Hits and Misses
Courtesy of Frito-Lay
The new Cracker Jill icon decorates packages of the iconic snack at baseball parks nationwide this season.
Observer-Reporter
In 2007, Pennsylvania honored the late August Wilson with an official historical marker in front of his Bedford Avenue home.
The late playwright August Wilson has loomed large over the Pittsburgh cultural landscape for 40 years, but there has not been a permanent exhibit on his life and work available for the public to see until this week. Starting Saturday, the August Wilson African American Cultural Center in downtown Pittsburgh will open a 3,600-square-foot gallery space with artifacts, audio recordings and other items that will illuminate Wilson’s creativity and the issues of race, family and community that appear in acclaimed works like “Fences” and “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” For anyone who is curious about exploring the work of Wilson, this exhibit is an excellent place to start. His widow, Constanza Romero-Wilson, said, “Pittsburgh’s Hill District and its people had a profound impact on my late husband’s writing, and the universality of his characters who call for racial justice continues to speak to audiences around the world today.”
For almost a decade, the Black Lives Matter movement has sought to spotlight and combat incidents of police brutality against Black men, and that’s a worthy cause. But if the cause itself is worthy, questions have been raised about the leadership of the national organization that bears the Black Lives Matter moniker. The organization has accumulated millions in donations, but there’s been little accounting of how it’s been spent. Last week, New York magazine reported that the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation shelled out $6 million for a mansion in the tony enclave of Malibu, Calif. The group has reportedly described it as a “safehouse” and a haven for “Black creatives,” but couldn’t they have purchased real estate in a considerably less pricey neighborhood and accomplished the same goal? Karen Attiah, a Washington Post columnist, put it this way: “Do they think we’re stupid? For years, people marched, got tear-gassed, donated and literally put their lives on the line in the hopes of Black emancipation – not a Black influencer McMansion.”
In his U.S. Senate race, Conor Lamb has been trying to convince Pennsylvania Democrats in advance of next month’s primary election that he would be more electable in the fall than his main competitor, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. But Lamb’s campaign has failed to gain much traction, and has committed some unforced errors. First, his campaign employed a consultant who had served time in federal prison for tax evasion, and a former Philadelphia city council member who has been convicted on fraud charges turned up at a Lamb event. Then, last week, a super PAC supporting Lamb had to withdraw a television ad that claimed Fetterman is “a self-described democratic socialist,” when Fetterman has never described himself that way. One strategist told The Philadelphia Inquirer that the super PAC “shot itself in the foot” with the ad, and the Fetterman campaign called it “desperate, and frankly sad.” With missteps like these, Lamb is demonstrating not electability, but that his campaign is not hitting on all four cylinders.
Cracker Jack has been a ballpark staple for decades, and the cartoon image of Sailor Jack has graced boxes of the snack since 1893, when it debuted at the Chicago World’s Fair. Now, almost 130 years later, a note for equality has been sounded with bags of Cracker Jill being introduced to the marketplace. Frito-Lay North America has announced that bags of Cracker Jill will be available for a $5 donation to the Women’s Sports Foundation and at professional ballparks. Cracker Jill is being introduced to honor women who break down barriers in sports, and the special-edition bags will feature five different and diverse Jills. Joe Ravasio, a retired health and physical education teacher in the Ringgold School District, told us this week, “I taught P.E. and, having been head coach of girls basketball for 24 years, that’s a great thing. It’s uplifting, you know, for young girls.”