Philadelphia Coming Apart at Its Seams

I wonder if we could call Betsy Ross back from the dead, because we sure do need a good seamstress.

Philadelphia is fast becoming the City of Hateful Beatings, with the latest — known — random beating occurring the evening of Saturday, January 28, at 8:30 pm, at 15th and Chestnut.  This time the victim really was truly random — he wasn’t losing his temper, cursing and yelling and drawing the unfortunate attention of marauding savages; he was sitting in a cab at a red light when the savages dragged him out of the cab and started to wallop him.  When the cab driver jumped out of the cab to help, the savages started to beat him, too, until he started hitting back with his tire iron, which brought an end to the attack.

A victim hitting back, with a weapon no less.  Sounds like a very good idea.  Effective, too.

The cops caught the perpetrators a few minutes after they fled the scene and took them into custody.  The three teens, two aged 17, one aged 15, are facing aggravated assault charges, possibly even hate crime charges, too, because apparently the teens, who are black, were casting racial aspersions upon the victims, who were white, before and during the physical attack.

The City of Philadelphia is a bomb not waiting to explode but in the process of exploding.  The explosion has reached such traditionally safe and peaceful neighborhoods as Society Hill and Old City, and is now making its mushroom cloud way into the center of Center City during prime Saturday night time, when all kinds of nice people, of all classes and colors and nationalities and religions, come out for dinner, to hear music, to have drinks, or just to enjoy each other’s company by having a walk.  In peace. 

These people, all of them, deserve to be safe, they deserve to feel safe. 

Most people of all races, religions, and nationalities are good people.  They just want to be happy and live in peace with the people they love. 

Well, in Philadelphia, they better beware.  Because the other people who are not good, who are not happy, and who do not just want to live in peace with the people they love, are increasing in number and becoming much more aggressive.  And they are expressing their anger and hate, physically.

Mayor Nutter is well aware of this, and he seems to be trying to take action.  But he, and the citizens of Philadelphia, are in a real pickle.  Because what can be done? I don’t think any of us want to live in a society that has armed police officers on every street corner — or do we? What price safety? What price peace? It is a larger question, obviously, given the situation of foreign terrorism, and not one easily answered.   How really to combat domestic terrorism (which is what this new trend of crime amounts to)? Waging the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq sure didn’t help much, but could it have, had it been waged differently, with a bit more determination to fight back the way victims of violence and terrorism actually should fight back?

The way the innocent react — whether the Innocent is the United States against the Taliban and the countries that give safe harbor to terrorists or Philadelphia against marauding gangs — matters. 

It is relevant that the cabbie who managed to get to his trunk to grab his tire iron and started beating the beaters did indeed stop the beating.  In a matter of seconds.

Is it time for the Nice People to weapon up and fight back? Clearly.  Once the rotten people realize that they don’t rule the streets, that if they are going to hit or shoot or stab someone, they very well might get hit, shot, or stabbed back, they will stop hitting, shooting, and stabbing. 

Three cheers for that cab driver.  We all, citizens, Mayor Nutter, and the United States itself, have something to learn from him.

Joe Paterno: He Didn’t Dare Disturb the University

Joe Paterno, who, you must already know, died at age 85 January 22, has had a tremendous amount of news coverage since that death.  A ridiculous amount of coverage of his funeral, for example.  Maybe a reasonable amount of coverage considering his vast accomplishments in football coaching and charitable giving.  Most glaringly, however, is the shockingly little coverage of his failure to do the right thing when the right thing was most in need of being done.

And you already know what that is, too.  Call the police, er, the real police, not the University police, when Mike McQueary told him he saw Jerry Sandusky sodomizing a child in the football showers.  Paterno claimed that McQueary just claimed to have witnessed an “incident,” so somehow just reporting this to Athletic Director Tim Curley was enough action.  I don’t understand how, even if McQueary didn’t say the words “raping,” “sodomizing,” “having sex with,” “messing around with,” Paterno didn’t do a double take and say “WHAT??? What the hell do you mean, an incident? What the hell did you see???” and then called the police.  The Grand Jury in 2002 certainly had enough information to get a pretty darn good idea what had been going on in that shower.  And I don’t buy for one minute that this was the only peep of pedophilia Paterno had heard regarding Sandusky over all those years.

The reputation of Penn State was the most important issue.  Paterno was an integral part of the University Ubermensch, and he did his duty as such.  Keep it quiet, don’t say anything to anyone.  And so they did, they all kept it quiet and didn’t say anything to anyone, while God knows how many boys were raped, humiliated, and stripped of their innocence by a monstrous, raging pervert.

How can a man who colluded in a cover-up of the violation of children be so blindly hailed as a near saint? He may have been one of the greatest college football coaches in history, he may have been a great donator of money to charities, but when he had the chance to do the most important thing any of us could ever have a chance to do — protect a child who is being harmed — he passed.

The overwhelming questions should not have been so overwhelming if Paterno was the man who was so excessively celebrated this week; such a man should never have had any indecision on the subject of protecting children; such a man never should have made wrong decisions so in need of revisions that were, of course, never made, despite there having been the time.  Paterno should have dared to disturb the universe of Penn State, and it shouldn’t have been so daring a thing, to protect children.  At the end, when all the efforts at concealment, when all the hushes had proved in vain, when all the thin walls came crashing down to reveal the ugly truth, I wonder if it was worth it for Paterno, worth it after all.

Woops, I Tripped and Fell to Safety While the Other People Died; Or, Grumble Grumble, Your Mama!! Profiles in Cowardice and Bloviation

While the search continues for 21 still-missing passengers, and 11 people have been confirmed dead, Captain Schettino of the Costa Concordia is clinging to his claim of accidentally falling into a lifeboat (rather than running screaming into one while crying for his mommy), much the way his battered, terrorized, about-to-drown-to-death passengers must have clung to railings, listing walls, and each other in last desperate bids to stay alive.

This man’s cowardice and arrogance are astounding.  The reason behind the Costa Concordia’s catastrophe seems to be that the captain, and perhaps another crew member tickled with himself and his neat job and neat boat, wanted to draw closer to shore to “salute” someone, or blow the horn at their moms.  Captain Yellow, and, it would appear, most of his crew, clearly belong in jail, and will hopefully live the rest of their deservedly ruined lives far away from all life forms.  Including plants.  Any man or woman who is so cowardly as to abandon ship — especially within site and reach of land!! — while other men, women, and possibly children suck down ocean water cocktails is a danger to every human being in their vicinity and beyond, at sea or on land.   

There should be a price paid for cowardice.  And for other forms of bad behavior related to cowardice, like bullying and physical and verbal bloviating.  The latest murder in Philadelphia (or maybe not; there are a lot of murders in Philadelphia) took place on my street, a few blocks away from where I live.  Sounds like the typical post-2am drunkard situation, except this guy, Kevin Kless, 23, went beyond acting like a soaking drunkard: he bloviated and bullied, and he did it to the wrong group of men. 

I would think that most people, especially those who live in Philadelphia, know that you better watch who you tell off, how nasty you allow your lost temper to make you, and what exactly you allow to fly out of your mouth.  Because if you say the wrong thing the wrong way to the wrong person at the wrong time, you just might end up with a mighty ass whooping.  Which is exactly what happened to this foolish young man. 

Did he deserve to be beaten to death on the street for being a loud-mouth, bloviating wiseass? No.  And the three animals who killed him deserve to be in jail for the rest of their lousy savage lives (actually, I’d hang them, if it were up to me, but I’m one of the few people left who believes in actually executing those unfit for life among humanity, like child molesters and murderers). 

I am saying that it matters how a person behaves in the world, especially a dangerous world, which ours is.  It matters what you do.  It matters what you say.  It matters how you treat other people.  It matters on the street at 2am, on sinking ships, in terrorized skyscrapers, in the hallway at work.  And being scared of death or being drunk are not excuses for lousy behavior.  There is a price to be paid for breaching decency, breaching standards of man- and womanhood.  Sometimes that price is far too steep, as when a too-sauced bloviator tries to push around a pack of wild immorals on the hunt for fresh blood. 

Sometimes the price is too light, as with Captain Yellow, who may live a shamed life from now on, but will live, unlike at least 11 other people.  Of course, how Little Yellow will fair on the street is debatable.  Because there is that price to be paid, and often it is exacted by the street, on the street, rather than in the courtroom.