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Good morning, and welcome to Broad + Liberty's Weekly Reads.

What We’re Hearing: “The popular saying is especially true and applicable to state legislators: Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” - Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill (R-York)

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** 1. The Super Bowl's Communal Allure
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By Jeff Hurvitz

“In an age of tribalism, when individuals tend to retreat to their own comfortable corners, the Super Bowl stands as a holdout. It is a throwback to the days when a large segment of the country’s population was affixed to one event at the same time. That it has reached a pinnacle of attention is a culmination of a process that tracks its growth from rather rudimentary origins.”

Why It Matters. “At one time, there were countless national TV shows that reached vast audiences. They drew tens of millions of viewers into a communal experience. With the proliferation of countless choices in both traditional media, pay cable and streaming channels and social media, audiences enjoying the same experience at the same moment on a super-large scale are quite rare.”

Quotable. “An extremely heterogeneous audience whose members need have nothing in common beyond receiving identical messages at about the same time.” – Sydney Head, author, Broadcasting In America, describing a mass audience.

Continue Reading ([link removed])


** 2. Medical services denied to Delco inmate 18 hours before suicide attempt in 2022
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By Todd Shepherd

“Pam Langworthy says she’s at peace with the 2022 death of her son, Patrick. But she also has questions — some things don’t seem to add up or sit well. All of that is true for her at the same time.

With numerous scrapes with police in his history, Patrick was admitted to the George W. Hill Correctional Facility in Delaware County on June 8 for a parole violation.

Patrick Langworthy died by suicide in June 2022. According to an incident report ([link removed]) obtained by Broad + Liberty through a source, at about 1:47 p.m. on the afternoon of June 15, a correctional officer at Delco’s George W. Hill Correctional Facility found Langworthy “sitting on the cell floor with a ripped bed sheet around his neck and tied to the bottom bunk.”

Why It Matters. “In an email, Warden Laura Williams is inquiring with the administrator for Wellpath, the company that provides medical services to the prison. The email subject line is “Interruption of Services,” and the email contains a spreadsheet attachments of the same name. The spreadsheet notes that for Langworthy, there was a request for some kind of medical services or intervention at about 8:45 p.m. on the 14th — or about sixteen to seventeen hours before his suicide attempt.”

Quotable. “It’s very confusing when you look at that and if his medical condition was bad enough that they wanted him to get some medical treatment for whatever reason – it just seems odd to me,” Pam said.”

Continue Reading ([link removed])


** 3. Lightning Round
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* Carbon tax repeal effort reignited ([link removed])
* Shapiro proposes $48.3 billion budget ([link removed])
* Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill: Lavish spending requests will mean higher taxes on all Pennsylvanians ([link removed])
* Exclusive: County investigators not notified after 2022 inmate suicide at Delaware County prison ([link removed])
* Andy Bloom: Don’t Swift boat this campaign ([link removed])

What We’re Reading...
Good news for Pennsylvania Republicans? It's not that common lately, but this week in POLITICO, Charles McElwee wrote that from Reading to Allentown to Hazleton, Pennsylvania's "Latino Belt" is a rare bright spot for the GOP ([link removed]) . "In Pennsylvania, as in many other states, Latinos have traditionally voted Democratic by large margins. But in places like Hazleton and elsewhere in the Latino Belt, there are growing signs that those habits are fraying."

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With gratitude,

— The Editors at Broad + Liberty
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