CP Illustration: Jeff Schreckengost
It’s a dark time in Pittsburgh — for anyone listening to local sports talking heads and ragebait-peddlers, at least. If you’re to believe the likes of Colin Dunlap and Marty Griffin, the city has become one long bullet-riddled
drag show featuring
poop vandals and dangerous antiwar
“thugs.” Much of this, they imply, is due to mayor Ed Gainey, who, like favorite local bogeyman Mike Tomlin, has allegedly screwed up the difficult task of building on past success (hmm, what else do they have in common?).
The problem is this: neither Dunlap nor Griffin live in Pittsburgh or have skin in the game beyond making money off of fear. They are two of many suburbanites who think Pittsburgh should be a quirky place for them to visit and exploit like a sort of Rust Belt Disney World. Instead of helping the unhoused or working to improve local policy, they prefer to grouse on the sidelines while their reply guys predict our inevitable slide into squalor or vow to keep their dollars in Cranberry. It’s all very tiresome and unhelpful.
You don’t need a degree in political science or a background in history to see what’s happening here — anyone who knows who Wendy Bell is (or
was, per our T-shirt) will recognize the dog whistling, overheated rhetoric, and winks to the region’s large population of Twitter junkies with American flag emojis in their profile. These blue-check yeomen then do their duty on every Griffin and Dunlap post by complaining about the “Democrat party” and pissing and moaning about how
dirty Downtown supposedly is now under Gainey. Rinse and repeat.
Paul Zeise and
Mark Madden are no strangers to this genre, either, though both train most of their fire on Pittsburgh’s beleaguered coaches. (Also of note: neither can bring themselves to curse on social media, which is objectively funny.) Dunlap, meanwhile, seems to be keeping most of his powder dry in order to flame Allegheny County councilmember-at-large Bethany Hallam at all hours for her
anti-carceral stances. Unlike Griffin, he seems unable to de-escalate this one-sided feud even after a
relatively civil dialogue with Hallam on his KDKA radio show. It’s indicative of the unfortunate ways some treat politics as zero-sum trench warfare.
To be clear, homelessness is
a real issue in Pittsburgh as in many cities. Yet murders have
fallen sharply since the end of COVID-19 lockdowns. Meanwhile, Downtown is heavily staffed with cops and Clean Team members. Sure, you see opioid use — a national tragedy that demands solutions — but none of this has impeded tourists and visitors from flocking in
pre-pandemic numbers to the Golden Triangle.
If you believe Dunlap or Griffin, however, you probably think a visit to the Benedum will end with your cowboy hat swiss-cheesed by flying bullets and syringes or your car hijacked by a keffiyeh-wearing mob. It would be funny if it weren’t so cynical.
Like their more practiced Fox News compatriots, I have to assume these guys know what they’re doing. You don’t regularly rack up dozens of replies on Twitter if your opinions don’t resonate. But none of these commentators seem keen to offer solutions. To do so would undermine their business model, which is built on scaring people from the exurbs who make an annual trip to Primanti’s before watching the Pirates lose and heading back down the parkway.
For people who live here, though, this Monday-morning quarterbacking is at best unhelpful and at worst actively detrimental to fixing this city’s longstanding problems, especially when it comes to racial justice.
Pretending to be a
sage moderate with the city’s best interests at heart when you don’t actually live here is also galling. Much of the rhetoric coming from this corner presupposes that Pittsburghers are somehow being held hostage by our politicians. I’ve got news for yinz: lots of Pittsburghers vote for progressives and protest against war because
these are things many Pittsburgh citizens support, and not just with their votes, but with year-round activism and advocacy.
In the spirit of being solution-oriented, I have a couple suggestions for Dunlap, Griffin, and their ilk. While I don’t reasonably expect either to veer left politically or go hand out food to locals in need, perhaps at least readers of this opinion piece will see for themselves the gap between Pittsburgh radio grumps’ rhetoric and their actions as citizens of the region.
Explore Pittsburgh: One has to imagine most of the yinzer rage caste is more likely to frequent the North Shore than Garfield or Allentown. I’d challenge anyone reading this to go on Google Maps and pick out a new neighborhood to explore. We have 90, and most offer something unique that provides helpful context about the city and its history.
Move here: It’s much easier to make political change when you can, you know, vote in a jurisdiction and thus validly complain about how your tax dollars are used. Perhaps Dunlap could move to tony, safe Lawrenceville, where he could
stump for Rachel Heisler and vote against Xander Orenstein instead of complaining about them from afar?
Run for office: It’s even easier to make political change when you’re in the driver’s seat! Given that Griffin already hobnobs with local lawyers, it would be especially convenient for him to learn the ins and outs of begging for donations on the fly. It would also be an excellent opportunity to face real public questioning about
amplifying misogyny and
spreading transphobia, and, if he won, Griffin could finally sponsor a sweeping anti-poop bill (“Marty’s Law”) sure to benefit the Steel City for generations to come.
Volunteer: I would love nothing more than to see the people complaining about Downtown spend a week or more,
Undercover Boss-style, volunteering alongside mutual aid workers in a homeless encampment or shelter. In doing so, they would likely learn a lot about how people end up unhoused — and how we can better meet these Pittsburghers' complex needs.
Log off: I take this advice myself from time to time, though
I’m told it’s unmanly to do things like making art instead of being terminally online. I get it; Twitter is addictive. Still, sometimes we could all do with some time in the yard instead of staying up late attempting to roast locals who are more focused on serving their communities than shrieking into a microphone.
In doing the above, maybe the yinzer ragebait crew would see what many Pittsburghers already know: the city has its warts, but it’s vibrant, far from irredeemable, and might, on a good day, measure up to some of the
livability hype. People are trying new progressive and grassroots solutions here because decades of griping from on high have gotten us nowhere. I’d challenge Dunlap, Griffin and others to actually look for data, talk to more locals with different opinions, and go into situations with a willingness to be wrong before cranking out a thinly sourced narrative that gives social media addicts a warped view of Pittsburgh society.
Moreover, 300,000 of us live here. This city isn’t your playground. Maybe check your
weird fear of urbanity at the border if you want to spend time and money here. Otherwise, if you want to stay home, your loss — just don’t expect us to invite you back with open arms and a smiley-face cookie.