Hi guys -- Will Bunch from the Philadelphia Daily NewsPhiladelphia Daily News here (full disclosure, for geeks...and working journalists). I'm writing a book on how to revive American media called "The News Fix" for Vaster Books -- the company founded by Markos Moulitsas and Jane Hamsher -- that's coming out next year, and as the release date gets closer I plan to cross-post more of my regular posts from over at my blog, Attytood.
Here in Philly, we're outraged tonight by murder, and a blown opportunity in the race for the White House:
The gunshots and sirens in West Philly were so close that you almost might have been able to hear them over Tim Russert's jabbering.
In a security-crazed nation, you'd think it would be a big deal thata convicted murderer who'd just shot up four people, including a Philadelphia police officer, had been running around almost literally a stone's throw from a room where seven major Democratic candidates for president were in the same stage, surrounded by numerous VIPs.
But in one of the saddest example of life-as-metaphor that I've seen in a long time, the presidential wannabees and their bizarre media inquisitors, Tim Russert and Brian Williams, stayed inside their hermetically sealed bubble of a so-called democratic (small "d") process, completely to oblivious that the street outside Drexel University was running red with the blood of a great American city.
At 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, a two-bit thug named Jerome Whitaker -- who for some ungodly reason was allowed to walk the streets of Philly despite the fact that he killed a 6-year-old girl with a stray bullet just 13 years ago -- shot three people in an SUV in Center City with a semiautomatic in a targeted hit (thankfully, no one died). When police officer Mario Santiago gave chase, Whitaker fired a shot into the headrest of the police cruiser that would have killed the 44-year-old officer had he not ducked; instead, Santiago suffered a shoulder wound.
This wasn't a random event. The seven Democrats who want to be our president came to debate in Philly knowing full well -- as did the NBC News moderators -- that the city is in the middle of a murder epidemic, and the shooting of three cops in four days, the last one fatally, was the exclamation point on crisis for millions of Americans who live not just here but other large cities where murders have risen this decade.
The cop-shooter Whitaker jumped to his eventual death in the chilly Schuylkill just a few blocks fromthe live debate -- just about when NBC's Williams was prodding the candidates about an issue of great national importance: Why is air travel in America so gosh-darned lousy? Minutes earlier, he and Russert squeezed in a short, obligatory question about schools, but now they'd moved to the event that ended up dominating the coverage: Drivers' licenses, in one of the 50 states, for illegal immigrants.
Yet in the last 10 minutes, there was still time to ask the candidates what they might do to help urban America control the twin problems of too many guns and too many young punks with no respect for human life. Instead we got this, directed to the candidate on stage least likely to actually become president (Dennis Kucinich):
"The godmother of your daughter, Shirley MacLaine, writes in her new book that you've sighted a UFO over her home in Washington state, that you found the encounter extremely moving, that it was a triangular craft silent and hovering, that you felt a connection to your heart and heard direction in your mind. Now, did you see a UFO?'''
Not only that, but the post-debate show on MSNBC with Chris Matthews then was dominated by a cross-examination of Bill Richardson on whether the New Mexico governor believes the feds are covering up the Roswell 1947 UFO incident.
Not once, in two whole hours before the American people, in a city with the most out-of-control murder problem, was any candidate asked what he could do as president to help desperate citizens do something about it. Not even for 30 lousy seconds. If Russert, Matthews & Co, really wanted to see a UFO, all the had to do was walk out into West Philly and watch the .9 mm slugs bounding around the sidewalks. As for the candidates, yes, it's not their fault what questions they were asked on Monday, but the fact is they've done a also lousy job talking about crime or any other urban issues in a screwed-up election process that's decided in some cornfield far from here.
Yes, A LOT of people need to solve the crime problem, starting with the lack of personal or parental responsibility but also with the next mayor -- who can't replace the impotent John Street quickly enough -- and state lawmakers who've washed their hands of Philadelphia's blood and...yes, Washington. In the 1990s, the feds pumped millions into hiring new cops, and crime rates fell across America, while in the 2000s that money has been slashed or shifted into counter-terrorism. How about countering the terrorism that killed Officer Chuck Cassidy this week?
And there's a lot that a president can do to reduce crime, not just with money for cops and more sensible gun laws but with programs to reduce unemployment and bring universal healthcare to the American city, moves that would have an enormously beneficial impact on crime. If those things haven't occurred to you, maybe that's because they've been excluded fromt the Great American Political Debate, which obsesses on all things suburban and whatever's on talk radio this week.
I would challenge the national news media -- especially the Beltway Gang of 500 -- and all the candidates for president, both Democratic and Republican, to make this right -- to come back to Philadelphia, to leave the cornfields for a day, and look us in our tear-stained eyes, and tell us how you would help us make this stop.
Or come back for the funeral of Officer Chuck Cassidy, killed by a heartless thug yesterday while you were hustling off to your next campaign stop. He was the best this city had to offer, a family man and a dedicated officer, who did his best to keep the peace here. A real national debate about crime and justice in America would make his senseless death just a tiny bit less painful for all of us.