Marty Griffin Show hour 04 062426

Hey folks, Brandon McGinley from the Post Gazette, filling in for Marty today. We've had a real freewheeling conversation today on a wide variety of topics, including some of the thornyest topics in all of American life, you know, questions of race, questions of ideology, questions of, is it possible to heal relationships in a society? Well, my view, which I've expressed in the show many times, is that the first step is always in-person communication to actually, ideally see someone face to face or at the very least to speak with them. And I like to hope that through this medium, you know, we can achieve a little bit of that. Hey, Craig from West Virginia. Hey, Craig. How you doing? I'm doing good today, Brandon. Now you're doing a fantastic show, by the way. I mean fantastic. Thank you. Back and forth with him, Trevin. Trevin might need his own show on Franklin. Hey, now we're talking. What do you think about that, Tref? I'll take it. Oh, there we go. Okay, okay. It is done. Reverend Frank from West Virginia show, I'll tell you, we'd make a team. I love it. Here's what I called. It seems to be Dog-Pow Democrat Day, and I'm just not going to let that happen. Fair enough, fair enough. Well, you make your point, then I'll defend myself. You go ahead. All right. I had a caller earlier today talking about the lady from New York using a American flag for a napkin. Yeah. And correct me if I'm wrong, but just a couple years ago, I watched 147 Capitol Police Officer get their brains beat in with the American flag. And yet the napkin was a turning point. Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? You know, then we get – If you're watching the live stream, you can see me nodding. Okay, go ahead. Okay, good. You know, then we just had a call talking about anti-Semitism. And here's where I stand. I don't judge any – we were raised in my family, but I don't care, race, color, religion, what you want to do in your own private bedroom. We don't do that. We don't. But here's what's happening, and I get so frustrated at this anti-Semitism moniker that my head wants to explode. Okay. Here's what I saw. Did Israel have the right to defend itself after October 7th? Heck, yes, they did. They did 1,000 percent. But what we witnessed, what Gaza looks like today, I have seen nothing even comparable except 1945 the Dresden Hamburg bombing. There was nothing even close. There was nothing existing.

There was a Hamas leader in the basement of a hospital, and they blew up 400 hospital workers to get it up one general. That is not okay to me. It's not. It's never going to be, no matter how they tried to defend it. If you want to send your army in against Hamas and go hand-to-hand in the trenches, let's go. But put it on paper view, I'll watch it. But the way that was handled... It is so blatantly, I don't even know what the word is. I don't know what the word is. But we saw what we saw. Craig, Craig, did you see the tweet from last weekend from the National Security Secretary of Israel? I did not. So this is Itamar Ben-Gvir. I'm not going to read the whole thing. It's so bad that... X, Twitter actually like shields it. You have to click through. They kept it up. It violates their, it violates their standards of rhetoric. And so they, if it was a average citizen, they would have taken it down for, for inciting violence. But they kept it because it's a public figure as a matter of public record. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but just, I'll just, I'll just read the first two sentences. For every tier of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn. That's the beginning and it keeps going. So, Craig, you're talking to someone who apps completely, I mean, the extent to which the regime in Tel Aviv has lost the plot. on some of these things. And Itamar Ben-Gvir, I mean, like, it is astounding this man still has a job. It is truly remarkable. And I was glad to see that the vice president the other day said that, you know, Israel's lacking for friends in the world right now. So trust me, I completely agree. I've just, there's a level of care that is required in the rhetoric on this issue that many on the left, and I'm not excusing the right. The right has its anti-Semitism problems to an extent, to a growing degree as well. But we've been talking about the left because we've been talking about city politics. So this is where the focus has been. It may not be fair, but that's just where we've been. The. There's extreme carelessness. And at times, I think, malice in the way some in the left, on the left, have spoken about this and clearly, intentionally or carelessly extended their critiques to all Jews. And that is where, like, it's just. we need to be able to hold two ideas in our head at once. One is that Israel has at times behaved abominably, and this rhetoric is so radically out of bounds, it is, and I use this word,

I just, just to reiterate, I think there's a tremendous amount of carelessness in how this is discussed. I think that we also need to remember that we are never getting the full truth about what's going on in Gaza because of a combination, because of propaganda from both sides. We're never getting the full truth, not to mention AI and everything else. It's impossible to know what exactly is happening at any given time. We can look at the results and say, wow, that was a lot. That was a lot of destruction. We can absolutely do that. But I also, one of the other reasons that I generally do not write or speak too much about this issue is because our ability, even in the year 2026, especially in the year 2026, our ability to actually understand the facts on the ground, the truth on the ground from several thousand miles away is very limited. But I will say what we can see is that kind of rhetoric from the national security. And hey, I know that Hamas and Hezbollah, they utilize genocidal rhetoric frequently as well. But that doesn't mean that it's fair game for everyone. And yet, whatever you think about the way the regime in Tel Aviv behaves, it is essential beyond all. ability, all of my ability to accentuate that we not connect whatever sins you may or may not believe occur there with the Jewish people who are just trying to live, practice or faith, continue their tradition all over the world. Back after this.

Alrighty, folks. It's been like the final boss of radio today, talk radio doing, we talked about racism in America, we've talked about Israel, Palestine. Trevin, if anybody calls into this program and tries to get me to talk about gay and trans issues, cut them off. I've done enough. I will not. Okay, okay. We're going to try to chill out a little bit here and do, I'm actually trying to find the tweet right now. The traffic coming out of, and I don't want to step on Ellen Gamble's beat here, but they are going to be closing the entire Parkway East for, what is like a month or something like that? I should know. Whatever, we'll figure it out. It's going to be closed for a long time, and it's going to be brutal, and there's going to be tens of thousands of cars a day that are going to be taken off the parkway. They'll be sent down Braddock. Yeah, they've sent down Braddock, I think, or is there, no, they're going to be sent down, um, yeah, that's it. They're going to be sent down Braddock or they can be sent down Route 8 into Wilkinsburg, one or the other. Either way, it's going to be brutal. So a combination of Route 8 through Wilkinsburg and or Braddock through Regent Square, which is bad, like 24 hours a day to begin with, then... Um, you'll be going down Penn past the evergreen cafe. Hopefully the parking spot won't be used. And then you'll be picking up fifth going through Oakland and then, um, picking up the parkway on the other side down, uh, where the boulevard of the ally split is down by the old church, St. Agnes, Carlo University, all that. Okay. That's it. And the killer is, and I was just looking at this tweet from Chris Bream from Pitt. He's a he's a economist at Pitt. He says the entire parkway is a picture of the old St. Agnes Church down to South Oakland, the edge of Oakland there. The entire Parkway East Detour around Squirrel Hill and through Oakland eventually leads to this single construction occluded lane. I love that construction occluded. It's like an artery before putting westbound vehicles back on the parkway. So as it stands right now, this part of Fifth becomes a single lane by old St. Agnes Church. And that's where all the cars are going to go down. Now, hopefully, at least they can open up another lane. But that's not the only example I've seen of construction along the detour route. This is something that we've known about for years. We've known for years that this was going to go down. We've known for years they're going to have to close the entire parkway. While they do this amazing thing that I do not understand. where they're going to move a bridge into place. Like it's like it's like I don't even know. They put it on wheels. I do not understand how they're going to do it. And it kind of worries me because I guess they just, I don't know, they slide it over. It's like Legos or something. I don't know. But the point is that we've known about this for years. And there is significant construction along.

the route of the detour. I believe, I assume that this is related to, um, I assume that this is related to the PRT project. And maybe it's unavoidable. You know, I, I understand I don't want to waste a month of, of construction on the BRT project. The PRT BRT, BRT, bus, rapid transit, um, university line, PRTX, whatever the hell they call it. Um, That may have been unavoidable. It may be that there was just always going to be an overlap between construction on the new transit line and construction on the parkway. But gosh, I wish somebody was looking at the entire picture here and said, wait a minute, guys, you have to work around the Parkway East problem. You just have to. You can't have major construction. Maybe in the next couple weeks, they'll, you know, sort it out. I hope that they will figure out some way to keep as many lanes open as possible through the, uh, through these, uh, um, these detours. You know, it has to be done. It's just the nature of living in Pittsburgh. I know people complain about the traffic. Oh, you know, you can't get there from here. Sorry, if you want to live in a city that's in the foothills of the Appalachians, if you want to live in a city that has all of the cool little nooks and crannies that comes with being a hilly city, you're going to have these problems where there's just one way to get there. Because there's one ravine. There's only one place you could build the highway. And then there's these bottlenecks. And these bottlenecks have to get worked on. You can't, you don't want a Fernhalla bridge situation on the parkway. It has to be done. Now the next one that worries me, and I know worries my friends in Hazelwood and the run. Um. is that bridge. That's one of those you barely even notice as a bridge, but it is totally a bridge, the one down by the down by, when you, when you're on the parkway going outbound and you veer away from the river. You see St. John Casostin Byzantine Catholic Church down there. That was Andy Warhol's Childhood Church. And there's a bridge there. And underneath that bridge is the Fraser Street Bridge or Fraser Street Bridge. So that's another name. Swinburne. Swinburne Bridge. And all that's going to get done at the same time, too. And that will be another full closure, I assume. And that's going to cause major problems down in the run because at least the bridge that they're working on now is basically just built over a ravine and commercial street, which is important if you live in Switzerland Park, but not terribly important for everybody else. Next time around, next time around, they're going to have to build a brand new interstate highway bridge on top of a neighborhood.

And that is going to be, that's going to be some nasty work. That is going to, that's going to take some cleverness. Because I don't think anybody wants to see buildings in the run torn down for this, but we also need these bridges to be rebuilt. I just hope that next time they aren't doing construction along the detour route. I, I, I, I, say, though, as a South Hills guy, I am a little bit feeling a little bit smug about the whole thing because it's not going to affect me that much, you know. I might have some business out that way, but I'll figure it out. But yeah, no one's building new. No one, no one's tearing down bridges in, you know, on Route 51. But I guess I'm stuck with Route 51, you know, 200, 365 days a year. So I guess maybe jokes on me. All rightyty, folks, that's your traffic report from me, Brandon McGinley, KDK Radio. And after this, I want to spend a little time talking about the Hoffman family of companies purchase of the Penguins. All righty. Pittsburgh, it's 136 in the afternoon on this Wednesday. And, yeah, you know, one of the big local stories we haven't gotten to, and we're running out of time to get to it. By the way, this is Brandon McGinley from the Post Gazette, filling in for Marty Griffin today. And actually, speaking of things that I don't want to forget about, we have, yeah, we need you guys to listen to the drive at five. That would be in three and a half hours. The story is driving the news every day at five. Brought to you by Service Master of Greater Pittsburgh, Demand the Yellow Vam. All righty. So, Hoffman family of companies. It's purchased the penguins. The NHL Board of Governors has said that's good. Gary Betman has said nice things. This seems like it's all a go. The Hoffman family of companies owns an incredible variety of companies, as you can tell by the name. They own like boat companies. They own media companies. They own a whole bunch of things. But now they're adding the penguins to the stable. From what I can tell, you know, it's a well-regarded collection of companies and they're real pros. And they've wanted to get in this business for a long time, in the hockey business for a long time, the NHL business in particular. So good for them. We say goodbye to Fenway Sports Group. I remember when FSG was announced as the buyer for the Penguins. And I remember there being two things that immediately came to my mind and that I think were also basically top of mind for most Pittsburghers and especially hockey fans. And as I said when I was on the show last week, I'm a hockey fan first. So, you know, I'm a hockey guy. So this is rather meaningful for me. So the two things that came to my mind. One, you guys have a ton of money. and they know how to run a sports team. And so kind of cool that we're getting attention from a big sports conglomerate and maybe these guys could really invest. The one thing you're not going to hear is that, you know, they don't have any money on hand. So I was like, okay, that could be good. But then the second, which is I think the thing that maybe was even more dominant in my mind and in the mind of Pittsburghers was.

Are we going to be, are we just becoming one asset on the balance sheet of this big conglomerate? They're mostly out of Boston. I think was they own Liverpool. I think it was the other thing. They own Liverpool FC. And. So these guys have some of the premier franchises in the world. Are we going to be top of mind for them? Are we going to get any attention? Or are we just another little Marco Rubio little kind of tick mark on the balance sheet? And what would be run like an uncaring corporate, you know, private equity kind of business as opposed to as. a community asset, a civic asset. And it became clear that it was going to be the latter. It became clear that that that problem was going to be, that that was going to be, that was going to be the dominant factor in FSG's time. They never made any real connection with the city. The attention to detail was not there. The experience of the games became more sterile, more corporate. Of course, the team also wasn't terribly successful in that time, so that didn't help. And they alienated Mario Lemieux. I mean, come on. It's like trying to appeal to a classroom of children and alienating Santa Claus. It was just completely needless and demonstrated that these were people who were thinking entirely in terms of corporate thinking and not in terms of civic thinking, in terms of being a member of this community. I don't want to suggest Pittsburgh's unique in wanting our... sports owners to be kind of active members of the civic community. I'm sure everybody feels that to some degree or another. But I do think we feel that especially. We feel especially that these are civic assets. I think part of it's just the whole black and gold thing. We, we, we, the, the black and gold identity is not just about Pittsburgh, it's not just about Steelers, pirates, or penguins, or riverhounds, for that matter, who've kind of adopted the colors. It's, it really is, it's, it's a color scheme. It's, it's a, it's an identity that, that is about Pittsburgh and not just the teams. And, uh, and I, it's clear from the beginning that FSG either didn't get it or didn't want to get it or didn't care. I'm not saying they had to like, you know, have floats in the parades and everything, but there was no sense that this was anything other than, than, then, then, the numbers on a balance sheet. And that's a shame. So what I would say to the Hoffman family of companies by way of advice, it would be, first of all, the number one thing that will make people like you is success.

I know the penguins are in an awkward position with the coming to the, you know, end of the Crosby, Malkin, Latang kind of era. And trying to rebuild on the fly is one of the most difficult things in sports. But success, or at least visible attempts to invest in success, that will go a long way. Make the games fun. Less corporate, more fun. Fun, fun, fun. That goes a long way. No matter what, it's going to be super expensive to go to a hockey game. If you can make it a little less expensive, that'd be great. If not, at least make it more fun. But perhaps even, not necessarily above all, because success is above all, but be visible here. Be visible here. In what way? I'm not exactly sure. We want to feel like you are invested in this community and not just invested in a corporation called Pittsburgh Penguins LLC. And being visible here would go a long way toward alleviating some concerns over, say, some short-term lapses and success that are pretty likely under the circumstances.

You have two models at your disposal for sports team ownership in Pittsburgh. You can look to the Roonies. You can look to Bob Nutting. You can see how these two have been received in the community and get a sense of which way you might want to go. But even in terms of the Roonies, of course, success goes a long way. This is something we talked about a couple weeks ago on the show that, you know, as the Steelers and the Pirates are looking to get public money to either expand or upgrade or replace their stadiums, for both Pirates and Steelers, successful teams will make people a little more willing to open up their checkbooks and write a tax check to support a big public expense. So, Hoffman family, take a look around. Learn some lessons from what has worked and doesn't work in terms of public popularity among sports franchises in Pittsburgh and their owners. And then... Be a visible part of the community. There were rumors, of course, that the Hoffman family of companies was in the running to buy the Post Gazette. I honestly don't know if that was ever the case or not. But that was the kind of thing. The fact that that was considered a live option, I think shows that there is a... There is a hunger here for our big corporate partners, our big, especially sports corporate partners, to be visible in other parts of the city. I'm very glad with how things turned out with the Post Gazette, to be sure. But I hope that we'll see Hoffman maybe make other investments. Maybe find other local institutions or local corporations that they can invest in and be part of the community here. And like I said, not just. Not just a distant owner of an asset on a balance sheet, but an active participant in the civic life of the city. And as far as I can tell, that's the kind of thing they like to do. So I'm hopeful. One last segment after this, and then we'll be paving the way for Colin Dunlap.

All righty, folks. Just to have a few more minutes with you today before Colin Dunlap comes into the studio. This is Brandon McGinley, columnist at the Post-Gazette. filling in for Marty Griffin, who, as you heard throughout the show today, including from his wife on Larry's show earlier, is doing a lot better. Doing a lot better after his brush with pneumonia. And while I will be in this studio the next two days during this time, although tomorrow the Pirates play, and as long as it doesn't rain, I'll be, have a shorter show for you. Marty, you should be back in the saddle soon. Yeah, we just kind of ranged all over the place today. You know, started talking about county council and the politics of Allegheny County government and how we're getting to the point where it seems to me that it's basically inevitable that county council is going to need more resources to do the job that it now has to do well. But I'm not sure that voters are going to agree. I'm not sure that voters are going to agree. I think that when it actually comes down to it and voters have the choice to let 15 county legislators have access to potentially, oh gosh, I mean, try to do some quick math, probably multi-million dollar, more of tax dollars in order to run their legislature. I'm not sure that voters are going to go for it. And that would be a huge rebuke for counsel. It's trying to carve out a much bigger rule for itself. A role that... While the framers of Home Rule didn't intend it, I think the charter does suggest they do have more power than people realized. But if they lose that vote, not only might that be the end of County Council trying to carve out a bigger role for itself could do significant damage to the careers of the largely progressive members who are pushing this. I think it's one of the few things that could turn around actually the composition of Allegheny County Council. Not necessarily bringing it back even to 10 to 5 Republican versus Democrat, but maybe more Democrats who are a little more pragmatic and a little less grandstanding. That might go a long way. Which ended up leading to us talking about how in the Democratic Party, it seems that at least in New York City. With the influence of Zohran Mamdani and Zohran Mamdani, the hard left still has the inside track in primary elections. Right now, that's, I think, at least just a, that's partially just a New York City thing because of Zohran Mamdani's influence, because of his popularity. But these things do tend to trickle down. And it's clear that across the board, Democratic primary voters are still preferring, in fact, maybe even increasingly preferring quite left-wing candidates. I suspect this is partially in response to the reality of Donald Trump's presidency, but also reflects a growing polarization in American society, one that is driven in part.

by the fact that we have created an enormous class of especially young or young-ish people who have significant credentials, who have significant debt, but do not have the economic and social status to match. This is, I believe, how we end up with a significant activist class to both left and right. And how we end up with voters, especially younger voters, who are looking for the most extreme option available because they're profoundly dissatisfied with the status quo, profoundly dissatisfied with a system that told them that if they get a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, a PhD, that they will become an elite member of this society. And there's just not enough space in the elite for all of them. leading to massive dissatisfaction that's then only compounded by the fact that middle class, even, you know, folks who might even be considered upper middle class in their 20s and 30s are struggling to afford the markers of stability and respectability, mostly a home, a family. This leads to massive social distrust. massive dissatisfaction with the politics that seems to have led us to this moment and leads people again looking for things, looking for options that are way outside the mainstream. Here in Pittsburgh, this raises the question of the most recent mayoral election. Mayor Cory O'Connor, one, running a more centrist campaign against a more progressive incumbent. Is his role sustainable? Is, can he, can the center hold here, even if it can't hold elsewhere? The nice thing about city governance, which is mostly a very difficult thing, but the nice thing is that mostly people are judging you on the basis of visible progress, visible services. Trash getting picked up, snow getting plowed. Puddles getting patched. That's why I think that there will always be a place for more pragmatic governance in executive roles, especially at the local level. And I think there's a good reason to believe that that will continue to be the case in Pittsburgh, regardless of what's happening in New York. But when it comes to legislatures, like county council, where people aren't expecting you to patch pot holes, where people aren't expecting you to plow the snow, they're expecting you to represent an idea, to represent a sensibility, to represent resistance. Those are the places where we're going to continue to see polarization.

And I suspect maybe even in part for that reason that even if it makes sense, and I kind of think it does for county council to get more money, to be unleashed from the restraints of the home rule charter, a lot of voters are not going to want it. And in fact, the fact that county councils become so much more progressive and so much more muscular, it may be exactly that that turns voters off from giving them more money. But only time will tell. That will be on November 3rd. As for me, I'm Brandon McGinley. This is a pleasure as always. I'm a columnist at the Post Gazette. Marty will be back soon, but not quite yet. So I will be with you again tomorrow at 10 o'clock. Talk to you soon.