Philly Bucket List: The Rocky Steps

We’ll be leaving Philadelphia to return to Kansas this summer: “Philadelphia Bucket List” is an occasional series of posts about what we’ll miss about this great city.

Everybody knows the Rocky Steps. Everybody who visits Philly has to visit the Rocky Steps. Why?

Do I really have to say? Because of this:

We visited soon after arriving in Philadelphia, of course. Everybody does. There's always somebody — often multiple somebodies — charging up the steps, then raising their fists in triumph at the top. Homeless guys hang out and offer to take pictures; there's a guy in a sweatshirt and porkpie hat, slightly Stallone-ish, who offers to be in the pictures.

None of that is why the Rocky Steps are on my list.

This is why:

Two months after my mom died in 2013, my dad came to visit us for the first time without her.

He and I walked and talked for a few days, stopping every now and again to sob. As deeply as I felt the loss, his pain (I know) was absolutely searing. One of our walks took us to the Philadelphia Museum of Art — we circled from the Schuylkill River Trail, on the back side, around to Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the steps in front.

I looked him, whipped out my cell phone, and told him to go.

And my father, deep in the earliest stages of widowerhood, bounded up the steps to the top, then raised his fists in triumph.


 That's when I knew we would survive.

This is what America is coming to: Our bullying douchebags versus their bullying douchebags.

This is being presented by some of my lefty friends as good and laudable:

Here's an explanation from Tulane's "The Tab":

Members of the Tulane football team were seen removing the sandbags as frat members yelled at them 

This past week Kappa Alpha fraternity placed a wall of sandbags around their house as part of their annual fraternity tradition. 

A member of the fraternity then defaced the wall, writing “Make America Great Again” on it.

I'm no Trump fan, but this stinks. Let's be clear: It's not freedom of speech to tear down somebody else's property because it says something you don't like. If this is the road we're going down, democracy is screwed. Football players versus frat boys? Forget principle, we're just seeing who can turn out the biggest douchebag bullies. Guess what liberals? That's a battle you're probably going to lose. Don't go down this road.

Is Bruce Springsteen's Boycott of North Carolina the Same Thing as a Baker Refusing Service to Gay Couples?

No, but a lot of people seem to think so.

A petition on Change.org has garnered nearly 500 signatures in support of Bruce Springsteen’s decision to cancel an April 10 concert in Greensboro, NC. 

“Bruce Springsteen has a right to his deeply held beliefs. He has a right to control his business and refuse to do business with those he disagrees with,” the petition reads. 

Additionally, the petition author Dennis Burgard argues that like Springsteen, “every business person” is entitled to the right to deny services where and when it violates their beliefs.

Get it?

OK, so here's the difference between Bruce and that Christian baker, florist, whatever: 

If North Carolinians come to a Bruce concert in any other state, they won't be refused at the door while everybody else is let in. And in North Carolina, he's not refusing to play for any specific portion of the population  while playing others — he's withdrawing his services entirely within the state. The differences are clear, unless one wants to be ostentatiously ignorant of them.

Listen: I'm torn on the whole idea of whether Christian florists and bakers should be required to provide services. As a lapsed Mennonite — one who has a number of Christian conservative friends — I'm a big fan of conscientious objection, and that probably has to remain true even if I don't appreciate what's being conscientiously objected.* Then again, there's an argument that if you're going to provide services to the public, you provide your services to the public, end of story. My preference? Would be for everybody to avoid a confrontation on the issue. But I don't get that preference, and I do think there are competing claims to be weighed.

*Theologically, were I still a practicing Christian, I'd probably heed these verses:

27"But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

...but I think the actual Gospel tends to involve a lot more turning the other cheek than actual Christians do.

That said, the implicit comparison between Bruce and the baker here is silly. If a Christian baker wants the same freedom Bruce has, they too can stop providing services altogether in an entire state whose policies they they find objectionable.

A note to my friends about our differences in the Democratic primary

I've spent the last decade arguing — vociferously at times — with conservatives over the right policies and principles by which to govern our country. By virtue of some twists of fate, some of those conservatives have ended up among my best friends.

So.

Is Bruce Springsteen "Illiberal" Not to Play a Concert in North Carolina?

Since we're in the season of flinging charges of "illiberalism" around, let's take a look at the latest — a screed against the so-called "LGBT Mafia" by Daniel Payne in The Federalist:

Aided by media that are both incompetent and often transparently biased, along with a burgeoning corporate culture that has discovered the economic benefits of public moral preening, we have what Stella Morabito aptly terms the “LGBT mafia:” a profoundly illiberal social movement rather single-mindedly determined to stamp out even minor and inconsequential dissent from its orthodoxy. It’s not going anywhere. In fact, it’s getting worse. 

(Snip, regarding passage of "religious liberty" bill in North Carolina): 

In response to this incredibly reasonable and commonsense bill, Bruce Springsteen cancelled a concert in Greensboro; dozens of corporations signed a protest letter; PayPal withdrew plans for an operations center in Charlotte; the composer Stephen Schwartz vowed that his productions—among them the Broadway hit “Wicked”—will not run in North Carolina; A&E and Lionsgate declared they will not film any productions in the state; and the federal government is deciding whether it can withhold billions and billions of dollars in highway, housing, and education funds.

A few months ago, we were saying it was "illiberal" of social movements to try to strongarm the public out of public places, as happened at Mizzou. Sounds right. More recently, we're labeling protests against Donald Trump to be "illiberal" — and that sounds slightly less right, but to the extent they were trying to drown him out, sure.

But now: Now the act of not holding a concert or signing a letter or deciding not to hold a play — that's an illiberal quashing of dissent. Well, no. That just seems like dissent to me. Covered by the First Amendment. And they're using the First Amendment the way it's commonly understood that we should: To try to peacefully create change.

There's nothing authoritarian about that, is there?

Hey Bruce Arians: I'm a Dad Who Won't Let My Son Play Football

This guy:

Arians came to football’s defense yet again on Friday here at the Cardinals training facility. He delivered the keynote address to over 130 high school football coaches at the “Arizona Cardinals High School Football Coaches Clinic,” and, as always, Arians was full of passion and energy for the sport, and he didn’t hold back any punches when speaking on stage in front of the men. 

“We feel like this is our sport. It’s being attacked, and we got to stop it at the grass roots,” Arians said. “It’s the best game that’s ever been f—— invented, and we got to make sure that moms get the message; because that’s who’s afraid of our game right now. It’s not dads, it’s moms.”

Well. It's not just moms.

Philly Bucket List: The Philly Orchestra

We’ll be leaving Philadelphia to return to Kansas this summer: “Philadelphia Bucket List” is an occasional series of posts about what we’ll miss about this great city.

The first time I heard the Philadelphia Orchestra was in September 2008, on Dilworth Plaza — now Dilworth Park — at City Hall. My son had been born weeks earlier and we were crazed with a lack of sleep; an outdoor concert seemed an appropriate way to allow us to have a cultural experience in our new city where an infant would be appropriate.

My son at his first orchestra concert, September 2008.

I remember a couple of things about that night. First: It was kind of chilly. Second: An officer had been killed in the line of duty that day. Mayor Nutter took the stage and said the death nearly caused him to cancel the concert. Instead, the orchestra opened with addition to the evening’s program: Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”