On Monday, I was contacted by the guy at Philebrity. He asked me to do a short e-mail interview, probably expecting a rambling, incoherent, Toynbee tile-like rant about how Larry Mendte controls the weather. That is
kind of what I gave them.
The full text of what appeared in Philebrity is posted below.
Lately, we’ve been thinking about this whole Larry Mendte/Alycia Lane thing. Well, not so much about the various controversies themselves, but the way they’ve played out in the local media. Not to get too heady about it, but suffice to say that watching Larrygate play out has represented not just the spiritual nadir of our beloved Dan Gross (Klein never had a soul anyway, so he’s actually all good here), but also the same kind of nadir for the city itself: What kind of people are we when we confer the highest homages to celebrity — in this case, that would be wide-scale scandal and public condemnation — not to the people with the brightest ideas or the most interesting lives, but to people who merely read the news? Worse still, what kind of people are we when we convict these poor schlubs before we know any or all of the facts? What, really, does all of this say about our own levels of civic self-hate and our own low opinion of what we, the public, deserve? Frankly, it’s caused us here at Philebrity to examine our own core values, and we’re only half joking. But when we came across the websiteLarryMendteIsNotACriminal.com yesterday, we weren’t thinking that the proprietor of the site would be thinking along the same lines, and then some. A quick Who-Is search revealed that the man behind it wasPaul Triggiani, a 25 year old life-long Philadelphian and member of the Secret Pants comedy troupe. What he had to say both sharpened our minds and gave us great comfort.
Are you affiliated with Larry Mendte at all? A close friend, or just a fan?
I’m not affiliated with Larry Mendte, and we aren’t friends, but I was once in the same room with him. I also wouldn’t say I’m a fan of Larry Mendte in particular, but I am a life-long Philadelphian who is interested in the culture and cult of personality behind regional celebrity. Larry Mendte represents a lot of that to me. In a good way.
What possessed you to put up this site?
It was very much a response to the reporting of the story by our local news media. The story should have been “Larry Mendte’s house was raided by the FBI. It was raided because a former co-worker made allegations of privacy invasion, which are very hard to prove in court. The FBI has seized his computer equipment to investigate into these allegations.” It should have ended there. But the drive to “stay on top of” this “breaking news event” allowed the whole thing to snowball. On Monday morning, half of Philadelphia woke up thinking that Larry Mendte was a criminal, because they had heard it repeated a hundred times.
Our news media has a bad habit of “covering the controversy” as if it were actual information, thereby letting it become news. Rather than report the known details of a story, they will pull the most wild, “up to the minute” details they can from whatever source that presents itself, and report that as “alleged” information. Then, they’ll report on the fact that they reported on it. They do it because they’re lazy.
I was listening to a specific morning show on the Monday following the raid, and the jocks were putting forth these increasingly wild speculations about what he may have done, or what would happen to his career, but they would preface everything with “I’m not saying this is true, but…” It isn’t slander, but I still think it’s fucked up. People hear that shit and think that it’s true.
What makes you so sure of Larry’s innocence?
I’m sure of his innocence because he hasn’t been proven guilty. In this country, unlike in others, a person maintains their innocence until they’re proven guilty in a court of law– that standard should be maintained outside the criminal and civil justice system.
Even if he is eventually proven guilty (and I’m almost positive that he won’t be), it still doesn’t make him a criminal; not in a career sense. It’s odd to me that we’re so eager, collectively, to demonize a man for something that 9 out of 10 of us have done, at least on some level.
Have you heard from Larry regarding your site? What do you ultimately hope to achieve with it?
The site was an afterthought to the logo and the shirt. I’d always wanted to make a t-shirt with a semi-political yet cryptic statement in the style of late-seventies, early-eighties punk rock campaigns. This came along, and I felt like there was a message that could be communicated, and people would dig it because of its simplicity and regionalism. You don’t have to care about the larger motivation behind it. So we made fifty, and we’re selling them at cost. If people like them, we’ll make more.
I have no goals for the site, much like my entire life. I’ll just see where things go. Maybe I’ll just abandon it after this all goes away. And maybe this decides it wants to be something. I’m pretty flexible.
I have not heard from Larry Mendte, or anyone associated with him. We would love to get him a shirt.
With Larry off the air now, who’s your favorite local anchor?
Funny thing- it was actually a toss-up between Larry Mendte and Dave Huddleston until recently. So you see how my luck is. To be honest, I don’t watch much local news, because it’s absolutely terrible in every possible way (Dave Schratwieser, for example). I’ll default to Larry Kane, because he is omnipresent.
