When Plain Dealer columnist Sam Fulwood was replaced by Phillip Morris as the feature columnist in the paper’s Metro section last spring, the only voices raised in protest were from those who were upset not only because a liberal black voice — Fulwood — was being supplanted in favor of the right-wing Morris, but also because Fulwood was known for getting out into the black community while Morris kept himself perched in Warehouse District watering holes pontificating about “irresponsible” African-Americans. That’s why in his first column Morris made it a point to say that he would be spending considerable time hitting the Cleveland streets to relate the stories of its people.

Well, five months later it’s apparent that Morris has been getting out into the community, all right, but what he’s writing about is — you guessed it —irresponsible black people.No matter where his columns start off they invariably end up with a diatribe against rap music, lazy black parents, young black men with pants hanging down below their butts and the young black women who love these “thugs.” What many African-Americans at the PD are whispering about is that Morris was brought in specifically to paint a picture of blacks that would go over well in the white community. They believe that Morris’ emphasis on law ‘n’ order, his minimizing of race as an issue in today’s society and his incessant calls for blacks’ “pick themselves up by their bootstraps” is a not so subtle attempt to boost sagging circulation, especially in the outlying suburbs. At the PD, stranger things have happened.