Philadelphia Weekly has a front page news item on the photo book Armed America, which I talked about here a few weeks ago.  To have a major Philadelphia media outlet giving the front page treatment to something like this is the kind of public relations coup you couldn’t have come up with if you tried.
Michael Bane has more.
I think the book looks pretty cool, but are you sure about the article? Given the cross-section of people mentioned in the article (again, not the book) it seems like the author is trying to make guns into hipster accessories. That seems like public relations strategy that could, as they say, backfire.
Andrew
http://www.malcolmxpark.org
I’ll take what I can get from the Philadelphia media. Actually, a commenter over at Bane’s made a great observation:
Philly journalists spends millions of words a year trying to convince themselves that they really work in New York City.
Philly is a city of houses, fairly blue collar and fiercely proud of itself. A perfect day in the city for most folks would be a Sunday drinking beer, eating a cheese steak and watching the Eagles beating the Dallas Cowboys 42-0.
Pretty spot on. The Philadelphia news culture is kind of dysfunctional. But, despite the fact that I hate the haughtiness of the article, it’s talking about gun owners in a light that’s not awful, and telling a story about a side of Philadelphia that no one in the media wants to talk about.
I think the inferiority complex vis-a-vis NYC extends well beyond the Philly media’s chattering classes, and Philly’s pride is more than balanced with a deep-seated pessimism. It’s almost clinical. But the expectation that you might find news media anywhere describing gun owners positively is sort of strange. Does that happen elsewhere? Under what circumstances? I linked to the PA Fish and Game HSRI report at malcolmxpark.org, is that the sort of relatively positive press you find outside of Philly?
As Bitter pointed out when we were having lunch with Wyatt Earp and Rightwingprof, “Philly seems to be such a self-hating city”. I think it’s true. Unfortunately, or fortunately in some cases, we’re the forgotten city between New York and Washington D.C. Hell, even signs on 95 don’t mention Philadelphia south of Newark.
I’ll have to take a look at your post when I have a few minutes. Never noticed your blog before. I’ll add the RSS feed.