Maxinista: Herding Cats

CH fecklessness swings both ways
by Sniper

The news is out, Lea Sitton Stanley, after five weeks on the job as editor of the Local, is fed up. And the folks who hired her are fed up too! None other than Betty Brady, the recently-reduced-to-two-days-a-week Community Manager, has been skittering around, letting folks in the Local office and outside the office, know that "We're sick of hearing her whine! She's always complaining! Not enough money [for hiring stringers or paying for more seasoned reporters]! Worried about her own [$55,000] pay and benefits package! [Allegedly $1200 a month after her Inky package tapers off by July.] Griping about having to teach the staff to write and having to spend all day Monday re-writing and copy-editing! Did she think she was coming to the Times or something? "

Small chance of that, Betty, but Lea is a pro from the Inquirer, from an old Southern newspaper family, too. And it's hard to adjust to the weirdness of Chestnut Hill, in those circumstances. Especially when you've been sold a bill of goods by the silver-tongued Maxine herself. The strangest part of the whole Maxinista phenomenon, and the Actionistas who are following her, is their schizophrenic insistence that they are for democracy and community participation, a free press and all the other buzz-points of citizen participation, when in fact they operate like old Meehan Republican machine pols -- secret deals in backrooms, non-accountability on finances, the flouting of all the former rules -- the Lentz policy, the advance printing of Board meeting agendas, and the locations of meetings, so that people can be prepared and actually attend . . . Secret ballots are more the AA way . . .

The word is in the street. Kay at Caruso's was telling someone the other day that Lea would be gone soon. Somebody else mentioned Pete Mazzaccaro's name as a possible replacement, but others said 'No, he's tainted. Doman hates him.' In fact Dougie Doman has a candidate from Lansdowne, a person as malleable as Boynton was, warming up in the wings. Mazzaccaro's name is just being floated to pacify the dopes in SOC from strenuously searching for an editor candidate who might have a chance against the Actionista designee . . . In its sandlot way, Chestnut Hill politics is growing a sophisticated rind. [Here's an idea: Nancy Berger and her husband Chris, alleged pilferer of Jim Sturdivant and Mike Mishak's computer files as "evidence", for distribution among the Maxinistas last fall, as Double Editors!! They'd be perfect for Actionista SWAT teams -- mean, sneaky, amoral . . . willing to hack off slices of their own flesh for the AA Cause! After all, Business is Business!!]

But let's examine a more disturbing trend. The swath of old ladies -- Pat Stokes, Quita Horan, Mary Anna Ross, Mary Jane Shelly, Virginia Mallery -- SOC members dedicated to the old CH politesse, where you're always courteous and nice and gentlewomanly -- after all, when the election is over, we've all got to live here, right? And there are a bunch of others -- Lou Aiello, Ned Mitinger , John Anderson, Susan Pizzano -- even the sainted Marie Lachat (who's always taken her lead from Pizzano) -- who think naming names and complaining loudly about hypocrisy and wrongdoing is vulgar and non-Chestnut Hill. Some of the above (not Lachat), decided some time ago to effectively boycott the blog -- "because it might hurt us [SOC]".

But how exactly? By ruffling Quita Horan, a very private and quiet rich lady who pays for ads and other things, so long as her sensibilities aren't offended? By angering Medicine Show hustlers like Dougie Doman, or Stewie Graham, the power-behind-the-scenes Karl Rove of AA, who will then be inspired to "go into overdrive for last minute votes." One person warned Sniper that "Stewart can easily throw in several thousands for ads, etc., and so we can't have [him} as [an] avowed enemy." (! He's not an enemy?) And then there's the long-held fear that Big Stew can screw up the next Editorial Search Committee pick -- after Stanley goes back to Mt. Airy -- by blocking certain desirable candidates from doing any more than submitting their names . . . Well, guess what, timorous SOCers? The latter's already happened. Just five weeks ago, and it will happen again, whether you develop the stones to say what you mean or not. And as far as gearing up for a Battle of the Bulge on votes, Carolyn "Leatherface" Haussermann completed her AA retirement-vote canvassing a week ago, and will be running a shuttle service for seniors from Cathedral Village on voting day . . .

All this came to a head on Tuesday in the infamous "backroom" (AA slanguage for the production department) of the Local, when Jim Foster, the coordinator of the SOC electoral campaign, had to fend off a verbal offensive by Ms. Pizzano, who demanded that nine names come off a SOC ad because they didn't agree with the tactic of naming Richard Becker, Douglas Doman and W (!) Stewart Graham, in Ed Feldman's very funny and acerbic poem, pointing out that the very people who
"created the committee
to control the paper
who abused the staff
who bullied the editor . . .
which created the mess the Hill is in",
are the same AA'ers who now say they want an "independent paper."

Sniper suggests -- in all humility and with no irony at all, for once -- that Ed Budnick Jr., Joanne Dhody, Marie Lachat, Ned Mitinger, Virginia Mallery, and Dr. Joseph and Susan Pizzano, reconsider their positions, and pull together with the other members of SOC to knock out AA candidates as incapable of reform as Becker, Doman and Graham are.

Just because Stewie and Richie Maloumian convinced Maxinista herself not to run for president again, because of her many faux pas and dissemblings, and counseled Sanjiv Jain to get off the slate because he'd grown too hot with recurrent scams, doesn't mean those two won't be affecting AA policy on the post-election board. Look what Actionistas have done already: nominated Carol "West Wing" Cope, a fallen-away Democrat to replace Maxine (they live next door, so you can imagine those summer koffee klatches); and Joe "Free Press" Pie -- who moves his lips when he reads print -- to head the Publisher's Committee!