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Friday, November 24, 2023

Lincoln Steffens

Investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) isn’t much remembered today, according to Kevin Baker of The New York Times, despite the 2021 reissuing of the author’s classic, The Shame of the Cities, and the Philosophy of Corruption and Reform, by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last year. The Cambridge Scholars edition of Steffens’s work is edited, annotated and introduced by Professor H.G. Callaway, a Philadelphian who splits his time between the United States and Germany. Callaway’s books on American philosophy and intellectual history have earned him some international renown. Why Lincoln Steffens? Callaway states in his Introduction that the volume is an “attempt to better understand the social and political phenomenon of corruption generally.” Municipal corruption, after all, is not limited to Steffens’ time but can be viewed as an all persuasive force existing in every era that seeks to “change the form of government from one that is representative of the people to an oligarchy.” (Steffens’ words) Steffens was born in San Francisco but grew up in Sacramento, California. As the eldest of four children, he often clashed with the founder and headmaster of the Episcopal Day School that he attended as a boy. As a journalist, he was known as a muckraker who took on corruption and institutional dysfunction. America, he wrote, was the place of a Great Swindle, where corrupt money changers ruin all of its institutions. Steffens covered the Mexican Revolution as a reporter and was enamored of the Soviet Communist Revolution. He was well liked, even by people who vehemently opposed his views. Teddy Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, Lenin, and Mussolini were among his journalistic contacts. “The tragedy of Lincoln Steffens,” Lawrence W. Reed wrote in FEE, the Foundation for Economic Freedom, is that “He could see the harm of concentrated power but, the typical ‘progressive’ that he was, he naively believed that more of it was the antidote. This is a recurring blind spot shared by intellectuals of the Left. Even if big government is the problem, the solution to them is almost always an even bigger government. It’s like drinking a gallon of Clorox to wash down the quart of Clorox you just swallowed.” Steffens advised fellow journalists to “Sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend, all you want to, but in reality, deep down underneath, care like hell.” One of his most famous sayings, “I have seen the future, and it works,” was a catch-all phrase he used multiple times for various issues. H. G. Callaway’s Introduction is a smoother read than Steffens’ work itself, which tends to an antidotal and a patchwork journalistic style that often makes for an awkward reading experience. The Shame of the Cities was compiled from a series of articles Steffens wrote for McClure’s magazine. The cities Steffens covers are St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Although most of the corrupt municipalities he writes about are Republican, Steffens lets his readers know that corruption affects both political parties. In writing about St. Louis, for instance, Steffens comments, “There was little difference between the two parties in the city; but the rascals that were in had been getting the greater share of the spoils, and the ‘outs’ wanted more than was given to them.” Steffens calls Philadelphia the most hopeless city in the nation. “But it was not till I got to Philadelphia that the possibilities of popular corruption were worked out to the limit of humiliating confession,” he writes. He equates Philadelphia with general civic corruption and an all powerful city machine that controls the mind of the average voter. Sadly, this was true when Philadelphia was Republican, and it’s certainly true today when the city is unlikely to ever elect a Republican mayor barring a miracle of biblical proportions. “I cut twenty thousand words out of the Philadelphia article and yet I had not written half my facts,” Steffens states, adding, “I know a man who is making a history of the corrupt construction of the Philadelphia City Hall, in three volumes.” In a follow up sentence he then fairly concludes that no writer can put all the incidents of corruption of an American city into one book. In concluding his two investigative pieces on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia for McClure’s, Steffens writes that “Pittsburgh may pull itself out of its disgrace,” but that other Pennsylvania city, Philadelphia, “is contented and seems hopeless.” Steffens keeps harping on the corruption in Philadelphia when he writes about other cities. In his October 1902 article entitled “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” Steffens concludes that “[St. Louis] isn’t our worst governed city; Philadelphia is that.” While Pittsburgh could not be said to be Pennsylvania’s most beautiful city in 1912 (when industry darkened its skies), the argument can be made that it is certainly the state’s most beautiful city in 2021. With its mountains, three rivers and multi-colored bridges forming a kind of OZ canopy around The Golden Triangle, Pittsburgh’s dazzling skyline rarely fails to impress. In Steffens’ chapter on Pittsburgh, he cites the corruption surrounding the building of the city’s many beautiful bridges yet avoids going into specifics. Steffens seems to have a soft spot for Pennsylvania’s western city although that does not prevent him from lashing out at it severely. “Pittsburgh has been described physically as ‘Hell with the lid off,’ politically it is hell with the lid on.’ I am not going to lift the lid,” he writes. Steffens traces Pittsburgh’s corruption to the railroads while reminding the reader that the corruption rings in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia form a direct link up to the corruption rings in Harrisburg. The corrupt party bosses and politicians that Steffens mentions in The Shame of the Cities are far too numerous to mention, but in every case he traces general municipal corruption back to big business and “the businessman.” Ironically, Steffens ends his article on Pittsburgh by saying that the city itself is “a spectacle for American self-respect, and its sturdiness a promise for poor old Pennsylvania.” The writer, surprisingly, had an occasional soft spot for Philadelphia, such as when he writes, “Philadelphia has long enjoyed great and widely distributed prosperity; it is a city of homes; there is a dwelling house for every five persons, men, women, and children, of the population; and the people give one a sense of more leisure and repose than any community I ever dwelt in.” Philadelphia, he adds, is surer that it has a ‘real aristocracy’ than any other place in the world, but its aristocrats, with few exceptions, are in the ring, with it, or of no political use.” Steffens, on a roll, tells the reader that Philadelphians do not vote but are “disenfranchised.” “The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more rights at the polls than the Negroes down South. Nor do they fight very hard for this basic privilege. “ Sounding weirdly contemporary, Steffens goes on record as saying that dead people vote in Philadelphia. “But many Philadelphians do not try to vote,” he adds. “They leave everything to the machine, and the machine casts their ballots for them.” This is why Philadelphia is unlikely to have a Republican mayor in the near or distant future. Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest, “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest” was released in May 2023.

Lincoln Steffens

Investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936) isn’t much remembered today, according to Kevin Baker of The New York Times, despite the 2021 reissuing of the author’s classic, The Shame of the Cities, and the Philosophy of Corruption and Reform, by Cambridge Scholars Publishing last year. The Cambridge Scholars edition of Steffens’s work is edited, annotated and introduced by Professor H.G. Callaway, a Philadelphian who splits his time between the United States and Germany. Callaway’s books on American philosophy and intellectual history have earned him some international renown. Why Lincoln Steffens? Callaway states in his Introduction that the volume is an “attempt to better understand the social and political phenomenon of corruption generally.” Municipal corruption, after all, is not limited to Steffens’ time but can be viewed as an all persuasive force existing in every era that seeks to “change the form of government from one that is representative of the people to an oligarchy.” (Steffens’ words) Steffens was born in San Francisco but grew up in Sacramento, California. As the eldest of four children, he often clashed with the founder and headmaster of the Episcopal Day School that he attended as a boy. As a journalist, he was known as a muckraker who took on corruption and institutional dysfunction. America, he wrote, was the place of a Great Swindle, where corrupt money changers ruin all of its institutions. Steffens covered the Mexican Revolution as a reporter and was enamored of the Soviet Communist Revolution. He was well liked, even by people who vehemently opposed his views. Teddy Roosevelt, J.P. Morgan, Lenin, and Mussolini were among his journalistic contacts. “The tragedy of Lincoln Steffens,” Lawrence W. Reed wrote in FEE, the Foundation for Economic Freedom, is that “He could see the harm of concentrated power but, the typical ‘progressive’ that he was, he naively believed that more of it was the antidote. This is a recurring blind spot shared by intellectuals of the Left. Even if big government is the problem, the solution to them is almost always an even bigger government. It’s like drinking a gallon of Clorox to wash down the quart of Clorox you just swallowed.” Steffens advised fellow journalists to “Sit around the bars and drink, and pose, and pretend, all you want to, but in reality, deep down underneath, care like hell.” One of his most famous sayings, “I have seen the future, and it works,” was a catch-all phrase he used multiple times for various issues. H. G. Callaway’s Introduction is a smoother read than Steffens’ work itself, which tends to an antidotal and a patchwork journalistic style that often makes for an awkward reading experience. The Shame of the Cities was compiled from a series of articles Steffens wrote for McClure’s magazine. The cities Steffens covers are St. Louis, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Although most of the corrupt municipalities he writes about are Republican, Steffens lets his readers know that corruption affects both political parties. In writing about St. Louis, for instance, Steffens comments, “There was little difference between the two parties in the city; but the rascals that were in had been getting the greater share of the spoils, and the ‘outs’ wanted more than was given to them.” Steffens calls Philadelphia the most hopeless city in the nation. “But it was not till I got to Philadelphia that the possibilities of popular corruption were worked out to the limit of humiliating confession,” he writes. He equates Philadelphia with general civic corruption and an all powerful city machine that controls the mind of the average voter. Sadly, this was true when Philadelphia was Republican, and it’s certainly true today when the city is unlikely to ever elect a Republican mayor barring a miracle of biblical proportions. “I cut twenty thousand words out of the Philadelphia article and yet I had not written half my facts,” Steffens states, adding, “I know a man who is making a history of the corrupt construction of the Philadelphia City Hall, in three volumes.” In a follow up sentence he then fairly concludes that no writer can put all the incidents of corruption of an American city into one book. In concluding his two investigative pieces on Pittsburgh and Philadelphia for McClure’s, Steffens writes that “Pittsburgh may pull itself out of its disgrace,” but that other Pennsylvania city, Philadelphia, “is contented and seems hopeless.” Steffens keeps harping on the corruption in Philadelphia when he writes about other cities. In his October 1902 article entitled “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” Steffens concludes that “[St. Louis] isn’t our worst governed city; Philadelphia is that.” While Pittsburgh could not be said to be Pennsylvania’s most beautiful city in 1912 (when industry darkened its skies), the argument can be made that it is certainly the state’s most beautiful city in 2021. With its mountains, three rivers and multi-colored bridges forming a kind of OZ canopy around The Golden Triangle, Pittsburgh’s dazzling skyline rarely fails to impress. In Steffens’ chapter on Pittsburgh, he cites the corruption surrounding the building of the city’s many beautiful bridges yet avoids going into specifics. Steffens seems to have a soft spot for Pennsylvania’s western city although that does not prevent him from lashing out at it severely. “Pittsburgh has been described physically as ‘Hell with the lid off,’ politically it is hell with the lid on.’ I am not going to lift the lid,” he writes. Steffens traces Pittsburgh’s corruption to the railroads while reminding the reader that the corruption rings in both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia form a direct link up to the corruption rings in Harrisburg. The corrupt party bosses and politicians that Steffens mentions in The Shame of the Cities are far too numerous to mention, but in every case he traces general municipal corruption back to big business and “the businessman.” Ironically, Steffens ends his article on Pittsburgh by saying that the city itself is “a spectacle for American self-respect, and its sturdiness a promise for poor old Pennsylvania.” The writer, surprisingly, had an occasional soft spot for Philadelphia, such as when he writes, “Philadelphia has long enjoyed great and widely distributed prosperity; it is a city of homes; there is a dwelling house for every five persons, men, women, and children, of the population; and the people give one a sense of more leisure and repose than any community I ever dwelt in.” Philadelphia, he adds, is surer that it has a ‘real aristocracy’ than any other place in the world, but its aristocrats, with few exceptions, are in the ring, with it, or of no political use.” Steffens, on a roll, tells the reader that Philadelphians do not vote but are “disenfranchised.” “The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no more rights at the polls than the Negroes down South. Nor do they fight very hard for this basic privilege. “ Sounding weirdly contemporary, Steffens goes on record as saying that dead people vote in Philadelphia. “But many Philadelphians do not try to vote,” he adds. “They leave everything to the machine, and the machine casts their ballots for them.” This is why Philadelphia is unlikely to have a Republican mayor in the near or distant future. Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest, “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest” was released in May 2023.

Tuesday, February 7, 2023

Friday, April 8, 2022

From City Journal, New York: Philadelphia's Woke Monoculture

Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation recently held a press event for “Water, Wind, Breath,” its new exhibition of Southwest Native art, pottery, jewelry, and culture. At the Barnes, such events are carefully orchestrated, with a distinct ambience: good-looking, well-dressed employees, all meticulously mannered, especially the women, who have come to represent the best in museum chic. At the Barnes opening, everything stood ready: microphone, guest speakers, a silver and chrome buffet table off to the side with coffee, tea, and yogurt parfaits. Thom Collins, executive director and president of the foundation, explained to attendees how hard the Barnes was working to achieve inclusion, equity, and diversity. It was a virtual copy-and-paste of everything I had heard weeks earlier at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of the American Revolution—a mandatory mini-lecture that one now hears at exhibition openings in every museum in the city. A paraphrase of this bit of instruction might read: Lest you have any doubts, equity and diversity are our main goals here. It apparently hasn’t occurred to any city museum official that the constant repetition of this mantra comes close to treating press-review audiences like learning-disabled children in need of constant reminding of a museum’s fealty to the new order. At Barnes, I took some consolation that Collins skipped over the standard “land acknowledgment” boilerplate, which, in case you don’t know, is a three- to four-minute declaration that the ground under a given museum, theater, or venue was once owned by a Native tribe before it was stolen by colonizers or settlers. Land-acknowledgement tributes have become the progressive Left’s version of grace before meals and can be heard at nearly every small theater in the city before a performance of a play. Theaters and museums nationwide have easy access to land-acknowledgment templates. A Google search reveals instructions on how to make your land-acknowledgment statement meaningful. One piece of advice is not to ask an indigenous person to deliver it because “indigenous people already bear enough of the burden of colonization.” The best call-to-action “is to ask everyone who hears the land acknowledgment to take out their phone or checkbook and donate at least $1 to a Native-led organization.” Both the subjects of plays and the topics of museum and art lectures in Philadelphia have veered toward “woke” themes, especially at small venues like Theatre Horizon and the Theater Company of Philadelphia, where plays about slavery predominate. At Theatre Horizon, for instance, James Ijames, whose work tends to focus on race, women, and sexual orientation, will premiere a new play that attempts to reimagine Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson as, respectively, a student and a dean at a Southern university. Slavery and subjects related to race, gender, and other woke topics have been the standard theme for productions at city theaters for almost a decade now. The overemphasis has even hit the grand dame of (former) WASP institutions, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, where 2022’s list of events and programs includes an imbalance of feminist programs and race-related topics, such as lectures on how women lost the vote, inequality in education, African-Americans in Civil War-era Virginia, and writings from the nineteenth-century antislavery movement. When plays about slavery and race came into their own in the city about a decade ago, they were welcomed. Unfortunately, Philadelphia’s arts and cultural scene today is locked into an endless repetition of these themes. It’s as if each museum and theater were in competition for a woke merit badge. The American Catholic Historical Society, which bills itself as the oldest Catholic historical society in the United States, has taken a decidedly leftward turn as well. On the heels of Philadelphia’s 2020 George Floyd riots, the society booked a program called “The Birth of a Movement: Black Lives Matter and the Catholic Church.” The event’s description included a reference to “a long-overdue reckoning on systemic racism, and the presidential election.” The selection of Black Lives Matter as the centerpiece for a major lecture by a heretofore largely conservative Catholic organization was an odd one, especially since BLM was founded by two Marxists and at one point had as one of its goals the elimination of “hetero-normative relationships” (now scrubbed from BLM’s website). Today you will find no conservative speakers at ACHS. When ACHS does veer off into nonpolitical waters, the subjects tend to be non-threatening ones like the founding of a particular religious order or historical topics concerning the archdiocese. As the city’s arts and cultural communities emerge from the pandemic, the influence of Zoom presentations is diminishing, though some institutions (like the ACHS) are still offering both virtual and live presentations. Most city theaters plan a complete reopening this spring, though classic old venues like the Walnut Street Theatre, founded in 1808 and known as America’s oldest theater, and the Forrest Theatre, named after famous nineteenth-century tragic actor Edwin Forrest, have been hosting live performances for the several months. The Walnut remains decidedly non-controversial and non-political (its last production was about Sherlock Holmes), but the same can’t be said for the Forrest. Its recent production of Daniel Fish’s rehashed and updated Oklahoma!, the 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, was by all accounts a disaster. While established reviewers like Toby Zinman and assorted “gender-queer” reviewers for small weeklies praised the show’s edgy woke qualities, most ticketholders had little praise for the rehabbed mess they dubbed “Woke-Lahoma.” Almost all the reviews from audience members were negative, while professional reviewers, perhaps attempting to safeguard their progressive credentials, praised it. This ticketholder “rebellion” was heartening. Numerous audience members walked out during the intermission. It’s too early to determine whether the tide is turning, though the Wilma Theater, long noted for its left-wing political curveballs, has taken to asking audiences what they want to see in future productions. What a novel approach! Perhaps more Philadelphia theaters and art galleries will follow suit. Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based author and journalist.

Fiorella and Padre Pio

The Local Lens: Farewell, Fiorella BY THOM NICKELS | FEBRUARY 9, 2017 For most, the death of a loved one or family member is a traumatic experience. That’s because most of us assume that our lives will go on for a long time. We don’t count on death happening today or even the day after tomorrow, but sometime in the distant future. Death is never a pleasant topic. There are no “nice” deaths, either. One can die instantly of a heart attack, stroke or automobile accident, or one can die slowly over a period of months or years. In the case of the latter, at least there’s a chance for the one who is about to die to say goodbye. In the case of the former, there are no such options. In the Orthodox Church there are prayers asking God to save us from an instant death. It is always better to be prepared for this important transition from life to afterlife. My sister-in-law, Fiorella, recently passed away. We were not extremely close, but we still had a closeness made palpable by decades of family dinners and reunions. When I say we were not extremely close I don’t mean to imply a distance caused by alienation. Like most people, we were caught up in our own lives, which led us to assume that there would be plenty of time to see each other again. Fiorella came into my brother’s life at a point when he really needed change and a life partner. One day my mother called me up and said, “You’ll be meeting Fiorella this Sunday. I think your brother has met his match.” Fiorella had long straight hair, a winning smile, a keen intelligence and an acute sense of humor. Her Italian roots could be traced to the area by the Adriatic Sea. She was born in Italy, but migrated to the United States as a toddler with her parents. She married my brother in Saint Patrick’s Church in Malvern, an old gothic structure with enormous stained-glass windows. I attended the wedding. It was the 1970s and all the men in the wedding party had long hair and mustaches. The reception was a rollicking party along the lines of “Saturday Night Fever.” Fiorella’s mother was a gifted seer who provided her daughter with advice and counseling. Her father had a talent for winemaking; his wine was known for its smooth medicinal properties and it rarely, if ever, caused a morning hangover. We all asked one another, “How does he make this stuff?’ My brother often spoke of his mother-in-law’s intuitive talents. Like the mystic and saint Padre Pio, it was claimed that Fiorella’s mother could be in two places at once — an ability called bi-location. My brother told me that his father-in-law would often see his wife in the garden and then half a second later at the kitchen stove. It was just one of life’s unexplained mysteries. Still, Fiorella’s mom’s excellent “intuitions” were sometimes not what her daughter or my brother wanted to hear. I remember the time when she warned them to travel by plane rather than take the train when planning a cross-country trip. The advice seemed backwards because conventional wisdom suggests that flying would be more dangerous than traveling by Amtrak. Fiorella was afraid of flying and she tried to avoid it whenever possible, so it took all her strength to muster up the courage to fly with my brother when they embarked on their honeymoon to Acapulco. But Fiorella’s mother was persistent: “Do not take the train! Take the plane!” Fiorella’s fear of flying was just too great, so she and my brother decided to take the train, despite the warning. Once on board the train’s sleeping compartment, there was a crash and a sort of explosion that sent the two of them flying off their bunks. Smoke entered their compartment and a lot of panic ensued. The train had derailed or had crashed into something, I’m not sure which, but those uncertain moments were very scary for them. Fortunately they escaped without injury. Fiorella and my brother settled in a house in a development in Exton, PA, where they raised three children. The years advanced and as often happens with families there were times when we Nickels siblings would drift apart only to come together during the holidays or at a 4th of July picnic. On one 4th of July, Fiorella and my brother hosted a massive reunion for my mother’s side of the family. The Muldoon-Kelly reunion covered the waterfront in terms of disparate personalities and incomes. Fiorella and my brother had also managed to obtain old photos of distant relatives in Tyrone County, Ireland. The photos depicted men with long black beards covering their chest and women carrying parasols. Fiorella contracted breast cancer a few years ago. She had a single mastectomy and routine chemo and radiation treatments. After that she and my brother went on an extreme health regime. Life was fine for some time, but then two or three days after Christmas it was discovered that the cancer had returned, only now it was in her liver. In no time at all it seemed the cancer got worse and spread to other parts of Fiorella’s body, and she was admitted to Bryn Mawr Hospital. When the truth of her incurable cancer became an indisputable fact, her youngest daughter, Amanda, came up with a plan. Scheduled to be married to her fiancé, Mark, in September 2017, the couple organized a wedding in the hospital chapel before their big September church wedding. All of my brother’s children pitched in to create what became a miniature but full extravaganza in just 24 hours. That included getting the wedding rings, hiring musicians, a priest, ordering food and champagne and negotiating with a tailor to alter Fiorella’s old wedding gown for Amanda to wear. Fiorella was informed of the impromptu chapel wedding and was given an extra treatment of radiation so she could attend. The morning of the wedding she woke up and said, “I feel great!” The small ceremony turned the hospital upside down when nurses, physicians and even the hospital’s president and CEO crowded into the small chapel. My last visit with Fiorella was on Tuesday, January 31st when I entered her hospital room around 5:20PM. She was alone and she looked to be sleeping. The room was empty except for the sounds of a nurse running water in the bathroom. When the nurse asked me who I was, I told her that I was a brother-in-law. In the few seconds that it took me to say this I thought I saw a smile cross Fiorella’s face. Was I imagining this? My brother had told me earlier that his wife was comatose, but that she could hear what was being said. The nurse said I could spend as much time with her as I wanted, so I sat with Fiorella until the chaplain walked in and told me that Fiorella had actually died hours before, at 3:20PM. Hearing this was disconcerting because all along I had thought that she was asleep. I spent 30 minutes sitting with Fiorella, meditating, thinking of times past. Then I thought of the words of St. John Chrysostom who wrote that although death is terrible and frightening — yes, even its name is devastating — for those who know the higher philosophy there should be no shuddering. That’s because death is merely a passing over when we leave this corruptible life and go on to another, which is unending and incomparably better. •

Thursday, January 27, 2022

STEVE BISCIOTTI

There are people who live for football and the Super Bowl. They arrange house parties; they make sure there’s plenty of food, cases of beer or bottles of wine on hand for the ‘life-changing’ extravaganza. For these people—they constitute multitudes-- Super Bowl Sunday is a major national holiday. I’ve never been one of these people. To me, football is boring and watching football is tantamount to watching leaves fall in autumn. Playing football is even worse given the number of physical injuries many of its athletes sustain and that follow them throughout life: bad backs, crushed knees, brain injuries, dislocated shoulders, hip replacements. In years past, I’ve tended to criticize how people can put so much energy and passion into something that’s just a game. But one year it was slightly different for me and that was when I found myself rooting for the Baltimore Ravensover the San Francisco 49ers during Super Bowl 2013. The reason for my change of heart was simple: Steve Bisciotti, the majority owner of the Ravens at that time (he is now the sole owner), is a second cousin of mine, or more specifically, the son of my godmother, Patricia Bisciotti (nee Muldoon), who hails from my mother’s side of the family, the Irish Muldoon-Kelly clan from Tyrone County, Northern Ireland. There was always random talk about Steve Bisciotti and the Ravens in family circles. That talk accelerated in the year 2000 when Bisciotti purchased 49% of the Ravens. It catapulted in 2004 when he purchased the remaining 51% and became the majority owner. While these developments struck me as interesting, I couldn’t say that I was especially excited about it. Since the Irish side of my family is so large, I had never met Steve Bisciotti until 2012. That was at a family funeral Mass for Patricia Bisciotti’s sister, Constance Davis, at St. Anastasia’s church in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. It was in that church that I was finally able to put a face to the name. Interestingly enough, this was about the time when Ravens linebacker Brandon Ayanbadejo was being castigated by a conservative Maryland legislator, Emmett Burns, Jr. (D-Baltimore Co.) for his open support of same sex marriage. (How mild this issue seems today when compared to the taking-a-knee-madness that plagued many teams, especially the Ravens, during playing of playing of the National Anthem.) Ayanbadejo, who is heterosexual, was not shy about his support of the marriage issue every chance he got. This fact bothered Burns, who wrote a letter to Steve Bisciotti and (then) Ravens President Dick Cass asking that Ayanbedejo be silenced. The Democrat legislator, according to Baltimore’s Metro Weekly, wanted the Ravens to “inhibit” Ayanbadejo and “take the necessary actions,” to have the linebacker “cease and desist” his public support. According to Ayanbedejo, Cass and Bisciotti had a talk about Burns’ letter and then Cass approached him with some words of encouragement, telling him first of all that we [the Ravens] support the right to freedom of speech under the First Amendment.” Ayanbadejo then went on to say that Cass told him, “We’re in support of you and it’s good that you’re able to voice your opinion and say how you feel. We’re not an organization that discriminates.” When I read about this controversy, I knew that second cousin Steve Bisciotti had inherited his father’s benevolent generosity of spirit. I immediately wrote a column about it for the Huff Post, praising my second cousin to the skies, even though I had never met him. (As it turned out, my godmother had read the piece and expressed her appreciation.) Although I had never met Steve Bisciotti, I did know his father. As a college student in Maryland, I visited Steve Bisciotti’s father, Bernie Bisciotti (Uncle Bernie) in a Baltimore hospital with my own father, Thomas C. when Bernie was fighting terminal leukemia. Our visit lasted over an hour, but this was enough time to see that Bernie Bisciotti was an empathetic gentle giant of a man. As a nervous 19 year old, on the verge of doing alternate service as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War, I was used to untoward looks and disapproving comments from unexpected quarters, especially from disgruntled uncles (the aunts were far more gracious) who saw me as nothing more than a draft dodger. But this was not the case with Uncle Bernie. In fact, the very opposite of this was true; Uncle Bernie wasn’t one to discriminate. The fact that he seemed so calm and peaceful when he knew he was going to die also impressed me as something very rare. The man, so close to death, seemed happier than ever. Finding Steve Bisciotti standing by himself after the funeral Mass in the church drinking his trademark bottled water seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to tell him about my meeting with his father so many years ago. I went over and introduced myself and reminded him that his mother was my godmother, and then recounted my hospital visit with his father. He smiled and listened politely; at the mention of his father, Bernie, he showed an even greater interest. I may have mentioned my Huff Post piece about the Ravens but by then our connection seemed to be fading. Since I had come late to the funeral, perhaps the multitudes of friends and cousins in the church had already bent his ear into a state of total exhaustion. In any event, I returned to my pew feeling a sense of disappointment. It was as if I was not a family member but a casual friend of a family member. I thought of H.L. Mencken’s comment. “Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.” The following year, 2013, he would see his team, the Ravens, win the Super Bowl. At home in front of the television set I saw my godmother at the conclusion of the game walk out into the middle of the field in a rain of confetti and bombast. There she was, the woman whose smiling face that can still be seen in old family 8mm films stepping out of a car and entering my family’s house on Bond Avenue in Drexel Hill, a coonskin Davy Crockett hat on my head. There she was in the national limelight. “That’s my Aunt Pat,” I told the people watching the game with me. “My godmother has confetti in her eyes!” Steve Biscotti was right beside her in center field, hugging and smiling. After the disappointing experience at the funeral, I wondered if I was expecting too much from a man I’d never really known except through family talk. Did my expectations come from having seen his father so close to death, a scene that Steve Bisciotti didn’t see because he was a little boy at the time? Writing and publishing the Huff Post piece also caused me to expect more. In the end, I decided it was a second cousin thing. Second cousins rarely rate; they are bottom of the totem pole people. Historically, they might be compared to third and fourth class Titanic passengers. The proof of this came after the funeral when it was it was stated through word of mouth that only first cousins were invited to the funeral luncheon. Second cousins and others had to fend for themselves (check out those nearby restaurants, etc.) I’ve encountered this once or twice before on my mother’s side of the family. The Irish seem especially prone to weird bouts of exclusivity. Certainly, inviting second cousins to the funeral luncheon was a very affordable thing in this case, given the success story mentioned above. Throughout my life I’ve been to funerals both high and low. Even at the low ones or funerals for very poor people, there were always a few sandwiches afterwards and a cup of coffee Listen up all Ye Wealthy: It’s about the camaraderie as much as it is about the food! After the funeral, my interest in football went up a notch but it didn’t last long. It’s still a beastly sport although the smell of autumn and the sound of cow bells when a football game is being played can be a wonderful thing. And football parties are great as an excuse to have a party. They’re fun, especially when nobody is watching the game but engaged in conversations with their backs to the TV. One more thing: Sometime after the funeral I went home and Googled Steve Biscotti’s name, having heard something about the beauty of his huge estate on Maryland’s Severn River. When I spotted a picture of the residence, I thought I’d gotten one of the Royal Family’s palaces in England by mistake. It was breathtaking, as they say.

LIVE NATION IN PHILADELPHIA

On December 6, 1969, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones looked out over the massive crowd at California’s Altamont Speedway and saw the concert security staff, the Hell’s Angels, beating up an audience member. The Angels, who were paid in beer rather than cash to act as security that day, had apprehended a man named Meredith Hunter, 27, who attempted to approach the stage. When Hunter attempted to approach the stage a second time, this time with a revolver in view, he was beaten by the Angels and then stabbed to death by a Hell’s Angel named Alan Passaro. The melee, which was captured on film (and later incorporated in the film, ‘Gimme Shelter,’ caused a nervous Jagger to announce, “People, people, let’s be cool!” The murder of Hunter would come to be known as Rock’n Roll’s Darkest Day, officially marking the end of the 1960’s peace and love era which had its peak expression only months before at Woodstock. The 1969 tragedy at Altamont has arguably been superseded in darkness by the troubling developments at Live Nation Entertainment – which bills itself as “the world’s leading live entertainment company.” The company’s recent production of the Astroworld Festival in Houston on November 2 saw 13 people killed and 300 injured when a crowd surge during the concert caused concertgoers to trample one another. Live Nation has a history of safety violations over the past decade. The massive concert enterprise also seems to thrive best in large Democrat-controlled cities where the urban landscape cultivates its own style of rough and tumble audiences and artists (Christian conservative rappers like Bryson Gray need not apply), especially artists who not so long ago specialized in ‘F—k Trump’ lyrics.) Consider Live Nation’s track record in Philadelphia. Philadelphia’s annual 2-day Labor Day concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, sponsored by Live Nation, has been drawing thousands of people since its inception 8 seasons ago. Called "Made in America" (MIA), when the festival began it was briefly criticized for being “too white” and not diverse enough. Since that first concert, organizers have gone to extreme lengths to balance the equation. Rap and hip hop became an essential part—the majority part-- of the Parkway concerts but it was (and is) the rap and hip hop of the woke variety that is promoted by CNN. Live Nation’s contention that the MIA festival also includes pop and electronic music has always been an exaggeration. While this latter category of music is given a cursory acknowledgment on stage, the bulk of MIA concerts on the Parkway (curated by Jay-Z) feature such artists as Meek Mill, Jay-Z, Justin Bieber, Lil Baby and a host of other rappers. Proceeds for Philadelphia’s 2021 MIA festival went to the ACLU with other proceeds going to The Reform Alliance -- a left progressive organization intent on eliminating “oppressive” probation, parole and bail issues. While some of the Alliance’s concerns might need looking into, the bulk of the organization’s focus is aligned with the progressive policies of Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner. Philadelphia has one of the highest rates of gun violence in the nation. The goal of The Reform Alliance is the replacement of America’s justice system “with a restorative system that is fair, accountable and invested in rehabilitation, support and wellbeing.” All of this sounds quite benign on the surface but it is also suggestive that these grand “restorative systems” will end up in the hands of radical left. As of this writing, The Reform Alliance has certainly failed in one of its main goals: to “make communities safer and stronger.” Keep in mind that MIA organizers boasted that they were able to collect thousands of signatures in support of the Alliance during the 2021 festival. Supporting The Reform Alliance, of course, means supporting Larry Krasner. There was a time when the ACLU did some good things for the American citizenry, but that "do good" era is certainly over. The ACLU in 2021 mirrors Marxist/Communist models with a social agenda reflecting the beliefs and convictions of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and champions positions and causes that are clearly antithetical to what has been called the American Way. One aim of the ACLU in 2021 seems to be the total remake of American society -- as explained quite powerfully in Mark Levin’s book, American Marxism. Live Nation’s MIA concerts transform Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway into a street version of Astroworld with overflow crowds that often spill out into the surrounding neighborhoods. At one MIA concert several years ago, neighbors in the Art Museum area complained of drunk and drugged-out MIA attendees urinating or vomiting on their cars and property. Mayor Jim Kenney, who loves these outdoor city extravaganzas because they bring a lot of money into the city, has always turned a deaf ear to the residents of high-rise condos along the Parkway who have complained about the mayhem and noise created by MIA. Many Parkway residents leave the city every Labor Day weekend as Live Nation invades Philadelphia. The city bends over backwards to accommodate MIA, rearranging or canceling bus routes, restricting parking and blocking off major and minor streets. It’s really a case of Live Nation and MIA holding the city hostage for two days. The tragedy at Astroworld, highlights the lethal mix of dark woke rap with Live Nation’s insatiable hunger for bigger and better concerts. It was Astroworld’s star performer, Travis Scott, after all, who announced at one of his concerts in 2015 for fans to jump the security barricades and follow their passion. “There’s not enough security to stop them all from hopping the fence,” he told the crowd. For that stunt, Scott, aka Jacques Bermon Webster, was sentenced to 1 year of court supervision after pleading guilty to reckless conduct charges. The rapper also made headlines that same year for kicking a cameraman off his stage. At the ill-fated 2021 Houston concert, Politifact reported that Travis Scott preformed for 37 minutes “as a mass causality unfolded.” In 1969, Mick Jagger, claiming he never knew the fatal stabbing of Meredith Hunter was taking place, kept on singing “Under My Thumb.” Scott’s Astroworld concert, or a trip to its theatrical stage name, Utopia Mountain, cost fans $350 a ticket (resellers got $993.00 per ticket). At this year’s Astroworld event, fans rushed the security barricades, knocking them over in a mad rush. Some saw this as evidence that Scott’s concert was "Satanic," although this charge was later lampooned in the press as absurd. Travis Scott has offered his condolences to the loved ones of the people who died. “I’m absolutely devastated by what took place last night,” he’s on record as saying. “My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival.” Scott then offered to cover the victims’ funeral expenses. Live Nation stated that it was "heartbroken for those lost and impacted at Astroworld.” Meanwhile, Philadelphia has its eyes set on the 2022 MIA Parkway concert when residents of the Parkway and the Museum area will either leave town or weather the two-day musical lockdown when the city is held hostage once again. You can be sure that the ACLU and The Reform Alliance will be there with their petitions and sign-in sheets, bringing in the masses -- while from behind the microphone audiences will hear the latest woke rap sounds of "F—k Trump" or whoever else happens to be on the Left’s current enemies list. One thing is certain: Philadelphia’s MIA crowds will never shout “F--k Krasner.”