Mike Ditka grew up in Aliquippa, PA, a town most famous for high school football and J & L Steel. Ditka’s father worked J&L’s mills as did seemingly the majority of fathers in Aliquippa, but when his son was being recruited by both Penn State and Pitt for football, Ditka chose Pitt. It had the better dental school.
Ditka rates mention as a counter to Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle’s recent column suggesting that “the twilight of the 20th-century manufacturing boom” somehow “devastated workers and communities.” McArdle cites Bruce Springsteen's music as a resonant cultural response to the alleged devastation except that Springsteen, by his own admission, has never even been inside a factory.
Read Full Article »
