So that’s what he was up to.

After an unexpected overture last fall from U.S. Rep. Bob Brady spurred him to contemplate a run for Congress, Philadelphia magazine editor Larry Platt spent three months getting yelled at by a crazed but brilliant political consultant, touching friends, acquaintances and friends of acquaintances for pledges of cash, and wondering just what the hell he’d gotten himself into.

Platt’s piece about the lows and lowers of his abortive political career, from the October issue of GQ, has just been posted online. It starts at a watershed moment, but one that didn’t go quite the way Platt was hoping:

As he approached, he was actually biting his lower lip. Just like on TV, I remember thinking. When Bill Clinton was up in my face, I extended my hand; we shook as his eyes darted out over my shoulder, surveying the room. We turned to face the photographer.

“Mr. President, I’m thinking of running for Congress in the Sixth District here,” I said as the photographer snapped away. This was it: my moment of inspiration, my chance to pick the brain of the greatest politician of my generation. For the past three months, I’d been a magazine editor turned all-but-declared candidate for Congress, yet lately I’d become increasingly aware of a burning ball of tension in my gut. That’s not figurative; all day, every day, I had this tightness in my stomach. Was it fear? Second thoughts about running? Or was it something deeper? I couldn’t be sure. But I was hoping that, upon meeting Bill Clinton at this fund-raiser last December, he’d say something so inspiring, so Clintonian, that my doubts about running would be forever quelled.

“That is a great bag,” he said again, and now he was on a roll. He couldn’t stop talking about the freakin’ bag. “Come on over here and get your picture taken with that bag. That is a terrific bag.”

“Larry Platt for Congress.” Not

Photo by Brian Finke/GQ

Jane Golden built the Mural Arts Program into one of the city’s proudest achievements, a testament to the power of art to transform neighborhoods. Then a painting proposed for Rittenhouse Square ruffled the feathers of the city’s elite — and all hell broke loose

By John Marchese

THE WARS THAT are fought around Rittenhouse Square are usually quite civil.

Occasionally, a perfect apartment in one of the best buildings will become available and provoke a skirmish of bidding by rival buyers. The Ladies Who Donate will sometimes engage in some sharp-elbowed jockeying for chairmanship of the proper charity event. And, of course, the opening of Stephen Starr’s Frenchified Parc this July forced tout le monde to tussle not just for a good table, but for any table.

So it was a little surprising when word started spreading of a bitter fight over the fate of a dowdy little wall on a cute little side street just off the Square. Tempers began flaring in June, around the time of the signature annual soiree of the Rittenhouse set, the Ball on the Square, where nasty whispers mingled with Eddie Bruce’s cocktail music and Georges Perrier’s canapés. Not long after, a shouting match erupted inside the earnest Ethical Society, pitting neighbors in the city’s most exclusive precinct against one another. Some think the fight is simply the latest manifestation of the always-simmering conflict between Old Money and New, the battle lines drawn in the sands of taste and propriety, fought at close quarters with charges of crassness hurled against a return volley alleging elitism. “This is just insanity,” says one prominent Rittenhouse resident who was at the Ethical Society brouhaha but didn’t want his name in print. “These people are crazy. I’m not looking to get into a fight. All the people on either side have had such a crazy, emotional response. I can’t even talk to my wife about it.”

The “it” in question is a painting, a big painting — a mural that would cover the two-story side wall of an art gallery bordering what is now a 40-space parking lot run by Joe Zuritsky’s Parkway Corporation. The lot sits on a tiny block known as Rittenhouse Street, which runs east to west between 17th and 18th streets. A lot of people agree with Zuritsky’s own evaluation of the aesthetic value of the spot right now: “It’s an ugly wall behind an ugly parking lot.”

It was when someone tried to make that wall look nicer that things really got ugly. The crazy, emotional argument started after attorney Paul Rosen — whose most recent high-profile client was Alycia Lane, in her battle against CBS 3 — announced that he was planning to cover Zuritsky’s blank wall with a realistic, allegorical painting depicting “Justice,” and the role of civil attorneys like himself in its noble pursuit. The artwork would be paid for by a foundation funded by Rosen’s law firm, Spector Gadon & Rosen, PC, to help encourage positive depictions of lawyers. The actual painting would be created under the auspices of the world-renowned Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and its much-lauded and beloved director, Jane Golden.

So an ugly wall gets covered with a pretty painting about Justice. Who could argue with that?

Read the rest of Brawl on the Square.

Illustration by Robin Eley, from the October 2008 issue of Philadelphia.

The first generation of Philly women who “opted out” in order to stay home with their kids is now ready for what’s next. Trouble is, opting back in can be pretty scary when you aren’t even sure who you are anymore

By Vicki Glembocki

THEIR KIDS ARE in school. Their husbands are at work. It’s 10 o’clock on a Friday morning, and these women have nothing they need to do.

Sure, they could be playing tennis. Or organizing the silent auction for the Lower Merion High fund-raiser. Or calling their friends to meet them in a few hours for lunch at Du Jour in Haverford. They aren’t, though.

They’re doing yoga.

But this isn’t their mamas’ yoga. This is serious, sweating, handstanding yoga. This is guy-playing-the-drums-and-­chanting yoga. And the nine women — most in their late 40s — practicing at Jai Yoga on Montgomery Avenue in Narberth aren’t resting in child’s pose. No, they’re bending and twisting and inhaling deep into their abdomens, trying to quiet their troubled minds as they face the front of the dimly lit, caramel-colored studio where two red, glowing Buddhas hang on the wall, staring back at them.

It’s no surprise that they’re thin and coiffed and pedicured, or that they’re sporting ginormous diamond rings, and outfits by the high-end line Beyond Yoga (with its odd but appropriate slogan “I Am Beyond”) that they probably purchased in the boutique downstairs, along with their VitaminWater. Many of them are, after all, stay-at-home-moms on the Main Line, and have been for the past 10 years. Or 15 years. Or 20 years.

They haven’t always been stay-at-home moms, though. They used to be career women, with big degrees and big-paying jobs, 120 percent committed and on their way up. But when kids came along, they decided to give it all up to stay home and raise their families, 120 percent committed to that. Now the kids are pretty much raised, and these women are the only members of their families who are really at home anymore. They’ve become, instead, wait-at-home moms — waiting for the kids to come back from school or soccer practice or their friends’ houses, waiting to cook dinner, waiting to help with college applications, waiting to remind them it’s time to go to bed. Waiting, in essence, to be useful.

They knew this moment was coming — they just didn’t expect it to be such a blow. In fact, a lot of them were looking forward to it, to all the time they’d have to themselves. And they did everything they could think of — planned vacations, joined boards, took watercolor classes, baked for every bake sale they could find. But it wasn’t enough. They weren’t feeling fulfilled. They weren’t feeling like they were contributing. They were starting to feel bored, yes. But they were also starting to feel something they never anticipated back when they decided to stay home with their kids — they were feeling meaningless.

Which is why they’re here, doing yoga on a Friday morning in a room that’s far too warm and has a sign outside it reading, “Quiet voices please, spiritual awakenings in process.” This is why, after class, one student asks if she can jot down the passage the instructor read today from the best-selling book The Secret (and, incidentally, this is probably why The Secret is a best-seller): “Decide what you want to be, do, and have, think the thoughts of it, emit the frequency, and your vision will become your life.”

Read the rest of The Existential Crisis of the Wait-at-Home Mom

Photo by Jonathan Pushnik, from the October 2008 issue of Philadelphia.

More bad news from 400 North Broad Street — but just how bad is a point of contention. First, a memo sent around the newsroom yesterday by Daily News city editor Gar Joseph:

Folks:

The realities of our business have recently forced another reduction in news hole. We are now down 20 percent for the year. Also, the Commerce Bank briefs page counts against our news hole budget. What we know from our reader surveys is that readers want the variety of stories we give them, so we are not going to change that. But what we must do is try to tell those stories as concisely as possible. Turning a 15-inch story into an 11-inch story almost always produces a better written story. So that’s our goal as we adapt to the new realities. Please keep that foremost in your minds as you discuss story lengths with your editors. Managing the problem on the front end is much better than just whacking away at overly long stories on the back end.

A 20 percent cut in editorial space in less than a year? Maybe not: DN managing editor Pat McLoone, who says he’s seen a lot of cuts in his years at the paper, contests that estimate. “Gar’s wrong,” McLoone says flatly. “I’m not going to get into the number, but it’s nowhere near that high.”

And venerable DN columnist Stu Bykofsky thinks McLoone is right on the number — whatever that might be. “I think you’d have to go back several years,” he says, “to find cuts that [accumulate to] 20 percent of the news hole.”

Last week I reported on some rumors coming out of the PhillyCarShare camp, namely the apparent ousting of co-founders Tanya Seaman and Clayton Lane — the latter said to have been prohibited from the premises after an in-office blowup. As Philebrity noted yesterday, the commenters on my post have had some not-so-nice things to say about Lane, so they will be very happy to know that, according to a spokesperson, PhillyCarShare has accepted Lane’s resignation.

Lane was unable to be reached for comment today, though his former colleague (not to mention former girlfriend) Seaman — who notes that she was not forced out but resigned and is now consulting with other car-sharing organizations — had this to say: “Clayton put in more than anybody at PhillyCarShare, and he cared more than anyone else did. He put in a ton of time and was very committed.” Given that this is coming from Lane’s ex, I figure he can’t be all THAT bad.

I thought I must have read the press release wrong yesterday: “AC/DC to bring ‘Black Ice’ to Wachovia Center on November 17th … Tickets at $92.50 will go on sale this Saturday, September 20.”

$92.50? To see AC/DC? Whether you sit in the front row or the nosebleeds? No way, I thought to myself. So I fired off an e-mail to a Comcast-Spectacor spokesperson who confirmed my darkest fears: $92.50. For all seats.

Now don’t get me wrong: I crank it whenever “Dirty Deeds” or “Back in Black” comes on the radio. And “For Those About to Rock” is one of those songs that I play at my desk when I need an attitude adjustment (oddly, so is Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast“). But this is good-old, working-class, screamed-not-sung rock-’n'-roll. And a flat $92.50 ticket price (think of what you’re going to spend after those dreaded service and “convenience” fees) — whether in this economy or in a thriving one, whether you’re close enough to feel the spit of singer Brian Johnson or so far away that you’re left to watch the whole thing on video screens — is just unconscionable.

So this Saturday at 10 a.m., hug your kids, water the lawn, eat an omelette, take a stroll through the park … hell, I don’t care … cut your friggin’ ear off. But whatever you do, do not buy tickets for this ripoff of a show.

Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian P. Tierney apparently gave a rousing talk to the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association last week, all about the incredible success story that is the Philadelphia Inquirer. It is difficult to say what Tierney might have gained by flying halfway around the world to give a presentation to 350 editors and publishers from 23 countries, but if the full rundown available at Garcia Media is any indication, he bowled them over.

A couple of highlights, as transcribed by a conference attendee:

“We have an incredible armament of assets, starting with the brand. Our greatest asset is journalists. We also know the community like nobody else. We are in a unique position to relate to advertisers. But we must go out and offer them variety. At the Inquirer we created a team whose function is to adapt advertising from other media — such as television — and design it for newspapers. We show these models to advertisers as possibilities of what could be. When we do, they buy it.”

And this:

“There were 18 people working on philly.com when I arrived, generating $1 million in banner ads. Today, we have 70 people working on philly.com, generating $16 million in banner ads.”

Judging by the rest of this long report, however, there was no mention made of PMH’s continuing financial woes or the recent cost-cutting, which we’ve covered here and here.

Seems like forever ago that we first started hearing about The Soloist, the Robert Downey Jr./Jamie Foxx movie based on former Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez’s (pictured left, surely much wealthier than when he left Philly for L.A.) friendship with Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless musical genius with schizophrenia. Paramount just released the trailer, which you can view here. The movie is scheduled for a Thanksgiving release, meaning it will probably make you laugh, cry, and feel a little bit less hopeless about the world.

In an interview this morning about her three-week run at an Atlantic City casino, I offhandedly asked “Wonder Woman” Lynda Carter how she felt about the media calling VP candidate Sarah Palin the “new Wonder Woman.” I wasn’t expecting her no-holds-barred response:

Don’t get me started. She’s the anti-Wonder Woman. She’s judgmental and dictatorial, telling people how they’ve got to live their lives. And a superior religious self-righteousness … that’s just not what Wonder Woman is about. Hillary Clinton is a lot more like Wonder Woman than Mrs. Palin. She did it all, didn’t she?

I like John McCain. But this woman — it’s anathema to me what she stands for. I think America should be very afraid. Very afraid. Separation of church and state is the one thing the creators of the Constitution did agree on — that it wasn’t to be a religious government. People should feel free to speak their minds about religion but not dictate it or put it into law.

People need to speak up. Doesn’t mean that I’m godless. Doesn’t mean that I am a murderer. What I hate is this demonization of everybody but one position. You’re un-American because you’re against the war. It’s such bullshit. Fear. It’s really such a finite way of thinking about God to think that your measley little mind can know the mind of God. It’s a very little God that way. I think that God’s bigger. I don’t presume to know his mind. Or her mind.

What’s What With … Lynda Carter [Philadelphia magazine]

As heard on Michael Smerconish’s show this morning …

BY VICTOR FIORILLO

After Barack Obama’s riveting “A More Perfect Union” speech at the Constitution Center in March, the nation’s first black presidential nominee was lucky he didn’t have to hail a Philly cab to get to his next stop. He might have had a hard time.

One night not long after Obama’s appearance, I caught a taxi downtown. We had gone a half-block on Market Street when the driver cut off a black motorist. A brief but unremarkable shouting match ensued, finishing as my driver turned left onto 18th. “These n—–s,” he said to me, angry eyes connecting with mine in the rearview mirror, “are ruining the city.”

I squirmed — surprised, silent, not knowing what to do — but got out thinking it an isolated incident. Remarkably, I had two more such run-ins within the next three weeks. “Send them all back to Africa in body bags,” one clean-cut white driver said to me, relating a story about a fellow driver stiffed by a black passenger. Three times in three weeks? I was shocked.

Repugnant, yes, but shocking, no, said Temple professor Marc Lamont Hill when I relayed my stories. Hill, an urban studies scholar and Fox News political contributor, thinks that these types of taxicab ­confessions — and transgressions — happen often and just go unreported. He points to New York’s notorious rep for discriminating against black riders — actor Danny Glover made headlines in the 1990s when his claim of racial profiling resulted in the suspension or revocation of some 500 cabbies’ licenses. And while Philly may look better on paper than New York — the Parking Authority reports an average of about two racism-­related complaints per month, ­usually resulting in fines — Hill believes that racism on the roads in the City of Brotherly Love is even more intense than in other cities.

“In New York, cabs just won’t pick you up — it’s inferential racism,” Hill says. “But in Philadelphia, they can be so blatant. Once, after I insisted on a four-block drive, the driver said to me, ‘You people are so lazy.’ I don’t think he meant people in suits.”

Encounter a racist cabbie? File a report with the PPA at 215-683-9440.

Illustration by Tom Burns from the September 2008 issue of Philadelphia magazine.