Woke Philadelphia Inquirer Journalists

City Safari: AWAKE, WOKE, And WOKEN: When Free Speech Is Broken.

Wed, Jun 17, 2020

By Thom Nickels

Contributing Editor    

The political forces of Leftist hypersensitivity have had quite a month in Philadelphia. 

              An award winning top editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Stan Wischnowski, resigned his post after a small band of ‘woke’ journalists in the newsroom objected to his mislabeling a headline on an Inga Saffron architecture column about damaging buildings in the name of social justice.  

     Wischnowski was the editor responsible for the Inquirer’s Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a 2011series on violence in Philadelphia Public schools. He was raked over the coals for his "Buildings Matter, Too” headline, a headline, according to woke critics that put human lives on a par with bricks and mortar.  Wischnowski and two other Inquirer editors wrote a signed apology to readers and staff and then Wischnowski abruptly resigned.  

     Inquirer publisher Lisa Hughes, the first woman publisher in the newspaper’s almost 200 year history, delivered her own missive to readers in which she thanked Wischnowski for his service and then in the next breath stated that the Inquirer was committed to finding an editor who "understands the diversity of the communities we serve.

    In one fell swoop Wischonowski’s twenty years at The Inquirerwas reduced to rubble. He was taken down like a statue: statues or people, it makes little difference to the American Taliban.  

     Wischonoswki’s resignation is another example of the "gotcha” culture that’s filled with micro-aggression landmines and that led to Hilary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.    

     The mood at the Inquirerwas set sometime before the offending headline came into being. That’s when Wischonoswki held a ZOOM meeting with Inquirer staff (numbering over 200). Reports indicate that during the meeting the editor was put on the defensive about the racial and gender mix of the newsroom. Dissatisfied with Wischonoswki’s answers during the meeting, about 50 woke Inquirer staffers immediately got to work and signed an open letter to the editor demanding that the newspaper accede to their demands. 

  "We’re tired of shouldering the burden of dragging this 200 year old institution kicking and screaming into a more equitable age,” wrote Inquirer columnist Jenice Armstrong who numbered herself among the signers. 

      Another woke woman staffer wrote, "There is much within the Inquirer that still needs to change.” 

   The Inquirerfiasco came on the heels of a big woke moment at The New York Times.A fewstaffers there were angry about an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) and made the claim that its publication threatened their fragile lives.

Reasonmagazine reported that, "They [woke ones} specifically chose ‘running this puts black Times staff in danger’ as their mantra because it invokes workplace safety. When the authority figure—the boss, the principal, the government—is responsible for ensuring safety, and safety is broadly defined as not merely protection from literal physical violence but also the fostering of emotional comfort, norms of classical liberalism will suffer. The Times conflict ended with opinion page chief James Bennet out of his job.”

              Journalism, like most of the theater world, has become increasingly political in Philadelphia. A journalist without a left wing bias is likely to find it harder going in Philadelphia, as would a theatre company that did not automatically sympathize with left wing causes. A conservative voice may appear periodically in Philadelphia Magazinebut it would never truly become part of the magazine unlike radical left voices, which the magazine seems to celebrate.

              There’s even less chance that a conservative voice would make it into the orbits of Philly Voice, Billy Pennand The Philadelphia Weekly, where the woke mentality reigns supreme. 

    

     When Mayor Kenney removed the statue of Frank Rizzo in the dead of night, he was following the example of Catherine Pugh, former mayor of Baltimore who made good on her 2017 pledge to remove Confederate statues in Baltimore. Former Mayor Pugh did not want the statues destroyed but moved to a Confederate cemetery while some Baltimore City Council members called for their complete destruction. The riots and looting in Center City was, of course, the catalyst in having the Zenos Frudakis statue removed and put into storage. 

   

       A columnist for Philadelphia Magazine online, a writer named Queen Muse, wrote a piece entitled, "Mayor Kenney, Tear Down the Rizzo Statue Right Now.” 

    Muse castigated Frank Rizzo for removing MOVE from an apartment building in Powelton Village way back in 1978. 

      Muse was not around during the time of MOVE to know that MOVE in the late 1970s had all of West Philadelphia up in arms, white and black neighbors alike. For most people at that time being against MOVE was not a racial thing but a peace and serenity issue. The group’s round the clock bullhorn rants not only disturbed the peace, but in many instances directed threats at neighbors. 

Several times MOVE raided gay rights lectures at the University of Pennsylvania sponsored by Gays at Penn. The group crashed the stage, chased the speaker away and took to the podium uttering expletives about homosexuality and the so-called homosexual life style. In both instances they forced the lecture to shut down as audience members nervously headed towards the door.  

              Revisionist "revolutionary” history has conveniently forgotten this part of MOVE’s history. The passage of time has romanticized MOVE and glossed over many unpleasant realities. 

     Queen Muse gets it wrong again when she writes about Frank Rizzo’s 1980 encounter with KYW-TV News Anchorman Stan Bohrman outside the mayor’s home in Chestnut Hill.

       Muse reports that Rizzo "once called a news reporter a ‘crumb bum’ and threatened to smash a camera over his head for merely doing his job.” The truth is that Bohrman and his camera crew parked an unmarked KYW news van down the street from Rizzo’s house for more than three hours, in effect stalking him. After local police spotted the van and informed the former mayor of its existence, they confronted Bohrman. "We want to know who you are and what you are doing up here,” an annoyed Rizzo says.  In a video documenting the incident, Bohrman holds up his press pass as if that were a pass to stalking the former mayor in an unmarked vehicle. Rizzo, in a rage, destroys a camera and the film goes blank but Bohrman, still adamant for a story, returns another day and stalks Rizzo again as he walks his dog in front of his house. Bohrman sticks a microphone in Rizzo’s face and demands that he answer a few questions. 

Rizzo doesn’t want to talk and winds calling him a "crumb bum yellow sneak,” and more. 

    When Bohrman complains to Police Commissioner Morton Solomon, Solomon gives Bohrman a blank stare as Bohrman babbles on about his press pass, as if a press pass gave a journalist permission to stalk people in any manner whatsoever. (I’m reminded of the paparazzi photo journalists who stalked Princess Diana in 1997 in a speeding car causing Diana’s car to crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris.)  

    First it was the Rizzo statue, then it was the Rizzo mural. 

     On June 3, Mural Arts Philadelphia issued the following statement:

     We do not believe the mural can play a role in healing and supporting dialogue, but rather it has become a painful reminder for many of the former Mayor’s legacy, and only adds to the pain and anger.We do not believe the maintenance and repair of the Rizzo mural is consistent with our mission. We think it is time for the mural to be decommissioned, and would support a unifying piece of public art in its place.

      I’ve interviewed Jane Golden of the Mural Arts Philadelphia many times throughout the years. These interviews have always been enjoyable and enriching. When I heard that MAP was disavowing any further connection to the much-beleaguered Frank Rizzo mural in South Philadelphia, I felt a tinge of sadness. Throughout the years whenever I’d tour the latest MAP murals with Jane Golden we would usually end the tour with an update on the Rizzo mural: how was it faring? Were people who hated Rizzo leaving it alone? In most cases, I would hear that people were not leaving it alone. 

      In the best good humor that Jane Golden could muster, she always tried to mitigate the offenses committed against the mural, but I could plainly see the writing on the wall. The mural’s days were numbered.  

Les Deplorables Theatre Company (of Philadelphia)  

An intelligent alternative to Philadelphia's Leftist theater scene. 

Open the Churches

City Safari:The Restoration Of St. Fergie’s Whilst Much Of The Church Remains Gated

Fergie Carey, owner of four restaurant/bars in the city

Wed, Jun 10, 2020

By Thom Nickels

Contributing Editor

 ‘Up in the air’ is an apt description of the situation when it comes to the opening of Philadelphia’s restaurants and bars after the worst of the covid-19 pandemic.

         For Fergie Carey, owner of four restaurant/bars in the city, including the famous Fergie’s Pub at 1214 Sansom Street, the lockdown has been a time to spend time with his family. "I have dinner with my family every night. We watch movies, we play games.” He describes his time away from the restaurant scene, especially Fergie’s Pub, as not bad at all. 

         Still, having four restaurants floating in the sea of Non-Being, is worrisome. Fergie says he’s used much of the virus sabbatical to refurbish and redo all of the woodwork inside the pub. "We’ve had all the floors refinished and the stairs refinished and the bar top refinished. The place has never been as clean in 26 years. The wood looks amazing. People will come back, walk in and say, "Wow, look at this!”

         Fergie recalls what it was like back on March 12. 

         "I woke up on March 12 and heard that the NBA had cancelled its entire season. Then they cancelled hockey. I thought Oh my God, this is serious, this is huge.” He says he contacted his partners and managers and told them to put a stop to spending money. Saint Patrick’s Day was coming up, the biggest restaurant bar time of the year for the Fergie Center City empire. "We were already in the works,” he said. "We put in these huge liquor and beer orders.

 That Friday night, the 13^th, two great bands that we had scheduled to appear at the pub, cancelled. One band held out but I think the band’s family members told them that they shouldn’t be doing the gig, so they backed out. It was also karaoke night, a big draw. "

         Business that night was just one quarter of what it normally would have been leading up to Saint Patrick’s Day. Saturday night was the same. 

         "I got nervous when the pub wasn’t busy and I got nervous when it was. I kept thinking, ‘Is this safe? What do we do?’”

         Turns out he and his partners opted to close Fergie’s and the three other businesses. The very next day a shutdown was ordered so he was ahead of the curve by hours.

         Fergie says that the thought of going back to business with a shower curtain around each table, constant sanitization and little or no barstools in the pub doesn’t strike him as any sort of Utopia. ‘Basically to go back to only 25 percent of your business with a lot of restrictions and a lot of extra costs, well….” 

         He lets the sentence drift off, then repeats a news headline he read over the last several weeks: "Will the virus kill karaoke and open mike?”

         His four restaurants were able to survive the lockdown thanks to the Payroll Protection Program, a so-called forgivable loan that allows employers to pay their employees when they are not able to work. The generous program provides two and a half times the amount of the monthly payroll with the stipulation that 75 per cent of it be spent on the payroll with the remaining 25 percent going towards rent and utilities. 

         "People are still making money,” Fergie adds, "It doesn’t feel like a Depression.”

         On June 5, according to Governor Wolf’s reopening plan, Philadelphia County will move into the so-called yellow zone, which does not allow restaurants and bars to open. Although the pub has been doing a brisk take out delivery service since the lockdown, Fergie wants to increase take-out to his other three businesses.

         His other plans include booking musicians to perform on the roof of the Pub to entertain guests on the street below. That plan is partially contingent on the city’s willingness to follow through on a plan to close off sections of Samson Street to traffic so that area restaurants can create a Tented Village.

         "Our own business association and the Mid-Town Village Merchants Association has been looking into this idea with some City Council people,” Fergie said. "We’re thinking that the block of Samson between 12^thand Juniper and 13^thbetween Walnut and Chestnut could become this Tented Village with picnic tables. This is the way we are going to survive. This could really turn into something beautiful. We could make it fun and have it as our fall festival every year. Of course, a thing like this could become too popular and attract 25,000 people.”  

            

         In an unexpected move on May 26, preempting June 5 as Philadelphia’s entry into the yellow zone, the Philadelphia Business Journalreported that the City of Philadelphia would allow mobile food vendors and restaurants to offer walk-up ordering, "effective immediately.” 

       

        "Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney amended business closure and stay-at-home orders this week, which will permit up to 10 people to line up to order at restaurants and food establishments. Dine-in service is still prohibited, and face coverings and social distancing guidelines are required, Kenney said,” The Journalreported.   

            Although Fergie looks forward to getting back on his feet, his mind drifts back to the pub’s ever popular Friday karaoke nights, when "there were three guys on stage and everyone who wants to sing, sings to a packed house. Will we ever get back to that again?”   

                                               

What about Churches?

         Before the police brutality demonstrations across the nation devolved into mayhem, looting and destruction, in Dallas,Texas, a large group of Catholics protested weekly outside the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe. They prayed the rosary and protested the bishop’s decision in that city to keep Catholic churches closed.

  

           Opinion in the Catholic World is divided on the subject. On one hand you have people like Fr. James Martin, editor-at-large of AmericaMagazine—a liberal Catholic magazine that sometimes reads like The Guardian-- who calls for caution when it comes to reopening churches. Fr. Martin, an advisor to Pope Francis, takes the opposite view of more traditional Catholics who feel that the supernatural always comes before the natural, and that the government should not be able to tell bishops what to do. Traditional Catholics cite Saint Ambrose of Milan who challenged the Roman Emperor Theodosius (378-392) after the latter slaughtered 7,000 people. Ambrose insisted that the Emperor do public penance before returning to church services, so the Emperor shed his royal robes in the cathedral and appeared before Ambrose as his humble servant.  

           Many Christians resent the fact that churches were perceived as non-essential by the government.  They believe that they had no say in their governance and say that government needs to be responsive to the will of the people.  The lockdown, they claim, has created a TSA all over the place. Catholics especially feel that their church leaders, the bishops, should have been consulted before the lockdown.

Fr. James Martin, Full Swing Novus Ordo

           Dr. Taylor Marshall, a convert from the Episcopal Church, and a renowned You Tube personality, feels that U.S. Catholic bishops have taken the low road of blind obedience to the powers that be. "Some of them are saying: Catholic Church, non-essential while Sam’s Club, grocery stores, are all essential. Liquor stores are essential, Planned Parenthood is essential, but the Church is not essential. That’s wrong.”

            CNN, however, managed to find a Catholic priest who addressed President Trump’s (non-binding) Executive Order of May 22, calling on all Churches to re-open while threatening to overrule any state authority that attempted to defy him.  

            "Priests with whom I live have blessed the sick and dying in hospitals and nursing homes. We have also celebrated virtual Masses and prayer services for countless of the faithful,” said Fr. Edward Beck wrote on May 23^rd.

In March,  The Guardianreported:  "The day after Pope Francis delivered a blessing in an empty St Peter’s Square, watched on television by an estimated 11 million people, Sunday services were held at some of Russia’s largest religious sites after Orthodox church leaders said they were an expression of religious freedom. Dozens of parishioners, many of them elderly, crowded into Kazan Cathedral in St Petersburg to receive communion.”

           Wherever you stand on the issue, the question many are asking is: What would a reopened Catholic Church look like?

           A survey of several Catholic churches online, spelled out the plan.

           Parishioners would be advised to stay home and not to attend Mass if they exhibited signs of the virus or if they were sick.

           There would only be one entry to the church. Everyone entering would be greeted by an usher who would show you your seat, all seats having been mapped out beforehand in acceptable social distance patterns. At the Sign of Peace there would be no hugging, (generally a form of liturgical abuse) but only waving and verbal greetings. An elaborate RSVP system would be set in place whereby parishioners would select their Mass time, stating the number of people in their party. In case of an overflow of Mass requests, pop up Masses would be added to the Sunday roster.

           Communion would be distributed under one form only: the host. Communion in hand would be the normal practice here. Holy water and baptismal fonts would not be in use. Hymnals would not be made available. One Catholic parish suggested that worshippers access online worship aids or bring their own worship book. Confession would be by appointment only.

            Of course, all these well thought out plans could be mote if civil unrest emerges again and the nation finds itself in another lockdown

Mayor Kenney, the Shame of Philadelphia

City Safari: Philadelphia Sees Little Lockdown During Its Pandemic Of Violence, Looting And Destruction

Philadelphia sees little lockdown during its pandemic of violence, looting and destruction

Wed, Jun 03, 2020

By Thom Nickels

Contributing Editor

A video of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis was posted on Facebook before the ensuing protests and riots in Philadelphia and many other cities. Like many people, I watched the video barely believing what I was seeing: A man begging for his life, asking to be allowed to breathe as a police officer (he hardly deserves the title) wedged his leg against the man’s neck as three fellow officers, accomplices essentially, observed the goings on with relative indifference. At a certain point one officer walked away from the scene, his body language (hands on his hips) indicating someone who was very nervous about what was taking place. I didn’t finish watching the film. Like those shocking videos of Islamist jihad beheadings in the desert, sometimes you have to turn them off.

The street protests in the beginning were decent demonstrations although anyone familiar with protest culture today realizes that there’s always an undercurrent of violence ready to emerge.

As the protests grew one could feel the emerging shadow of Antifa and other demonic forces gaining strength. I asked myself: How long would it be before the usual suspects infiltrated the demonstrations and put their own stamp on it?

The peaceful protests did turn violent. Part of the reason they turned violent can be attributed to the unnecessary national lockdown over covid-19. The lockdown contributed to feelings of massive feelings of frustration. It laid the groundwork. For three months all CNN and the corporate media could talk about was the virus and how everyone was on the verge of death.

 It saturated our consciousness; defined our life, limited our movements. Then we witnessed—and are still witnessing--the quarantine of the healthy rather than a quarantine of the sick. Overnight it seemed we had all become prisoners and lost our freedoms.

The repression of our freedoms in the name of health set the ‘social’ water on a high boil. The rapid pace of the peaceful-to-rioting protests reminded me of how an obscure virus in China so swiftly turned into a global pandemic. The two scenarios seem linked in a strange way…in a way that I cannot grasp.

The ugly facts of Floyd’s murder captured the attention (and heart) of everyone. Even staunch defenders of the police seemed to take pause and rethink everything they thought they knew about racial injustice. Before the violence it was a perfect moment for social change.

Like a viral fever the violence spread everywhere and did its damage. As the names of cities began to pile up—Los Angeles, New York, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia—and the list of damages and destroyed properties grew, the more Floyd’s name seemed to recede into the background. The violence-- even as Floyd’s own brother was calling for the rioters to stay calm--was taking over and replacing Floyd’s murder and memory with another atrocity.

The riots, in effect, tarnished and dishonored Floyd. And they are still doing that.

I walked through Center City and surveyed the damage caused by the riots and looting. Many Center City residents had the same idea and were taking photographs of their beloved city in tatters. Expletives spray painted on the fronts and sides of old buildings like the Belgravia on Walnut Street, WFSF bank were common. ATMs were hammered in; Wells Fargo Bank was plastered with boards. The CVS near Rittenhouse Square had just enough glass punched out of its front window so that looters could crawl inside and topple over merchandise in the aisles.

I started my walk up Chestnut Street but couldn’t turn on Walnut because police had the area blocked off. The high-rise fire from the night before was still causing complications. 

Onlookers strained their necks to see the burned-out tops of buildings, many taking photos. I detoured down Locust passing Rouge which was serving food and drinks outdoors, a line of takers waiting in line to order. Walking along Locust the scene was more normal but that changed when I was able to finally make a turn on Walnut.

I passed a clothing store with a tiny side window broken through revealing an accessible rack of expensive sneakers. Whoever broke the window wanting to snatch the sneakers had apparently been apprehended in the knick of time.

Some stores were left untouched. Barnes and Noble, for instance, didn’t have a scratch on it—looters do not like to read—and Brooks Brothers’ front door had just one small spider webbed scar, not quite broken glass. The looters must have changed their minds when they spotted all those bow ties. The expensive athletic and sneaker store next to Brooks Brothers, North Point, was a different story: it was boarded up.

I watched as armies of bike cops rode in tandem up and down the streets, but there were no looters for them to take note of. Center City volunteers carried buckets and brooms and began the work of scrubbing away the spray-painted expletives and hollow political slogans. It was a positive sight.

I headed down East Market Street via Saint John the Evangelist Church on 13^th Street, but since churches do not sell sneakers, the church and its statues were left unharmed, though that was not the case in Washington DC where the Church of the Presidents, Saint John’s, was set on fire (and the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King spoke, vandalized).

Macy’s, which had been attacked hours before, showed no signs of a break-in (the store has been boarded up since the virus lockdown). Along Market Street, one of Century 21’s windows had been smashed as well as the front windows of other stores.

For three days the looters ran willy-nilly throughout the city. Police seemed to be operating with their hands tied, arresting only a few people. At the height of the drama, rather than use tear gas or rubber bullets, it seemed that the police had instituted a hands off policy. Online videos showed looters demolishing police cars and setting them on fire as officers ran away like scared rabbits. In one video, 6 or 7 police cars were destroyed as police stood by like hand wringing church ladies. Do videos lie? The police seemed to be holding themselves back. As I played and replayed the video, I noticed a pattern.

Every city that had been hit with looter violence is one that has a Democratic mayor. As a registered Democrat, I say this with some sadness. Progressive Democratic politics is unusually politically correct. In almost every instance, all of the Democratic mayors did as Mayor Kenney did: they adopted a watch and wait attitude, using no tear gas or effective crowd control measures (prior to the writing of this story,) for fear of alienating the mob and possibly killing someone. This would put the name of their city on the top of CCN news, a "municipal executor” no better than the officer who killed George Floyd.

All the Democratic mayors seemed to be holding back because they feared being labeled racists if they employed harsh tactics to deal with the looters.

After my walk through Center City, I headed home to my neighborhood in Fishtown and Port Richmond to discover that my own area had been attacked. A string of stores along Aramingo Avenue had been vandalized, as were several stores in my local shopping center. My local WAWA, a stone’s throw away from my house, had all of its windows shattered. The IGA supermarket had also been hit, as well as another athletic sports wear and sneaker store near the IGA.

The terrorists then moved up and down Aramingo Ave. and farther into Kensington.

Before press time, the looters attacked Jefferson Hospital’s Neuro Clinic in Center City.

During all of this, our weak mayor seemed to vascilate, afraid to protect the citizens of Philadelphia and their property from destruction by coming down hard on the looters. He seemed to be sitting back with his head in the sand, afraid to act for fear of offending the rioters.

The price of waiting to act can be disastrous. The businesses along Chestnut and Walnut Street, already hurting because of the lockdown, now have to deal with the aftermath of terrorism. There’s no guarantee that these businesses are going to want to stay in Philadelphia when (and if) the smoke clears. If riots and looting are the future of big cities in America, then it would behoove these businesses to move to safer, smaller environments.

On June 1, when I thought that the looting and mayhem was over, there was more trouble along the Ben Franklin Bridge and in my own neighborhood.

The looters and terrorists, in the end, have accomplished nothing. They have murdered George Floyd a second time.

They have also all but guaranteed the reelection of Donald Trump this November.