Editorial

And Our Sympathies Go To ……

Waking up each day in Pittsburgh is always an adventure and maybe that’s why we all love it here so much. It’s simultaneously exhilarating and disconcerting to grab that first cup of coffee and walk out the door armed with the knowledge that anything, absolutely anything could greet you. Anything, absolutely anything could happen.

It could be a water main break that floods Downtown. Or sink holes swallowing cars. Or falling bridges/buildings that sometimes miss killing people, and other times they don’t. Maybe it’s Everyone’s Grandma Mayor Sophie who has decided to move the 4th of July to the 3rd so as to save city overtime pay for police. (Couldn’t she have picked a holiday to move that didn’t have the date as its name?) Or who could possibly forget the spectacle caught on tape of a councilman being chased on foot by the press because of city gasoline he allegedly pilfered. But my absolute favorite, however, has to be the press-conference-from-another-dimension whereby Fire Fighters Union President Joey King tried to explain how Mayor Murphy was guilty of offering him a bribe but he was not guilty of accepting one. How could that be? Because Joey didn’t realize that the $10 million or so in contract goodies that Murphy was offering him, in a darkened back room of some restaurant on the Southside, in exchange for votes, was in fact a bribe! The gall and temerity of that performance, in my opinion, still surpasses even the shake-down attempt by Hill District “leaders” of last week.

But of all the embarrassing, infuriating, enraging moments this city has seen… Why has the Twanda Carlisle debacle tugged at my heartstrings so? Maybe it’s like one of those movies where the actors are so bad and the plot is so thin that you find yourself averting your eyes because it’s just too darned embarrassing to watch any longer. Yes, it’s been horribly embarrassing….. except I can’t decide whom I should pity the most.

Should it be Twanda who doesn’t seem to realize that 17 counts, hefty fines and a prison sentence is not an occasion to smile?

Maybe I feel sorriest for her lawyer who seems to have only two possible defense options, both even sorrier than he is. One posits that someone other than Twanda could have been responsible for the 60 or so cash deposits to her personal bank account. As mortifying as that option must have been to verbalize with a straight face, the other has something to do with Don Imus. Something no one quite understands as of yet.

Should our collective pity go to Twanda’s mother who initially uttered the “Imus” word in the first place?

I truly don’t know, Pittsburgh. Do you? If you do, let me know. Set me straight. So I can get up in the morning, grab my cup of coffee, and look forward to the new Pittsburgh adventures of a brand new Pittsburgh day.

Carlisle Missing-In-Action At Council Meetings

Councilwoman Finally Located

Pictured Above: Councilwoman Tonya Payne who is often mistaken for Councilwoman Twanda Carlisle

Councilwoman Twanda Carlisle has been missing from City Council meetings as of late. Her absence has been made all the more intriguing by council’s silence on the matter. No comment or excuse has been put forth to explain the empty chair.

But it appears Ms Carlisle truly had a valid excuse for her nonattendance. She is being arraigned this morning in a Brookline courtroom on charges of theft and criminal conspiracy. These charges stem in part from a $30,000 “health study” that Carlisle commissioned for her district. The study was conducted by Lee O. Johnson, Carlisle’s mother’s boyfriend and a “doctor” in the sense he successfully paid for and received his Ph.D. from a now-shut-down diploma mill. Johnson’s study, “A Report on the Mental, Physical, Spiritual, Social Status of the Ninth Councilmatic [sic] District," was rife with misspellings, poor grammar and whole sections that had been plagiarized from various other sources.

In Ms. Carlisle’s defense, her actions are unfortunately not isolated nor unusual in Pittsburgh’s political scene. They were, however, egregiously blatant if not shockingly stupid. Think of the trouble that could have been averted had she and Dr. Johnson taken a moment or two to just use their spell-checkers.