The New York Times Still Thinks We’re the Sixth Borough

PA Society article rife with PA Stereotypes.
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Reporter Trip Gabriel—of Sheetz vs. Wawa piece fame–wrote a story about this weekend’s annual PA Society dinner/schmoozefest for the New York Times. The take? Pennsylvanians are a bunch of New York-worshipping, Little Brother-complexed, Sixth-Boroughans whose inferiority complexes are on full display during their annual political pilgrimage to the Waldorf Astoria.

Let us start with the title of the piece, which as we all know, was not Gabriel’s doing, but deserves mention: “A Grand Weekend Out for Pennsylvanians.” Oh, come on. What do they think? That the entire state is comprised of coal miners from The Deer Hunter seeing a fancy hotel for the first time in their lives? To the article, then.

Left unsaid was an ever-so-slight inferiority complex: The Keystone State is grand, but the Empire State, grander. “People come to enjoy the weekend in New York,” said Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College who has been attending for more than 20 years. “They shop. They do plays. They go out and eat at, arguably, the best dining establishments in the world. I go to Barneys.”

OK, if it’s somehow an embarrassing faux pas to admit to eating out in New York, it’s an ever greater faux pas for a journalist to quote ole Terry Madonna for the 4,580,834th time.

If Pennsylvanians were inclined to feel a little like a sixth borough when contemplating New York City, Mr. Biden offered reassurance that all they need to do to experience a real inferiority complex was move to Delaware. “I raised over 60 percent of my money from y’all during my political career,” he told the 1,600 Pennsylvania movers and shakers.

Who said anyone was feeling like a sixth borough? The reporter did! Besides, the entire state is now a borough?! It wasn’t enough to annex the city? All that said, the Times piece actually did a better and meatier job covering the PA Society than the Inquirer or the Daily News thus far. This Public Record photogallery, on the other hand…

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