Here’s a letter just in from a, well, “reader,” an obvious sophisticate from southern New Jersey, home of such magnet destinations as Trenton, Camden, and Atlantic City.

It’s an interesting message, but bitterly disappointing to us given that we thought our audience was far more intelligent than this. Regardless, we offer the correspondence for your consideration.

From: Scott Welsh [sswenviron@comcast.net]
To: RittenReview@earthlink.net
Subject: You are a joke
Sent: Monday, 08/19/02 9:00 p.m.

“You are the loser I see as I get off the Speedline in that filthy city.

“You are the one [sic; “The one”? Just us? Just me?] that [sic] has ensured the [D]emocrats stay in charge and keep the city in abject poverty.

“You are the one [sic; “The one”? Just us? Just me?] who reelected a mayor who bombed his own race, people he governed, and city [sic] and then ensured the scam continued by having a crony get the rebuilding work.

“You are the one [sic; “The one”? Just us? Just me?] who backs the convention center union idiots and believes that the way they run the center is the way the country should be run. Do you know how many businesses were displaced because of that s***-**** convention center?

“You are also a part of the Street ‘we are in charge’ mentality.

“Enjoy the erosion of a once great city...Just stay the hell out of south Jersey.”

That’s all Mr. Welsh had to say. It’s all very strange, really, particularly since at the present time we don’t even work out of Philadelphia, the city to which his misguided rant refers.

Below we offer some translations and other comments to help our readers make sense of Mr. Welsh’s tirade.

TRANSLATIONS & OTHER ASSISTANCE:

“Speedline”: PATCO, or the Port Authority Transit Corp., which operates a heavily subsidized railway that transports residents of persistently economically depressed southern New Jersey into the city of Philadelphia at below-market rates.

“That filthy city”: Philadelphia.

“[A] mayor who bombed his own race”: W. Wilson Goode, mayor of Philadelphia, 1984-1992. The reference being to Mayor Goode’s 1985 decision to destroy the headquarters of MOVE, a bizarre cult that had been terrorizing its neighbors for years. At the time our editor, the oldest member of our staff, was 23 years old and living in Washington, D.C.

“Street”: Current Philadelphia Mayor John F. Street. “You are also a part of the Street ‘we are in charge’ mentality.” Wrong. We have nothing to do with Mayor Street. Nobody here voted for Mayor Street. Nobody here is particularly fond of Mayor Street.

“Enjoy the erosion of a once great city”: Actually, many parts of Philadelphia are doing quite well. In fact, the city has a greater density of full-time residents in the core downtown area than any city in the country. And this erosion, we are expected to presume, has absolutely nothing to do with decades of flight to the suburbs.

“You are the one who backs the convention center union idiots and believes that the way they run the center is the way the country should be run. Do you know how many businesses were displaced because of that s***-**** convention center?” A complete and absolute lie. Simple as that. We have expressed our opinions to the contrary at our site |||trr|||.

“Just stay the hell out of south Jersey”: Hey, no problem, pal.