent of racism emanating from within the trash can that is your heart. If Black kids can spend their entire educations reading about white people, white kids can spend some time reading about Black people. It doesn’t make them hate each other; it makes them AWARE of each other. The end.
Stop. Banning. Books. History is not on your side.
5. Take my money
I love this news:
The city of Pittsburgh is looking to partner with CommonWealth Press to design and sell officially licensed Pittsburgh merchandise.
Pittsburgh-based CommonWealth Press said it is excited to work with the city to design and sell official merchandise. The company said it and the city are still in the “beginning stages” of the process, and declined to provide specifics about what kind of merchandise would be available.
Everything Commonwealth Press does is magic, so I expect this will be amazing. I’d love to see some vintage designs with the old flag standards or some of the insane old-timey quotes that have been said about Pittsburgh. My favorite is, of course, by the famed reporter Ernie Pyle:
“Pittsburgh is the cockeyedest city in the United States. Physically it is absolutely irrational. It must have been laid out by a mountain goat.”
I might get that tattooed across my whole back.
Also, my band name has just been changed to Absolutely Irrational Mountain Goats. RIP to The Pizza/Chicken Salad Incident. We hardly knew ye.
6. This week in the “Dumb Stuff to Get Mad About” File
A jersey patch?! A JERSEY PATCH?!? I’m not being dramatic when I say …
I kid. I kid. But lots of fans are pretty upset about this expected development and have been yelling at the Penguins’ for a few days. Listen, fan jerseys will still be sold without the patch so you all can just simmer the dramatics down and chase your chill pills with some suck-it-up juice.
7. And we’re done! I’m out of space so we’ll end it here. Hopefully next week I won’t be writing about fifth winter or first equatorial summer. Why can’t we find a nice middle ground between Hoth and THE SWELTERING BOWELS OF HELL?
Thus ends my complaining about the weather. Now let me tell you how I feel about Hunt’s ketchup.
*If you want to know what I was referring to with my Carnegie note, it was him telling his mill workers, who he worked 12-hour days/seven days a week, to be sure to find time for recreation such as whilst or billiards. “It’s a great mistake to think that the man who works all the time wins in the race,” said the man whose employees had absolutely no time for a personal or family life because they worked ALL THE TIME.
Good Lord!! WUT. Nooooooo. I. Can’t. Even.