Maxinista: Old Baggage

SOC-hops & Actionistas

by Sniper

Good news first, since my ex-friends from the mossy green swards of the SOC-hop sodality are always accusing me of being mean-spirited and Scroogey, the death of every party -- you invite him over and optimists start diving for the doors and windows -- whoops, whoops, lemme out! It's the death ray! The ray, I say . . .

Okay, just for that, I'm gonna be nice: Shoshona Bricklin is running for the board as an independent. Reason? You have to pony up a couple of hundred just to get rolling in Chestnut Hill board politics this year, which doesn't seem fair for an old grass roots organizer, people's advocate and Dem lawyer like Shonie . . . Hell, it's segregation by checkbook. Why don't some of the Hill's more luxe bank accounts recognize this woman's worth? Or was there some faction within the SOC-hoppers who didn't want Bricklin, for less than relevant reasons? We've heard a couple of geezers tried to keep the brilliant Ed Feldman off the ticket for "aesthetic" reasons, too . . .

Shoshona worked for Philadelphia City Council for 13 years -- that's serious experience negotiating a system nearly as Byzantine and irrational as Chestnut Hill's own. She knows zoning and recycling so well she could burn down greedheads like Sanjiv Jain and SuperBrat Snowden with deft legal swipes. (Also, since she's a lawyer, she could protect folks like Martha Haley, Lawrence Walsh, Scott Alloway, Jimmy Pack, and allegedly [rumor has it], Ron Recko, from threats by Joe "Rocky" Pie, who is always teetering on the edge of physical assault, with anger issues to rival Kong . . . This last bit is really ironic in a party that now emphasizes "courtesy". In fact -- COURTESY. Be polite while backstabbing, pork-barreling, rooting out anyone tainted with a nostalgia for press freedom . . . That's been Pie-Man's whole function as muscle for Dornemann and the semi-lucid George Parry -- threaten anyone who deviates from the party line of the Maxinistas -- now rechristened the "Action Alliance" ("Actionistas"?). That's Action over Thought, a semiotic trip back to the 30s, when totalitarianism first began molting into modern drag . . .

Anyway, Shoshana's part of the answer. She's a longtime Chestnut Hiller. A Coordinator with Interfaith Advocates, Northwest Philly Interfaith Hospitality Network (on loan from Goldman Realty). She's married to Bert Schultz, a technical writer and Co-Chairman of the Philadelphia Local of the National Writers' Union. Has two teen-age boys, is an elected Committeeperson from the 9th Ward, 6th Division, a member of Neighborhood Networks and the Raise the Minimum Wage Coalition . . . a little more serious than A.A.'s comfortable Carol Cope, whose notion of supporting the ideals of the Democratic Party involves faithfully watching Martin Sheen and Jimmy Smits on The West Wing every Sunday, between martoonies . . .

Not that the SOC-hop slate is all go. Shoshana could easily have replaced Virginia Mallery, for ex., who's been showing signs of slippage for a while, dragging out fine points at meetings until people's teeth grind, trying to interfere with writers doing stories for the blog on the mistaken grounds that the AA is essentially correct in its insistence on COURTESY, which the blog, thank God, violates every day. Newsflash for the geriatric SOC-hop set: When people are destroying your community newspaper and community government, lying (the Sturdivant affair); cheating (Sanjiv & the Commerce Bank debacle, plus his scam to try to make it seem as if the CHBA was behind his zoning variance application for the old Yankee Candles site -- it wasn't, Anne McNally and Paul Roller shot him down); logrolling -- Stewie Graham's cosy deal with Dougie Doman to house the families of D's patients getting royally fleeced at the Institutes for Human Potential in S's pricey apartment units -- it's less than responsible to preserve proper decorum. When these things happen, you're supposed to get mad and fight back.

Unfortunately, old-timers like Mallery, Mary Anna Ross (Queen of the teeth-grinders), Quita Horan and Ned Mitinger, have been as comfortable as Cope for so long that their senses of outrage are hard to revive. On some level they agree with the other side that what is "Chestnut Hill" -- a kind of Towne & Country politesse -- is more important than anything else. Including selling out worthy candidates on specious grounds, and rationalizing their own cowardice under "social pressure" -- Pete Mazzaccaro's recent fate at the hands of his indifferent SOC "backers" and non-backers: "Oh, my endorsement would only harm him" -- "We've got to protect Pete by keeping his name out of the blog" . . .

Why? Because a bunch of old farts don't like us?

And then there's the bizarre inclusion of triple agents like Ratso Aiello and now his wife Elaine in the loose (to put it mildly) SOC network.

Can't anyone see that those two are part of the CH problem? That trusting Lou in SOC is like trusting Joe Lieberman as a Democrat? Like Mark Keintz, Aiello and his spouse are simply interested in surviving, doing business by "doing well" -- whatever that may entail, and "blending in" on Chestnut Hill, the mythical WASP Ward of the City of Brotherly Love, where, to be allowed to stick around, you've gotta be a wannabe.

Aiello comes down on any side of any issue he thinks is expedient for his status, and for his small home repair trade. In that sense, he's just a penny-ante Sanjiv Jain . . .