Joe and Mary Schmuck
Introducing a couple of newcomers to polite society in Monterey County
By Joe Livernois
Among the multitude of unique characters who worked at The Monterey County Herald, Anne Germain stood out as among my favorites.
For a lot of years, Anne was the harried and overwhelmed Society Page editor. The job required a journalist who was willing to navigate a nightly bustle of parties, soirees, teas, receptions, balls, galas, clambakes, chamber gatherings and awkward exchanges. It also required a disciplined supervision of one's intake of alcoholic beverages. A practiced patron of the bottle, Anne managed to maintain a level of sobriety well enough to navigate her way home most evenings. She was a professional, and she knew from experience that the job required her to remember where she'd been the previous night.
It's hard to imagine today, but Society Pages in local community newspapers were a crucial link to the social fabric of the community's upper crust. It was an opportunity to be seen in the white places, with all the white people. It's how wannabe respectable got their names in the newspaper. It was "positive press," relevant to absolutely nothing of importance.
For the most part, the Society Page at the Monterey County Herald was a repository for bland pronouncements of upcoming social events surrounded by photographs of white people holding glasses of white wine and showing off their pearly whites at social events. A local slick magazine still carries similar seen-to-be-seen content, nobly carrying on the weird tradition.
No one ever looked unhappy in a Society Page photograph. In my many decades of reading newspapers, I’ve never seen photographs of “The Help” on the Society Page. You knew they were there at all the fancy functions; they served hors d'oeuvres from a tray without being intrusive, poured the white wine, cleaned everybody’s messes, and navigated the rooms like they didn’t exist.
For minimum wage.
And you’d never see them depicted in the Society Page pictures.
For any self-respecting newspaper photographer, shooting a Society Page function was professional death. Photographers with Society Page assignments were usually on an editor's shit list. These miserable wretches rushed into a hoity-toity soiree, quickly gathered several clumps of white people to pose with their white wine, and rushed back to the darkroom with their film to nurse their melancholia.
No photographer ever looked happy shooting a Society Page photograph.
Back in the newsroom, Anne Germain nursed her own complaints: she was overworked, under-appreciated and overlooked by her peers. She never believed she was afforded the respect she deserved. It was a common resentment, shared by anyone who has ever worked in a newsroom anywhere on the planet, but Anne had honed her own personal grievances to a fine whine.
Eventually, she so badgered some hapless editor with her onslaught of relentless complaints that the editor found her an assistant. Her new helper had been a city desk reporter, known mostly as a gloomy irritant who muttered to herself with her own chilling resentments. The editor demoted her to the Society Page, working for Anne, with the wishful expectation that she'd quit and wouldn’t have to listen to her mutterances anymore.
She didn’t quit, and it wasn't a good match.
One Monday morning several weeks after welcoming her new assistant, Anne picked up a stack of photographs placed on her desk by a shit-listed photographer. The photos depicted folks enjoying themselves at the previous weekend's social functions. Photographers never bothered to get the identities of their subjects because they knew that Anne would know who they were. Sure enough, Anne rifled through the pictures, writing the names of the people she knew on the back, left to right, with a grease pencil.
At some point that morning, Anne came across a picture of a couple she didn't recognize. They were newcomers to the area. (I seem to recall that he was in finance, perhaps an assistant banker. Or maybe he was a seed salesman.) The newcomers hoped to make a good first impression in their new community. Anne had no idea who they were. As a marker to herself to check with the event organizer later in the week for an identity, she wrote "Joe & Mary Schmuck" on the back of the photo.
She then set the stack of photos aside for several days. As the weekly Society Page deadline approached, Anne frantically handed the stack of photos to her muttering assistant and asked for captions.
The assistant did what she was told, mindlessly grabbing names from the backs of the photos to write identifying cutlines, left to right.
And that is how, in the next day's newspaper, the banker and his wife were introduced to Monterey's reading public as Joe and Mary Schmuck.
.