So, this is what we get for impressing out-of-towners, eh? During the Pennsylvania primary last year, then-candidate Barack Obama went out of his way to praise the state's beauty in general and Pittsburgh in particular. He seemed genuinely shocked that we weren't all sitting around in bars like the one in "Flashdance" waiting for the second-shift bell at the coke works to ring.

Candidate Obama was full of compliments that sounded inadvertently like insults. He was struck by how "pretty" the town was -- which can only mean he was expecting the smokiest, ugliest dump imaginable before he got a gander of the Golden Triangle from Mount Washington.

During interviews last year, Mr. Obama praised Pittsburgh as if it were the star of an Easter morning sermon. Suddenly, Pittsburgh became a politically useful parable about the death and unlikely resurrection of an American city.

Because it is the kind of mythology that flatters us, we didn't mind candidate Obama repeating stories about our resurrection on the campaign trail. For once, we were being used as a positive example to other rust bucket cities that had suffered as Pittsburgh had when its steel and heavy manufacturing industries collapsed.

Ironically, Mr. Obama went on to lose the Pennsylvania primary by a substantial margin. Let's face it, as cool as he is, Barack Obama still bowls like a black guy. You can't roll gutter balls when you're trying to beat Hillary Clinton in "Pennsyltucky." It also didn't help his cause in this state that every prominent Democratic apparatchik in Pennsylvania except Sen. Bob Casey was in Mrs. Clinton's corner, including Gov. Ed Rendell, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato.

But as it turns out, Mr. Obama wasn't just gushing about Pittsburgh for electoral advantage. He was already thinking about likely places to host the capitalist hoedown known as the G-20 if he was elected president.

As a student of history, President Obama is aware of Pittsburgh's past as the center of American corporate life. Some of the nation's most legendary robber barons called Pittsburgh home. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, American plutocrats had their corporate headquarters here.

It was these companies that brought wealth to the region, choked the region with foul air and water and, ultimately, abandoned the region once labor got too uppity and the cost of competing in world markets necessitated moving overseas.

In an ironic kind of way, Pittsburgh playing host to the G-20 makes a lot of sense. Can you think of another major city that has embraced the corporate ethos of its biggest employers as uncritically as Pittsburgh has? In many ways, the G-20 conference in Pittsburgh represents the chickens coming home to roost.

Yes, our skies are clearer and freer of pollution than they were three decades ago, but we still have a blind spot when it comes to enabling our corporate masters -- both local and national. They have more carte blanche now than ever.

That's why my sympathies are more with the non-violent protesters than they are with folks who have what I consider an irrational fear of dissent. Seeing Downtown Pittsburgh transformed into a virtual police state because our political leaders want to party with international dignitaries without encountering flash mobs of protesters or the homeless isn't a testament to democracy.

When you have boarded-up storefronts and empty buildings Downtown, how does that translate into a picture of a vital American city? With most of the workers gone, doesn't it feel more like a capitalist vision of the Rapture than proof that some scheme of economic revitalization worked? If a gathering of the 20 most vital economies means the loss of income to working people for two days, it kind of rips the mask of benign intent from the gathering, doesn't it?

No, you don't have to be in love with anarchists to wonder if an uncritical embrace of G-20 hype makes a whole lot of sense for Pittsburgh. Once you get beyond the boosterism and the novelty of hearing the names of local haunts mangled by foreign journalists, there are big questions that should be asked about such a gathering.

Like every other Pittsburgher, I'm glad the president likes our little town. But there's still a small, insistent voice in the back of my head that's also wondering if hosting the G-20 in Pittsburgh is Mr. Obama's sly way of getting back at the Democratic machine that initially opposed him here.

Nah, that's way too conspiratorial -- even for me.