Baltimore does not deserve Trump’s scorn
They always say you never forget your first love. He, or she, or that puppy you found under the Christmas tree at age 3, occupies a spot in the deepest folds of your memory that is immune to the passage and ravages of time. Baltimore that, for is me.
I know it sounds strange that an entire zip code would represent something “beloved” to me, especially since I was spirited away from the city at the age of 1. There are no personal, distinct memories that I have, nothing that hasn’t been transferred secondhand to me by my parents in passing comments or in blurry, black and white photographs.
And yet, I was born with an innate love of the Baltimore Colts circa Johnny Unitas, the Orioles with the absolute best sports logo in the country, the large Domino sugar sign presiding over the Inner Harbor, the smell of the only crabs worth eating in the entire world (with a generous sprinkling of Old Bay.) I think that when you are born in a place, something in the air settles onto that clean slate of your soul and remains a part of you.
I’ve followed Baltimore through the years, from afar, like an old boyfriend you’ve broken up with but never stopped loving. Ironically, the only boyfriend who ever broke up with me did the dastardly deed in, you guessed it, Baltimore. Camden Yards to be exact, at the seventh inning stretch. Didn’t change my love for the place.
That’s why President Trump’s tweet about that “rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live” angered me, before it saddened me, before it puzzled me, before it finally made me shake my head and think that someone who grew up in Queens has chutzpah criticizing the hometown of Babe Ruth, H.L. Mencken and Edgar Allan Poe. Who’s the iconic figure from Queens, besides Archie Bunker?
I know a lot of people agreed with Trump, the people who tend to think that Baltimore is one step removed from Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a lot of poverty, environmental decay, crime and a deterioration of a once-proud city. It’s really not that different from Detroit, New York, Newark, Cleveland, and other rust belt cities with aging populations and shrinking tax bases. Philadelphia, my wonderful hometown, is in no position to point fingers to our municipal sibling a short ride south on I-95.
Unlike many liberals, and some conservatives, I don’t think Trump’s tweets were racist. You can try and read all the subtext in the world into the words “rat and rodent infested” and the residents of West Baltimore will tell you that there are rats, and there are rodents, and their trash does not get picked up on time. They might be angry that the president is attacking their city, but they’re not going to deny that it needs help, and if they don’t host a cable news show, they’re not going to play the race card. They want results, not ratings.
But I do take issue with Trump attacking a great American city with a history and a unique beauty that will survive when the last of his own buildings crumbles and disappears. He can play political games with jaundiced voters and reach out to the most zealous among his own squad, but ridiculing a community and a place that has given so much to the history of our country (not to mention provided him with a fabulous wrestling partner named Nancy D’Alessandro Pelosi) is beneath him.
So as they say in Baltimore, “Mr. President, just shut up. Hon.”