Stu Bykofsky: Can Nutter have his cake & icing, too?
YOU EVER have a "threshold " birthday - 18 or 21 or 30 or 50 or 75 - and friends bring out the biggest, gooiest five-layer cake you've ever seen, and as you crank a forkful to your lips, a blob plops onto your just-back-from-the-cleaners suede jacket?
YOU EVER have a "threshold " birthday - 18 or 21 or 30 or 50 or 75 - and friends bring out the biggest, gooiest five-layer cake you've ever seen, and as you crank a forkful to your lips, a blob plops onto your just-back-from-the-cleaners suede jacket?
The cake is still delicious, but you've been stained.
That's how Mayor Nutter may feel after taking a bite of the Pew Research Initiative poll released last week.
The icing is his job-approval rating - 53 percent say they like what he's doing as mayor, only 32 percent give him the finger.
Even better, 60 percent of Philadelphians have a favorable impression of him, while 30 percent boo. Nutter is halfway through his first term, and these numbers suggest that he'll get a second term, if he wants it.
With the economy laying sewer pipe, you might wonder who else would want it?
The butter-cream icing covered a few curious nuggets.
The most glaring: 65 percent of white people have a favorable view of Nutter, contrasted with only 43 percent of blacks. Hispanic percentages align with whites. Asians weren't included.
Would you have guessed - in Philadelphia, which gets "racially polarized" as a common prefix - that more whites than blacks would approve of a black mayor?
Black adoration is not a problem for President Obama. "Blacks' support for him has averaged 93 percent during his time in office," according to a recent Gallup Poll.
Even the imperious John Street got a 50 percent approval from blacks in a 2006 Keystone Poll, while pleasing a piddling 15 percent of whites.
Do white Philadelphians (subliminally) perceive of nerdy Nutter as one of their own - "white," or maybe White Lite®?
I can't say for sure.
Nutter surmised that his low ratings in the black community are a result of economic suffering being greater there, and that makes sense. But black economic depression exists nationally - there's a stunning 16.5 percent black unemployment rate - yet (magically) it hasn't tarnished Obama's numbers with them.
Are those uninfatuated with Nutter self-hating blacks? Are they more incisive than other minorities who offer unquestioning fidelity to "their" elected officials? Do blacks think that Nutter hasn't done enough, specifically, for them? Is it a black thang I just wouldn't understand?
I ask 48-year-old Mervin Stady, an African-American chef (and longtime reader) who lives in the Northeast.
"Most of what he's doing has hurt lower-income people," who regard him as a "photo-opportunist individual," Stady says. (About three hours after our chat, Nutter and Councilwoman Marian Tasco arrived in West Oak Lane to help shovel snow.)
I raise these questions because we Philadelphians love arguing about race almost as much as squabbling about sports.
Other anomalies are buried in the research.
Philadelphians were split almost evenly on a choice between higher taxes/more services vs. lower taxes/fewer services. Higher taxes got the nod from 41 percent, lower taxes from 43 percent. My gut tells me that those opting for fewer services will feel that way until their services get cut - libraries, police, fire, parks, education, transportation, medical, and street and sewer cleaning.
Maybe my gut is wrong.
Since the cash crunch, city services have been cut, some say severely.
Despite that, 62 percent noticed no change in city services, 17 percent said that they were worse and 15 percent said that they were better.
How is that possible?
If cutting services can improve them, will eating more make you thinner?
Cut me a slice of that birthday cake.
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: