Shallow | Center

Way to Go, Guys

 BY SUSPENDING Don Imus for two weeks, CBS and NBC have sent a clear message.

That message is: Racism is fine as long as no one complains about it.

Imus's Klan-like screed about Rutgers's women's basketball team, broadcast nationally last week, would have gotten a lesser-rated jock an immediate pink slip. Imus, though, draws listeners and viewers, and so it was only well after the public condemnation rolled in that his bosses acted. In waiting so long, they gave the impression that they are concerned not that their employee polluted the airwaves with racist drivel, but that that they might lose revenue because of it.

Which makes CBS and NBC as culpable as Imus, especially considering that this isn't the first time that his on-air commentary crossed the line that separates offensive from unacceptable.

You Go, Girls

POLITICALLY, NANCY Pelosi hasn't impressed me much. Maybe I haven't been paying sufficient attention -- a real possibility -- but I have a greater sense of what she's against than what she's for. As a speaker, she delivers her thoughts in a too-deliberate style that makes me feel I'm being lectured at instead of inspired. But as the father of daughters, I couldn't be happier about her ascendancy to the speakership of the U.S. House. I want my girls to grow up knowing that whatever they wish to do, whoever they wish to be, is there for the taking, and having role models  and trailblazers will only help that. Astoundingly, we as a culture are still struggling with how to ensure that all people, regardless of gender, race, or religion, are treated equally. Glass ceilings still exist. Whether Pelosi's tenure is lengthy or short-lived, effective or forgettable, I'm grateful to her and the House for the crack that's been made in the ceiling.

What, They Couldn't Find a Middle-Aged Guy to Talk About His Prostate Acting Up?

THE BEST person-on-the-street quote of the new year is courtesy the Inquirer, which offers this in its obligatory warm-winter front-page story today:

"I just don't like it," complained Lucille Sisti, 63, a retired schoolteacher from Drexel Hill who was lunching in West Philadelphia yesterday. "I have hot flashes and I need cold."

I guarantee you someone on the desk almost peed himself laughing when he read that quote last night.

Presenting the Insane Clown Posse

MAYBE THERE'S a reason so many state capitals are located in not-so-major cities. Cities such as Albany and Trenton and Annapolis and Dover, to cite just a few examples, instead of New York and Newark and Baltimore and Wilmington, respectively. And that's just in the Northeast. Hmmm ... Have I left any capital out? Ah, yes, Harrisburg, site of my very own commonwealth's long-running clown show. After the pay-raise fiasco of last year, one can conclude only that Pennsylvania's forefathers wanted to keep prying media eyes out of the state's nefariously run affairs, and so seated the capital not in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, but in the center of nowhere, making government appear remote and insignificant and thus not worth following.

No News Would Have Been Bad News

REGARDLESS OF how you feel about their politics, the news that the management and editorial staffs of the Inquirer and the Daily News are likely going to settle their differences without a strike is something every Philadelphian should applaud. There is simply no other media outlet that covers this region's happenings with the breadth and depth of these papers. Even now, in their weakened state, hobbled by staff cuts and an uncertain advertising environment, they remain the only game in town for anything substantive about the area. A strike would have been ruinous, chasing even more readers to other, less informative media outlets. The Inky and DN have a lot of work to do in such critical areas as attracting and retaining younger viewers, and using the Web properly to disseminate news and opinions. A work stoppage would have crippled those efforts even before they got started.

Then, of course, there would have been the prospect of Jim Gardner reading the comics to viewers on the air. No one needed to see that.

Thank-You Note

BEFORE I succumb to the commercial orgy of the holidays, I wanted to take a minute to reflect on yesterday's theme of giving thanks. Rather than offer the usual litany of family and friends and such for which to be thankful -- and I am thankful for those things -- I can't help but think of the film version of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. The Mercury astronauts are meeting the media, and answering the reporters' inane questions with the typical pablum of public figures, when the earnest John Glenn is asked to comment. I don't recall the specific question, but Glenn, played to perfection by Ed Harris, eschews the cynical confidence of his colleagues and instead answers with genuine enthusiasm. "I just thank God I live in a country where the best and the finest in a man can be brought out," he says, and as the crowd starts to react with applause, he adds, "I really do." It's not a bad thing to be grateful for.

Troop Movement

THE PUNDITS of the second decade of the last century took in the unspeakable carnage that shattered Europe from 1914 to 1918 and solemnly declared the conflict that caused it to be "the war to end all wars." Sadly, they hadn't seen anything yet. In the nearly century that has elapsed since then, wars large and small, necessary and unjust, effective and foolish, have culled from the world's population a heartbreaking number of men, women, and children, laid waste to some of our greatest cities, liberated the oppressed, turned aside evil, and given rise to epic tragedy. And so the holiday that came out of the Great War, Armistice Day, marking the day the fighting stopped, had to be renamed. They were other wars to be fought, after all, and so November 11 became known in the United States as Veterans Day, to honor those Americans who fulfilled the highest possible duty to their country.

Ink Bomb

Once Again, the Speaker of the State House Can't Get Out of His Own Way

JOHN PERZEL, speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, is going to receive deserved flak for his whining, reported today, that state legislators shouldn't earn less than tattoo artists. (It reminds one, of course, of Babe Ruth's classic response when someone observed that he had been paid more than the President: "I had a better year than he did.") I'm not sure that calling your constituents overpaid is the best campaign strategy, but the speaker has a history of this sort of thing, complaining last year about "immigrant" cow milkers in Lancaster County supposedly earning $55,000.

High Steaks and the Low Road

Seriously -- Can't We All Just Get Along?

FIRST THINGS first: Joey Vento, the owner of Geno's Steaks, one of the lamer tourist-trap cheesesteak joints in our fair city, is not completely wrong in posting a sign that tells his customers: "This is America. When ordering speak English." Generations of immigrants -- including my ancestors -- have come to the United States and learned the language here in order to become functioning citizens. It's just the way it is, and as a nation, it makes us stronger to have a common language.

Bank Shot

Treasury Nominee Brings an Interesting Pedigree to the White House

Henry Paulson, nominated by President Bush yesterday to replace John Snow as Secretary of the Treasury, will be taking a massive pay cut once he's confirmed. Serving as CEO of Goldman Sachs, apparently, earns one much more scratch than trying to convince the nation's most gifted economists that huge tax cuts for the upper classes comprise sound policy at a time of burgeoning budget deficits. Anyway, according to an NPR report I heard last night, Paulson is one of Wall Street's most generous philanthropists, having donated more than $100 million to various charitable causes over the years. Among the organizations he supports are those advocating environmental conservation -- Paulson chairs the board of the Nature Conservancy -- and a group that promotes the advancement of women in the workplace. An ace businessman who's going to sacrifice major bucks to take a job in the public sector, and who thinks the environment and businesswomen are causes worth supporting? Maybe you should consider running, Mr. Paulson. And kudos to Mr. Bush for the pick, though of course with this White House you have to wonder whether anybody not named Cheney or Rove even gets his phone calls returned.