Word: philadelphia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That's the way Philadelphians I talked to last week viewed Mayor Frank Rizzo's unsuccessful attempt to kill a column strongly critical of his administration which appeared in the March 14th edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The publication of that column and the events that followed portend dangerous consequences for both the people of the nation's fourth largest city and editors who write about politics in every newspaper in the country...
...publication. The one-page article, billed as a hypothetical interview with the mayor in the table of contents of the Inquirer's "Today Magazine," portrayed Rizzo making derogatory comments about ethnic groups and homosexuals, and parodied his style of speech. The following excerpt with translation for those unattuned to Philadelphia's politics, shows how deep Ryan plunged...
That's what O'Neill (police commissioner Joseph O'Neill) says in the Peeper Paper ("The People Paper"--trade name for Philadelphia's third paper, the Daily News) the other day and that's one time the Mick was right. I mean who really wants broads on the police? What about you're having a fight with the wife and givin' her the back of your hand when the Polack down the street puts the squeal in. You want some bull dyke come chargin' on your property all ready with a swift kick in the lasagnas. No way. Not while...
...libel suit was a minor slap in the face compared to the incident that followed. Five days after the article appeared, demonstrators from a building and trade union that has vigorously supported Rizzo in Philadelphia politics began assembling across the street of the Inquirer building at midday. By 3 p.m. enough men had gathered to block sidewalks and close off the Inquirer's entrances preventing delivery trucks from entering or leaving. The picketers carried signs saying "When is the Inquirer going to start telling the truth," and "The Inquirer is a biased paper." They closed their ranks tight enough...
...handled the dispute as they would any "labor matter." The union that surrounded the Inquirer building had no contractural relationships with that paper. Furthermore, Rizzo excused the police because he claimed they were hamstrung by a federal court ruling against police who arrested demonstrators at a Nixon rally in Philadelphia...