We don't appreciate outside political thugs and fascists coming into our city limits and dick-tating what's best for our fair city; we have our own political thugs and fascists to do that already. We are a fascinating town: a city which is really an amalgam of annexed neighborhoods, limited on one side by the Delaware River and thus the New Jersey line, and by the arbitrary lines drawn when the final neighborhoods of Manayunk and Roxborough were assimilated years ago.

We are fiercely provincial and our means of identification of each others' native credentials involve the question, "Where didja go to high school?". Outsiders are now well-tolerated, but like the Old South, you can move here, you can have money, you can participate, but you'll never b e one of us. Your children, if born here, will be, but alas!: you won't. If you call a Tastykake Kandy Kake a Tandy Take, then you're a veteran of our society; if you remember heartbreaking seasons of professional athletic frustrations, you've been here a while; if you remember that the Keir Dullea film David and Lisa was shot here many years before he was in 2001: A Space Odyssey, then you're the real thing, if you're middle-old aged.

So Sarah Palin thinks she can just show up, accompany Ed Snider to an Irish Bar, and all's going to be OK. Not so fast, Abercrombie. We're a city of the Machine, a bit dismantled, but you just don't mess with the Unions here, you don't mess with the South Philadelphians, and you don't mess with the City Council. Embarrassing occurrences take place when you do. A far-right Republican nominee has about as much chance impressing people here as a Dallas Cowboy's fan has of making out of Lincoln Financial Field without being harassed within an inch of his life. Literally.

Another dumb idea, I don't care how much money they raise.


(P.S.: I have it on good authority that the board members and execs of Tastykake get into arguments as to whether the product should be called Kandy Kake (new) or Tandy Take (old)...my favorite were the peanut butter Tandy Takes...and the Lemon Pies! Before they started putting all the additives and preservatives.)