Bill White's Pawlowski Column

Although Bill White's column is a template set on seasonal themes, such as Eating His Way Through Musikfest, he also now serves as the paper's de facto editorial writer. Recently, I observed that although the paper's love affair with the NIZ continues, the honeymoon with Ed Pawlowski seems to be over. On Sunday, Bill White interrupted his normal Christmas light column, and with profound regret, suggested that Ed Pawlowski should resign. Bill said that he refrained from writing an earlier column defending Ed, but that sentiment had, never the less, permeated several of his columns. White strove to disassociate himself from the naysayers, which he now labels as Pawlowski haters.

White's fundamental faulty thinking is contained in the last line; Ed Pawlowski helped get Allentown moving in the right direction. What White refuses to acknowledge is that Reillyville has nothing to do with Pawlowski, it just happened on his watch. Reillyville, although perfectly legal, is not the pure driven snow that White and The Morning Call have bestowed upon it. It is an aberration of the marketplace, for the private gain of just a few individuals. It is a result of a morally flexible state government, with a long tradition of corruption. It is promoted and justified by a newspaper impressed by new buildings of no merit, occupied by poached tenants. The NIZ creators, in their profound manipulative way, even included the Morning Call building in the zone, although it's across the street from the rest of the district.