I realize the question was about language specifically, but something that wasn't really addressed in all these comments is the totality of the environment PHP will be used in.
PHP using a decent framework with properly unit-tested and documented code, a team of mid-level and sr devs, version controlled, good comments, a build process, and reasonable development schedules would be a joy to work with vs hacked-up Python thrown together by various people who don't know what they're doing with no process, docs, version control, test, where everything was due 2 weeks ago and people just develop on live servers. That would, simply put, be a nightmare, regardless of the 'purity' of Python.
I recently took on a project based on Rails. I saw some code - there were tests - some of the models I inspected looked decent. My initial view was "it's Rails - how bad could it possibly be?". It was/is horrible. However, once we'd commenced, I realized a) it's Rails1 (and was still being developed in Rails1 as of March 2010), there's 0 version control, no external docs, few internal comments, and 95% of the tests are either auto-generated skeletons only, or at the level of "Add 1 to the inventory, save, then check the inventory has increased by 1" (not checking any logic, just db code).
Parts of the code are - yes - more expressive that they'd have been in PHP. But, overall, the project is an abysmal mess. It's painfully apparent the original dev(s) didn't understand how to build software. They could 'sling Rails stuff together', but that's about where it stopped.
We've made a not too painful decision to rebuild, just using the old code for reference as to how screens should look. Rebuilding is being done in Grails (fwiw), and we're using a bdd approach (easyb) to get started. I was on the fence about using Rails/cucumber, but my skills aren't very strong in that, and we've got a deadline to meet.
I understand PHP isn't perfect. Coming from other platforms, there can be many 'gotchas' which catch people off guard. I've found moving from PHP to other platforms you find similar gotchas. It doesn't make every 'gotcha' automatic proof that PHP is crappy (a few do, but not all!) But again, the language, while important, should not totally define your view of the job or the entire ecosystem.