Justice Schack: Kicking Down Front Doors

Some call him a hero, some a menace. One thing is for sure; when Justice Schack comes a-knockin, you better get your front ready. I had no idea what I was going to reflect on when I woke up this morning, decided to mull over the problem with a copy of the New York Times. Even though the story was on the front page, I didn’t get to reading it until I was about a half hour into the paper. It read “’Little Judge’ Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style.” It was only after I half-heartedly began reading the article that I discovered that I had stumbled across a gold mine of performance and frontery.
Justice Schack is perhaps what Goffman would call an intruder, or perhaps one of the imposters “in the audience” who act in the “interests of the audience, not the performers” (147). In this case, the performers are some of the biggest banks in the nation, and the audience comprises of everyone who gets devoured by their behemoth appetites.
What makes the Schackster different from the many other judges working with foreclosed homes, is that he does not stand for the front that the banks compose, he does not perform business with them as it has usually been conducted in the past. In the past, banks have gotten away with faulty and mismanaged claims, and still presented themselves as legitimate enterprises who are taking what is rightfully theirs. The Schack Attack refused to take part in what he calls a complex corporate “confidence game,” which incidentally is a term frequented by Goffman when describing specific performances. He always fights foreclosure claims, even though homeowners often do not choose to fight themselves, accepting the front put on by the banks as legitimate. \
What I took from this article is the importance trying to look past others fronts when it appears that the fronts are out on for devious purposes. According to the article, judges rarely “hold large corporations to the rules” (14A). So someone needed to scrutinize the fronts between the two teams, the large banks and those who are supposed to hold them in check.