When I interviewed Falk on the Burbank Studios lot in 1986 it was easy to see where the lovable Columbo got his eccentricities — and his raincoat. One of my favorite interviews in LA in the ‘80s was with the beloved actor Peter Falk, who died in 2011. 1986 “Columbo” the TV show may have…
Read More ...Hope and a prayer — and a choice
Here’s a look back at how the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s inner-city Catholic schools used lots of love and discipline to give young black kids the education they needed and their parents wanted. In 1994 when I realized the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette had not written two words about the Diocese of Pittsburgh’s three inner-city “Extra Mile Schools,”…
Read More ...Remembering fricking Tommy Lasorda — a nice guy in Blue
Before two games in 1986 I hung out with the salty-tongued LA Dodgers manager in his office under Dodger Stadium. This is the X-rated version of my quality time with one of the nicest celebrities I ever met. “I get these fucking invitations to weddings,” Tommy Lasorda was saying, his bare feet propped on his…
Read More ...Downtown Pittsburgh, Sept. 11, 2001 — A city in shock
On the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001, as the country was in shock from the horrible events in New York, Washington and Shanksville, Pa., my job at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review was to go out into the abandoned and strangely silent city of Pittsburgh and report what I saw. Here’s what I wrote: Empty Downtown offers…
Read More ...Western PA. to Gov. Wolf — We’re dead. Please remove your knee.
For all you folks who think Gov. Wolf’s strict strangulation of Western Pa. to fight the Covid-19 ‘pandemic’ is justified and that schools should remain closed to protect the children, please wake up, look at the facts and get a grip. Kids rarely catch Covid-19, don’t readily infect others and don’t ever die from it…
Read More ...Going to school in the Age of Covid is not going to be fun — or funny
OK, let’s pretend that Covid-19 is especially lethal to kids and that extraordinary steps need to be taken to open and operate our public schools safely. Let’s pretend that the state of Pennsylvania’s guidelines for reopening schools are not totally insane, laughable and unrealistic. Let’s pretend that the nannies and medical experts who came up…
Read More ...Pittsburgh’s Phantom Pandemic — as misreported by The New York Times
‘Pittsburgh Seemed Like a Virus Success Story. Now Cases Are Surging’ ‘Pittsburgh, a sister city to Wuhan, China, saw only modest cases for months. In the last two weeks, cases are suddenly soaring’ The headline and content of this July 12 article about how Pittsburgh has dodged the Covid-19 bullet are a perfect example of…
Read More ...Bill's Q&A's
Q&A: Tucker Carlson, before he became King of Cable — and GOP presidential timber
Bill Steigerwald is a veteran journalist from Pittsburgh. His new nonfiction book "30 Days a Black Man" tells the amazing but forgotten story about an undercover mission by a Pittsburgh newspaperman into the Jim Crow South in 1948 that shook up the whole country. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette star reporter Ray Sprigle's nationally syndicated series "In the Land of Jim Crow" exposed the iniquities and humiliations suffered by ten million black Americans in the segregated South. It shocked the white people of the North, angered the South and started the first national debate in the media about ending America's legal apartheid. Kirkus Review said "30 Days a Black Man" is "a fascinating account of an anti-Jim Crow muckraking adventure..." that Steigerwald turned "into rollicking, haunting American history." ... READ MORE