Showing posts with label Philadelphia Inquirer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philadelphia Inquirer. Show all posts

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Now they are coming for Big Frank Rizzo

Big Frank has been dead for some years now.  He was first police commissioner and then got himself elected mayor of Philadelphia.  I was living one state over (Delaware) in those years.  We got the Philadelphia Inquirer, which was solidly anti Rizzo and the Philadelphia TV.  The Inquirer ran hit pieces on Big Frank every other day and the TV was unsupportive, to put it mildly. 
  Frank was colorful and had pretty solid political support in Philadelphia.  He had some rough edges, and managed to offend a lot of people.  He was not an "affirmative action" kinda guy.  Anyhow, after his death his supporters got a stature of him erected in Philadelphia.
   Now, after demonizing statues of long dead Confederate generals, Frank's surviving enemies, of which there are quite a few, want to get rid of the statue of Big Frank.  They couldn't vote him out of office during his lifetime, so now that's he is dead and gone, they want to spit on his statue. 
   Seems like a waste of effort to me.  Big Frank is a part of Philadelphia's history, for better or for worse.  Taking down his statue won't change that history, it will just erase today's memory of it. 
   I didn't approve of Big Frank back in his day, but I think he deserves a statue in his beloved home town.