Sports Illustrated: Run by Snobs From Mt. Lebanon
Monday, June 25, 2007Hey, Internets.
This week, Sports Illustrated had a big piece about Miami Dolphin and Pittsburgh native Jason Taylor. Not only did the article improve my opinion of Taylor a great deal (check out the part where a pro athlete puts sports into perspective with politics), but Woodland Hills H.S., the alma mater of JT and your resident author, even got a name-check. (Taylor was home-schooled but played senior year football for the school team as a district resident.)
That was cool, and I was pumped reading the article. Then I got to this part:
Yet as much as Taylor, in this instance, is guilty of stereotyping his fellow pros, he bristles when others’ expectations of how an athlete should act are used against him … And don’t get Taylor started on the notion some have that his unabashed ambition makes him something of a sellout to his roots. (He grew up in a largely underprivileged neighborhood.)
Huh say what???
Woodland Hills has its nasty areas (shoutout to Rankin and Braddock!) but it’s otherwise smack dab in the middle of American socioeconomic strata. Both Jason Taylor and myself are from Wilkins Township, one of the municipalities in WHSD (read this old Akron page), which I don’t know how someone could see as being “underprivileged”. (Peep these housing prices).
Woody High has a pretty battered rep in the local media, and it’s true that I have plenty of weird stories that I probably wouldn’t have gotten at Upper Middle Whitebread High. But some writer-reporter here is painting the whole district with a pretty broad brush that makes for a better story, but isn’t quite true.
What more can I say: The streetz is a mutha.
Holy Mother of S do I need to get out of DC. My 1600sf townhouse costs over $325K – and I’m out in Springfield VA.
Because I have no sense of normal housing markets – are those prices normal for suburbs?
I think that’s a bit excessive for Springfield. It’s not like you’re very close to DC. Perhaps you’ve got easy Metro access? It tends to drive up prices. Of course in real estate it’s worth what someone will pay you for it so until you find a buyer what it “costs” it theoretical.
Come on Pat, you know you love Young Guttah and the boys from Pistolvania.
I’m not sure if this is a Pittsburgh-only phenomenon, but this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a celeb completely misrepresent their ‘burgh experience: Xtina Aguilera often refers to her superposh suburb of Wexford as a “small farm town outside Pittsburgh” (I don’t think the fact that there’s Soergel’s Orchards makes it a farm town), and Jason Taylor–in a TV profile for Phil Simms’ All-Iron team a few years back–basically said that Pittsburgh sucks. Unfortunately, the kind of guys who are still cool about it (Kevan Barlow) are not famous or good.
So why did the snobs have to be from Mt. Lebanon? What you gotta cap on Lebo, n’at? 🙂