The dog wags back!

A sometimes funny, somtimes angry, but mostly progressive, blog on the politics and issues of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and America.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Titanic Pittsburgh

I realize that Pittsburgh as the Titanic is perhaps a cheap and overblown analogy in a way that the movie never was - cheap that is because the movie was certainly overblown. The previous Captain steered us into an iceberg and then jumped overboard. Now we have a choice to make about who will steer the ship. We have three basic choices.

One pilot says that the giant gash in the hull is a serious problem that we can't ignore, but if we throw a few deck chairs overboard, we'll be able to ride safely back to port.

Another pilot had been screaming that we were about to hit an iceberg, but everybody ignored him. Now that we have hit the iceberg, he wants the crew to start trying to fix it to buy us time while we radio for help. Unfortunately, there is no one on the crew who want to fix the ship because it is "not their job" and they don't want to be put in a different job. The chance of outside help coming in time is also slim, but maybe the only chance to save passengers and possibly the ship. But nobody thinks he is qualified because he couldn't get anyone to listen when he said we were going hit the iceberg.

The oldest pilot says that if he had been steering the ship we wouldn't have hit the iceberg (even though the first pilot has pointed out that the old guy had the iceberg listed as a "safe harbor" on his charts). Furthermore, he won't even steer the ship, but he will find the best person to do the job. If you're wondering why he seems to have forgotten about the hole in the hull and why no one has called him on it, well, join the club.

Can you guess who the pilots are:

1 - the deck chair pilot is:
2 - the chicken little pilot is:
3 - the old guy is: