Meet the Blocks
No, not the kindly family that runs the famous bagel store in Columbus. The other one.
William Block Sr., the executive chairman of the famous Block Communications of Toledo, was by all accounts a respected and brilliant man who cobbled together a media empire.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, William Block Sr. was not as talented at being a father as he was a media tycoon. When he croaked in 2005, that left his two mediocre twin sons, John and Allan, to run the company.
What would you do with $100 million? For Allan Block, the answer was blaming feminists and gays for his inability to get laid in 1999.
Mr. Block is a nice enough guy, a man who doesn’t believe in the one-night stand, and he’s beginning to be frustrated by the fact that he has not yet found the woman who will be Mrs. Block. Over the years, he has dated scores of women in Manhattan, taken them to Cipriani and ’21’, and he has spent many late nights searching solo, at places like Nell’s and Le Club and Au Bar, but no wife yet.
“I would say I wish I had been married before now,” said Mr. Block, driving down Route 27 in a rented Ford Taurus on his way to Southampton one recent Saturday. “I never thought I’d be this age and never been married. It was never my plan, you know. I think the conditions, the way it is today, is the reason. I think there’s a war between the sexes going on. I think the female part of the population has been waging a war against the male part. Male and female have always been equal, you cannot compare gender to race, that was never a valid analogy or comparison. There was never a deliberate effort to hold women down. Feminism is basically wrong.”
[…]
“Another point I would make: some people think gay rights doesn’t hurt anybody, but I would say to be a single male over 40 years old, the gay movement is very hurtful–definitely detrimental to my position, because I am a totally heterosexual individual. In the past, I would have gotten credit for that. Today, people say, ‘Why aren’t you married?’ Or, ‘Maybe he’s gay.'”
Sadly, the homosexual conspiracy to prevent the totally heterosexual Allan Block from fucking was unsuccessful. He married Susan Jeanne Pond, “a culinary arts student studying in Paris” who was 12 years his junior in 2011. She adopted his first and last name like a true pervert and now goes by Susan Allan Block.
In the past, she has said the Blocks run The Toledo Blade out of charity to the city. She also supported the insurrection of January 6th:
Most recently, Susan Allan Block resigned from the Ohio Arts Council, a seat she probably earned through total merit, because she spread anti-Muslim conspiracy theories on Facebook.
John Robinson Block, the twin brother of Allan, is the Vice President of Block Communications and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Toledo Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Even in spite of his 19th-century skull scientist ensemble, you might think there is no way he can be as creepily ghoulish as his brother and sister-in-law. You would be wrong.
Here’s John Block in action during a contentious labor dispute with Post-Gazette staff in 2019, via Madison Hahamy of The Columbia Journalism Review:
Block, who also serves as the paper’s publisher and editor in chief, approached a photo editor on duty. He asked the editor to take a picture of him and his daughter in front of the sign. When his daughter, who had begun to cry, said she didn’t want to, Block responded, according to Post-Gazette reporter Andrew Goldstein, “Do you want to be high class or low class? You’re a Block, you’re one of us! You have to learn how to lead!”
As an HR manager approached Block, Block began to scream “Get rid of it” and repeatedly slapped, kicked, and punched the sign while also threatening to fire the HR manager. Block left an hour later.
Sometimes I feel like America must be the only country in the world where rich assholes are this deluded about being “high class” and “leaders.” But I’m sure these types of losers exist all over the globe.
Unfortunately for the good people of Toledo, the Blocks also have a monopoly on high-speed internet:
Unsurprisingly, the Blocks’ tenure has been marked with labor unrest at their publications, considering neither staff has gotten raises in over a decade.
After a wave of attrition at The Blade and Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh wing is drawing a line in the sand.
From post-gazette.com on Tuesday:
The union representing editorial workers at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette began a strike at noon Tuesday, after giving management a contract bargaining ultimatum.
The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which represents about 100 newsroom employees, had demanded that management reinstate the terms of its previous contract and return to the bargaining table or face a walkout by union members. Guild members have been working without a contract since 2017.
On October 6, a group of Teamsters, Pressmen, Mailers and Typographical union members went on strike to protest a lack of agreement regarding health care coverage. At that time, the Newspaper Guild members did not go on strike, although a number of union members began withholding bylines from their work.
Few things are worse in America than when a competent business person dies and their odious offspring take the helm. The Blocks clearly have a disdain for the workers. They have no interest in running a journalistic outlet other than when it can be used to cover their exploits flatteringly.
From the cjr.com piece:
In 2019, John Block had a reporter write a piece about his attendance at the Kentucky Derby and a subsequent celebration that he hosted. In 2008, when he installed a streetlight outside of his Shadyside house, the newspaper covered it, without mentioning he was its publisher. He was referred to as the “safety-conscious man who dreamed up this unique system.”
You would be hard-pressed to find a better example of the toxic mismanagement that swept the newspaper industry the second it stopped being as profitable as it had been since its inception.
The Blocks are clueless right-wing weirdos detached from reality. I wish the Post-Gazette workers nothing but the best in their strike. I hope it spreads to The Blade, too.
The faster the Blocks go away, the better for Toledo and Pittsburgh. But even then, their damage might not be able to be undone. Such are the consequences of mediocre sons inheriting a business empire they did nothing to earn.
THOSE WMDs. The college student who decoded the data hidden in Inca knots… Getting rid of mold naturally: Five non-toxic solutions… I uncovered an army of fake men on Hinge… Your section-by-section guide to storing food in the fridge… Halloween rainbow fentanyl?
Excellent - no one else is doing local reportage like this on Ohio freaks and ghouls.
Are the Blade men Incels?