Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Two Tales Of A City . . . In A Single News Cycle

As local elites feverishly spackle lipstick on a Pittsburgh (in the largest-scale rehabilitative cosmetology project since Windows Me Windows Vista Sarah Palin), two strikingly different cities were in the news today.

One city, described by the affable mouthpiece of the region's ossified, ineffectual power structure Allegheny Conference, is a 'showcase' and 'case study' of a region that has 'really turned itself around and transformed itself' with 'one of the biggest economic comebacks in the United States in more than a half-century.' (quotations from linked video at The Comet)

The other city was depicted as no longer competent to arrange its own affairs, dysfunctional and insolvent, requiring (despite desperate pleas for a reprieve) imposition of a brutal financial reckoning by outside authorities.

Which city is Pittsburgh? It is difficult to believe that it can be both.

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