The annual Carbondalien festival in Carbondale isn’t until November, but over the weekend, antisocial media buzzed with reports of local sightings of strange visitors from another world.
Jared and Ivanka Kushner were spotted at the Viewmont Diner on Business Route 6, which has a Scranton address but is a Sunday staple for many Midvalley families. It’s a rare brunch rush that features the president’s son-in-law and U.S. special envoy for peace missions strolling in wearing shorts and a ballcap.
The initial shock of the Kushners appearing in the same space as everyday earthlings was too much for this professional absurdist to accept at face value. It’s the equivalent of bumping into Mitch McConnell at Wegmans. The incognito U.S. senator from Kentucky is on presumed eternity leave until someone produces credible proof he’s still among the living. Seeing Mitch in the checkout line would be an international scoop, but even with a selfie, few would believe he was there. Or alive.
Ever-vigilant Times-Tribune Staff Writer Frank Wilkes Lesnefsky texted me a screenshot of a Facebook post featuring “Javanka” posing with diner staff, which I immediately dismissed as AI-generated slop. I thought Frank was pranking me.
Turns out that even in this exasperating age of “deepfakes” and cheap, creepy memes, you can occasionally still believe your overwhelmed eyes. Jared and Ivanka really did visit the Viewmont Diner. Right?
Why they were there is anyone’s guess. I reached out to the few press contacts I could find for the couple, including through Affinity Partners, Jared’s private equity firm and a major investor in the Homer City Energy Campus in Indiana County, about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Investors plan to develop a 3,200-acre natural gas-fired power plant and data center complex on the former site of a coal-fed energy plant. Homer City is a past coal hub with a population of about 1,800 and a median household income of about $65,000, making it an attractive target for predatory outsiders promising a windfall of jobs and tax revenue.
I didn’t hear back from Jared’s people, so I can only speculate on why the Kushners would quietly visit Our Stiff Neck of the Woods. It’s possible they were here for some ordinary reason, but I can’t imagine one. Since the AI industry and its many tentacles are almost entirely speculative, educated guesses are routinely the best option available to the average observer.
The parallels between Homer City, Archbald and a host of neighboring communities targeted by the data center invasion are absurdly obvious. Despite countless pathetic attempts to conceal the web of local, national and international connections behind the invasion, the broad strokes couldn’t be easier to read.
The fourth conditional use hearing for the Green Mountain Data Center Campus will be held Thursday at 5 p.m. in the auditorium of Valley View High School (if Tuesday’s hearing on the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus has wrapped up by then). These two projects and the gargantuan, toxic energy apparatus they would require are among an unconscionable six (and soon maybe seven) data center proposals aimed at the lives and livelihoods of the “lucky” people of Archbald.
Considering Jared’s affinity for invasive data centers and power plants in Homer City and his father-in-law’s ardent if ignorant support for their construction in small towns and rural communities, it’s reasonable to speculate that the Kushners’ visit was related to a current or pending investment in the annihilation of Archbald, et. al.
If that sounds paranoid, you haven’t been paying attention. In the space of a year, tiny, quiet Archbald has emerged as the mouse that roared around the world. International news outlets and environmental groups have highlighted the borough as ground zero of the data center invasion.
This cresting wave of outside attention was preceded by quieter, clandestine interest from investors and developers who would feel right at home seated in a diner booth with Jared and Ivanka. The alien infiltration of our local, state and federal governments and banks, utilities and business interests was underway long before any of us everyday earthlings noticed.
The data center invasion is an outside attack engineered by beings from another world. To them, this planet, its natural resources and the majority of people living on it are playthings to be used up and pitched on the ash heap for fun and profit. The only credible affinity elites like the Kushners have for everyday earthlings and the communities we call home is our value as assets to be exploited, efficiently depleted and salvaged for whatever raw materials survive the process.
Jared and Ivanka Kushner were born on Earth and in America, which I guess gives them dual birthright citizenship. They live on the same planet as the rest of us, but in a very different world. Their world is populated exclusively by ultra-wealthy elites who can afford to write off the rest of humanity. The Kushners’ visit created such a buzz because a small-town diner filled with everyday earthlings is the last place anyone expects to spot entitled aliens.
It’s noteworthy when a universally known figure drifts into our wobbly, ordinary orbit wearing shorts and a ballcap. When his even more recognizable wife “beams down” with him, it’s almost impossible to believe or ignore.
Frank wasn’t pranking me. Jared and Ivanka really did appear at the Viewmont Diner. I still don’t know why, but my educated guess is that they were pranking us.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, has no affinity for entitled elites. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook; and @chriskellyink on Bluesky.