The story of the Jeweler’s Row peeping tom never really took off, perhaps because it didn’t have hilarious characters like a guy in a pimp hat. Anyway, NBC 10 finally made this a story worth commenting on when Deanna Durante somehow made him crash into a wall. He seems to walk into the wall himself and crash into Durante; it’s clearly some sort of Jedi mind trick.
After the collision, Benjamin Sorkin hilariously asks Durante what’s wrong with her and she then immediately throws the red flag and calls for instant replay.
It’s been about a month since we all decided to forget the name Latrice Bryant, the aide to Councilman Wilson Goode who makes $90,000 a year to call Fox 29 racist during City Council meetings.
Hairston explains how nonsensical the interview is going to be:
“I think on one hand I was able to understand some of her concerns and what she felt,” Hairston said. “But on the other hand I was a little bit confused as far as what she can see from this. What did she learn? Can’t you see how this looks?”
Bryant again cited race as a factor, Hairston added.
“There’s a tone of race in her interview,” he said. “I don’t know why. That didn’t fully come out.”
So it seems like she will continue to act like she is boinking Councilman Goode, surely a good way to bolster denials of a romantic relationship.
There isn’t an election anymore to get peoples’ minds off this whole situation, so it’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, Goode does to get the local media’s attention away from it. My suggestion: A cute wittle itty bitty puppy should do the trick. If not: Geeze, I dunno, drop C4 on a city block?
Ronnie Polaneczky: “The last time we heard of a road-rage incident this bad was in July 2007.” Man, that SEPTA cop who killed that dude in the suburbs sure got off easy even in the sphere of public opinion, eh?
John Baer: Oh, yeah, there was a debate last night. And, hey, guess what: It was pointless, just like all third presidential debates nowadays!
Um, okay, there are two Stu Bykofsky columns today. It’s like Abridged Daily News Columnists Christmas!
Stu Bykofsky: This is about animals and PACCA. Whatever the other one is about Latrice Bryant so I’m just going to read that one.
Stu Bykofsky: Here’s the best line: “Having failed to get any city entity to condemn Bryant’s public display of a hate symbol (KKK) and possible ethnic intimidation of Fox 29 reporter Jeff Cole, who broke the story about Bryant’s off-campus capers, I move from ethnics to ethics.” I still can’t believe that anybody is actually surprised that there are cushy jobs in city government and that City Councilpeople use their positions to benefit themselves. Welcome to politics!
Ronnie Polaneczky: The Daily News columnists can’t stop writing about Wilson Goode’s aide, the one who held up the Fox 29 are racist sign. Yes! Apparently, this is an important story. Polaneczky is upset still because no one got up to grandstand when she held up her stupid signs.
Now she’s decided the city will not prevent hate speech! Of course, one might say the city has no authority to prevent any speech, hateful or otherwise, but Polaneczky is having none of that. The law has “no teeth.” It’s just not tough enough on black people.
And why no one from Council took a stand against Bryant’s actions is baffling. This is the legislative body that, last year, voted to strengthen the prohibition of ethnic intimidation in the city by forbidding the display of three “symbols of virulent animus: a noose; a burning cross; or a swastika.”
Yet they still couldn’t see fit to at least chastise Bryant for making a sign implying that a white reporter belonged to a group that routinely uses these symbols to intimidate blacks and other minorities. [...] Ironically, it seems fitting that a new law with no teeth resulted from an incident that no one can prove even happened.
I won’t quibble with the use of ironically but of routinely. You’d think if the KKK was out there every day routinely putting up nooses, burning crosses and drawing swastikas, it wouldn’t be too hard to find an incident one could prove. Welp, it’s off to jail for me, I believe I just violated a new speech law the Daily News columnists dreamed up.
John Baer: Hey, a Harrisburg aide went against the family!
Michael Smerconish: This column is about Bill Ayers, apparently, and how everyone has friends that do bad things. Smerconish then gives some hilarious examples of his friends who have done bad, such as one person who tried to commit suicide and another who succeeded. He also took G. Gordon Liddy to lunch! Clearly, Smerconish is unfit for duty.
Me, I feel bad for the kids. They come up to me and ask me about the joyous days of news like when I was in high school. It was all presidential blowjobs, school shootings and minute figure skaters (Infoplease: “At 4′ 8″ and 75 pounds, it seems the downsizing trend has extended from the board room to the ice rink”).
And now the high school kids are going to do something about it:
Tired of the negative what about the positive!!! Kensington Students will Hold Protest about Negative Press
Purpose – Students will demand more positive press coverage about their school and work they do in the community.
On October 1, 2008 at 3:00 Kensington High School students will protest at the Fox News studios. “What about the Positive? That’s the question that Kensington students are asking, we are frustrated with only negative press.” Says Dasha Scott a junior at Kensington High School for Creative and Performing Arts and member of Youth United for Change. Referring to the recent media coverage of students fighting at Kensington High School, Fox news reporters spent two days in front of Kensington High School Multiplex covering a fight outside of the school.
It’s okay, though: She didn’t apologize to Jeff Cole, just to Wilson Goode (her boss at her $90K-a-year job) and other members of City Council: “I sincerely apologize to you, to City Council President Anna Verna, to all other City Council members and staffers… and especially to all residents and taxpayers of Philadelphia.” Ooh, does that count as Jeff Cole?
Anyway, now she’s going to do what she should have done in the first place, says her lawyer in another letter:
“I agree that my client’s reaction was inappropriate. I explained to her that the appropriate response would have been to do exactly what she later did. And that was to contact an attorney who could determine whether or not Fox29’s relentless paparazzi-like conduct… was libelous and slanderous, thereby warranting the filing of a defamation lawsuit.”
Woo-hoo! Maybe she can file the lawsuit from prison, where she will soon be along with the rest of Philadelphia’s residents.
Then a newspaper columnist suggested imprisonment for a protest sign; the responses to her column are more art than commentary. thelastRepublicaninPhilly: “I can see it now; if we make the tragic mistake of electing Obama; he’ll take some advice from Goode and hire goons to keep away those pesty reporters (’just one second sweetie’). He’ll have his goons rooming around in press conferences just to make sure they ask the right questions. I know a few other countries that have socialized health care, high taxes and and restricted freedom of speech.” Djata: “It’s even funnier how this paper censors legitimate intellectual ideas.” And, finally, Philly Guy: “You can put nice suits on thugs, give them (they really don’t have to earn them) decent jobs, expect nothing from them, pay them an extremely nice salary, allow them to act like they are respectable in respectable surroundings and at the end they are what we all know they are ….. thugs. There has been this double standard where black behavior can sink to any level they want and there are no recriminations.” Comment number two, Philly Guy; that’s an impressive dedication to nonsensical racism.
Today, more developments: Councilman Goode both defended and bashed the media, Chris Brennan reports. His buzzword: Media diversity — rather, the lack thereof. While he loves freedom of speech, he also didn’t like being followed around by Jeff Cole.
“For the last week, it appears as if the press doesn’t care about my mission either. But I care about my mission. I believe in freedom of the press, even with its lack of diversity. Many black elected officials would never admit it but the lack of diversity in the press is a major issue for us. In fact, many don’t feel that the freedom of speech applies equally to them.”
Councilman Goode probably has quite a few insightful things to say about being a black politician covered largely by an all-white press. Could be a fascinating conversation. Of course, though, none of this would have gotten the publicity it did had his aide not held up a sign that read, “Fox 29 are racist.” Jeff Cole goes out and annoys local powerful people almost every week. “Fox 29 Investigates” saying a Philadelphia politician and his aide are screwing the public trust isn’t going to land on the front page of the Metro section. Hell, a timesheet problem is more notable.
Jeff Cole is apparently spending his time recording awesome promos; Claudia Gomez covered Goode in City Hall today. She seems a dogged enough reporter who appears to get bumped quite easily. There’s video on Fox’s site, but the real treasure is the photo gallery, which I’ve excerpted above. Larger (~1MB) version after the jump. Deinterlace your video before taking screenshots next time, guys!
Ronnie Polaneczky: Holy shit, Ronnie Polaneczky wants to the city to charge the Wilson Goode aide who held up the Fox 29 are racist sign with a ethnic intimidation. She wants Latrice Bryant to go to jail!
While Bryant didn’t use a noose, burning cross or swastika in her handmade message, she implied that a TV reporter belonged to a group that routinely uses these symbols to intimidate blacks and other minorities. If that kind of hate speech doesn’t constitute an act of ethnic intimidation, the law ain’t worth the paper it’s printed on.
In her next column, I bet she’ll call for the imprisonment of the guy who played the Soup Nazi.
Michael Smerconish: Ha ha, Michael Smerconish discussed a poll about race on his radio show and people called up and told him that, yes, indeed, they hate black people.
Take Linda, for instance. She told me the word “violent” describes most black people, and cited the lifestyle choices and irresponsibility that has “permeated their culture.”
“First is when they chose the welfare program over marriage. Second, when they embraced this idea that if you’re black and do well in school, you’re a white wannabe. And third is when they embraced gangsta rap . . . There are more, but they are the three main things that ruined the blacks, and they don’t want to admit it,” Linda told me.
Yes, the number three problem in the black community today is most certainly rap lyrics. Rap more like crap am I rite???
It’s Christmas morning and Santa brought me everything I asked for and more. What an incredible trio of columns. I’ve been doing this feature for damn near three years, and this is the best day of Daily News columns I’ve ever read. I don’t even think it’s close.
Stu takes Heller’s cute closing line and puts it into practice, asking the paper to print everyone’s real name. When told that won’t happen, he says to scrap ‘em entirely. In the comments, there are comments bashing Dan Gross, which is the average Philly.com commenter’s third favorite pastime after racism and misspellings.
Heller wrote: “The blog ‘Philadelphia Will Do’ has noted that Philly.com is among the most racist sites in the region, due to the verbal waste of our posters.” Aw, thanks, guys, you hadn’t mentioned me in forever! I do fear the attention will have the cops hauling me off to prison any day now after receiving a tip from Polaneczky.
If you asked me how Fox 29 could make this Jeff Cole/Fox 29 are racist sign story even better, I might have come up with some decent ideas. But I never would have come up with the idea of slying asking Al Sharpton to weigh in! Yes, this is incredible; but what makes it better is how he talks in general terms, making everyone wonder: Was he just asked about it in general terms, too?
Really, though, who cares. This is some of the best entertainment from a news station in months. The summer doldrums are over!
In case you didn’t notice, here’s a screengrab from yesterday’s Fox 29 promo. I’m not so much befuddled about the “Fox 29 are racist” construction but by this thought: Nobody had a Sharpie to make sure the sign showed up better on TV? Geeze, that’s just kind of poor planning.
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