Friday, September 2, 2005

THERE ARE EIGHT MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY, AND THIS IS ONE OF THEM: I was watching MSNBC last night, and caught a rather fawning interview with a "Philadelphia philanthropist" named Joe Mammana. He had something of a Joe-Pesci-in-Goodfellas vibe about him, and explained that because the president, the mayor of New Orleans, and the governor of Louisiana weren't getting the job done, it was time for Mammana to step in. He's organizing a caravan of trucks carrying relief workers and supplies to travel from Philadelphia to his "staging area," Montgomery, Alabama, as soon as Mammana can ensure the safety of his truckers. (To me, this means that the Mammanites may never leave Philadelphia, but that's neither here nor there.)

During the interview, Mammana spent a lot of time talking about how he'd gotten this city councilman to donate X, and that city official to donate Y -- it had a very inside Philadelphia baseball feel to it. So I googled the guy. He's a self-made millionaire whose entrepreneurial endeavors include real estate and boxing promotion (warning, warning, warning!) , among other things -- his philanthropy seems to be focused on offering significant sums of cash to incentivize people who may have information about unsolved crimes to step forward and cough up what they know.

Question for the current Philadelphians out there -- who is this guy, anyway?

No comments:

Post a Comment