Trump Night in Pittsburgh

  The Post- Gazette won't print an article, editorial, or letter with the word "Jagoff" in it. 

   David Schribman the editor in chief finds it offensive. Or possibly he finds it beneath his dignity. 

   A beloved term from our local dialect - a phrase possibly deriding someone as "a masturbator". (That word passes Schribman's muster I imagine.) Why give it the silent treatment? 

   I guess it would be similar to allowing the use of "intercourse" but not "fuck"? 

    Grandmothers might be upset. 

     Hell, mothers might be upset. 

     Someone please find me a mother or grandmother in the entire Greater Pittsburgh area who'd be upset by the word "jagoff".

   So it must be that the PG finds Jagoff beneath its dignity. 

     The same dignity that almost endorsed Donald Trump. 

    The same dignity that's pushed half of its veteran staff into early retirement. 

    The same dignity happy with the worst online homepage in the web's short history. 

    I'm kinda glad they told me they wouldn't print the piece below if I didn't excise my "jagoff". 

    When I looked up "letters@pg..." I shouldn't have pressed send. 

    And quite frankly folks, until the ownership of the paper leaves the hands of the blockish Blocks and the-where'd-responsible-journalism-go-Mr Robinson's none of us should press "spend" on the PGs pay site or elsewhere for its thinning content. 

   The time has come. 

    Let it and the Trib chase each other to the bottom. They deserve each other. The latter subsidized by a radical conservative billionaire and the former trying to sound like him. 

   Press delete. 

   I wrote this the night of the Trump rally in Pittsburgh and I should have printed it right then on this little blog. 

   Somehow I felt like Pittsburgh and its newspapers still co-habituated. 

   They don't folks. They don't. 

     Jagoffs. 

  There's been a lot said in the media about a new Pittsburgh. 
  How we're a cultural gem, a rust belt city reborn, a realtor's dirty secret, a foody Mecca, the best example of a new American Urbanism.
   What I saw last night, (a few nights ago) Trumps all of that. 
   Literally. 

   There was sound, there was fury, there were even a few punches thrown. But....
   I watched a number of people who should have been fighting shake hands. Take time. Reach out. 
   I watched a bearded college kid repeatedly approach the Trump supporters line along the convention center wall and ask,  "What matters most to you? Tell me." 

   He was never assaulted, he was never harassed. He talked to a massive guy in full Harley skins for quarter of an hour. 
   I watched three African American women talk for 20 minutes to a Persian CMU grad about what was missing from American government. He held

His hands up at one point and said, "Hey look I don't mean to offend you." They embraced when they parted.

  I watched a guy with half his head shaved carrying a "Dump Racost Sexist Trump" banner the size of a  flag for the 1st Air cavalry, speak to a man in a cowboy hat with the Virgin of Guadeloupe across his chest, quoting scripture - they never came to blows. 
  And I watched the city's police act with a kind of restraint and decency I can only say almost brought me to tears. 
   My point is: old or new, this is Pittsburgh. 
   We don't fit the national model of disdain, disharmony, and disunion. Thank God.
   We don't behave like jagoffs. Right or Left.
   We might get in fights but we don't hit each other without good reason. Usually. 

   So yes, there was anger,

 cruel words were thrown. But...
   I watched people, radical conservatives and radical democrats, both, who for good reason, believe they have been left behind by the powers that be, dispossessed. 
    Who believe their government has got to change.
   And I truly believe I saw them look at each other, across the divide under the David Lawrence Convention Center, and I think I saw them see themselves.