Maxinista: The Hole in the Walsh Gang

More hard truths about the clique that stole the Local

by Sniper
January 26, 2006: Oh holey night! Lawrence Walsh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Neiman Fellow and former big gun for the Washington Post, lecturer at Duke, battlefield news cameraman in Vietnam, ME of the Texas Observer, had just come off a gurney where he'd had a colonoscopy done. He was reeling with the after-affects of sedation. He arrived at Chestnut Hill Hospital (!), where the Maxinistas had weirdly switched their illegal Executive Session to consider firing him from the CHCA Board at the last minute -- maybe they were doing a P.R. deal with CHH's new management team?; or maybe they hoped that with his frail health, he might be needing the ER?

Anyway, standard Maxinista obfuscation, the usual murky procedural night moves. Corruption of the very Roberts Rules of Order types like Sanjiv "Can We Move On?" Jain reflexively use to stifle discussion by loud guys Ron Recko and Ed Feldman . . . But the truth is, an official Board of Directors meeting must actually convene before an Executive Session -- which excludes the general public -- can be called. And notice of the agenda must be published seven days in advance. But Max was so anxious to get her kangaroo court martial rolling that she and Jane Becker and others smarmed over objections of procedural foul play and convened the ES before the Board Meeting opened! Thus the whole three-hour farce that followed is legally null and void . . .

So what happened was three hours of the interested public cooling its heels while petty remarks Lawrence once made were woven into a tapestry of trivia meant to show his unfitness to serve on the august Publisher's Committee and Board. This from a group that esteems and lauds Medicine Show fraud Douglas Doman, inheritor of the Institute for the Achievement of Human (whew) Potential in Wyndmoor, who retails pricey hope to the physically helpless; real estate hustler Jain; dreadful crybaby and inept operator SuperBrat Snowden (currently down in W. Va., reportedly trying to buy up dangerous coal mines to exploit); and Exploding Car Mysterioso & McNally's Saloon Fixture Joe Pie . . . A typical charge was that Walsh had muttered "bitch!" about some alleged clumsy makeout moves by Pam "Boom-Boom" Waters on WASP cutey Jeremy Heep (at an earlier meeting.) For the record, Lawrence admits it.

Okay. Walsh, gaga on meds, has to endure a maelstrom of twittering before they kick him out. A slander package, containing an e-mail he'd written to former Local editor Jim Sturdivant and copied to former staff writer Mike Mishak, in which he'd counseled Mishak -- upon solicitation of advice -- to resign his position, and which had been making the clandestine rounds for months and burning up the Phone Mafia lines in town, was distributed to the assembled CHCA heavies. Oh, Law & Order, Criminal Intent! Foolishly, but understandably, Walsh had been vehemently denying that he'd suggested either Jim or Mike should quit. Given the level of hostility in the community, the tiny stitches ripped wide at every opportunity, he didn't feel he could speak truthfully in such a hateful atmosphere. Chestnut Hill was like Clay County, Missouri in 1863 or something, when Bloody Bill Anderson was shooting abolitionists who disagreed with the Old Values . . .

Mishak, as fine a reporter as the Local has seen (despite one dumb move involving not contacting SBSnowden before writing a story about that churl's questionable business practices), had been weighing whether he should leave the Local's glorious employ. These doubts started in 2004, at a dinner Sniper attended at the Warsaw Cafe on 16th Street, long before Sturdivant even showed up. As things grew worse under the Maxinista boot, Mike naturally turned to Lawrence, the only man on the premises with pro journalism chops. After Jim's resignation following a silent coup still shamefully denied by the Executive Committee, Mishak was offered effective "control," if he agreed not to criticize the CHCA and its ruling clique (!). The offer was made by Kari Ghezarian. When Mishak rightly refused, a Jain associate, Vijay Kothare, with credentials as solid as newly-minted Maxinista Carol Cope's, was brought in as a back-up spy to make sure neither Mishak, Scott Alloway nor Robyn John did anything interesting with what was left of the Local. And this was when Nancy Berger and Joe Pie were already marauding through 8434; these are people capable of squeezing the joy out of firecrackers -- Kothare ended up writing a report for Sanjiv characterizing Walsh and his friends as "parasites" and the recalcitrant staff as "terrorists".

Once more, for the record:

There is no rule in the CHCA bylaws preventing Board and/or committee members from advising Local staffers to apply or resign, a charge the Maxinistas have been furling over Walsh's dome like a Scarlet Letter. Sniper knows of two current members who've just advised a candidate for the editor's job to go for it.

Mishak didn't need Walsh to tell him to resign. And Lawrence and his boys are not the Hole in the Wall Gang. He should have been censured for lying, then, if his health allows it, reinstated, since his ouster violates all known rules of procedural honesty, and because no one else in the CHCA cares more about journalism's true role here.

It's the Maxinistas who should be thrown out in the spring election. For being subversive of the Fourth Estate.

Where are the Hill's liberal due process lawyers when you need them?