Half-Life of an Empty Slogan : Use by 12/16

Slogans are generally understood as marketing, and marketing is sometimes understood as propaganda; an implicit, covert attempt to sway public thoughts, moods, and behavior. We see historic examples of slogans serving their people well; for instance, in Britain during WW2 the Prime Minister spoke of Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat.

Recently there was a disastrous massacre of Jews worshiping at their Synagogue. The assailant was very much a product of the Pittsburgh region, of Allegheny County, but nobody wanted to contemplate the Black and Gold terrorist. Nobody wanted to ask, what part of Baldwin was he radicalized in? How did we grow a local-made terrorist?

So the media and the people asserted This is not us, when really this very much was us. We said, we're better than this. We tweaked the local iconography (the Steelers' emblem) and said, We're stronger than Hate.

Stronger than Hate provided a narrative that helped Pittsburgh through the week of funerals and then the weeks of flowers in the street. It let us pretend that the Evil was from Elsewhere when it's really very Yinzer. There's a Most Livable Pittsburgh with happy smiling people holding hands and living in the new economy; there's an ignored Pittsburgh facing poverty, racism, failed transit, and food deserts. One Pittsburgh takes Uber; the other rides a jitney.

Whenever any town picks a slogan, there's a race of time: can local institutions adopt and co-opt the slogan before the slogan is proven a charade and soiled by the marketplace? Churchill used Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat for a long time before Blood Sweat and Tears became the name of a pop band.

But time and trends move faster these days. Pittsburgh's Stronger than Hate seemed to win its race, with adapted logos going on a portion of the city's police cars before the lie was made evident.

On December 16th, the Post-Gazette editorial board wrote a reprobate screed announcing moral equivalency between respecting (and disrespecting) transgender identity and rights. I will not link to it, because I don't want to feed their money-clicker, but you will find it at Pittsburgh's best blog.

On December 16th, the timeframe for Stronger Than Hate expired and the Post Gazette editorial page brought us their diatribe that tells us like it is, at least to them, when it comes to transgender respect and communication. The PG will have you know that you don't have to consider "them" a woman or a man if you don't agree with their self-designation; it's okay for you to ignore preferred pronouns; it's okay for you to dead-name or doxx persons that stand outside of the straight-and-narrow, and at the bottom line Pittsburgh is a very narrow town.

Delta Foundation, the locally acceptable LGBTQ organization which is very much part of shiny new Pittsburgh, has raised no objection to the editorial.

We're back to Two Pittsburgh's: either you're on the very narrow, Most Livable, Booster-rah! side of the Pittsburgh coin, or you're ignored, belittled, deprecated, and what's more this diminishment and marginalization of you is socially approved. There's no stigma for the Up-and-Comers, the problem is all in the Left Behinds.

Same as it ever was. Go Steelers. Ben.