By Kat Renz
Commie Girl on the OC: “It took Senor Schwarzenegger’s propositions, overwhelmingly denied through the rest of the state and overwhelmingly approved here, to make me see just how willingly I’d blinded myself. It’s not the conservatism that bothers me: it’s the nastiness. The nattering classes I’d thought were fringey were in fact the decision makers.”
First off, what a great word: nattering. Second, really? I couldn’t believe Commie Girl — a.k.a. Rebecca Schoenkopf, a.k.a. “the black widow/queen bee of alternative journalism”(Orange Country Register) — claimed forced ignorance for nine years. “ ‘That’s a bad rap’,”she told me, describing her excuses over the phone from the porch of her new-as-of-eight-days home in LA. “ ‘We have a lot of Republicans, but we’re electing Democrats in central county and blah blah blah.’ But no, I was wrong. I was totally, totally wrong.”
It seems perfect timing: Schoenkopf’s inaugural book — Commie Girl in the OC (Verso Press, 2008), a compilation of scathing tales of Orange County high and low culture written under her leftie-chick moniker – was published just as she’s moved out of the OC. When I spoke with Commie Girl, she’d just finished whirlwindedly unpacking her boxes among the blue-violet jacaranda trees and 1930’s Spanish bungalows of Los Angeles’s Wilshire ‘hood. Her relocation effectively wrapped up a 12-year tenure at the Orange County Weekly and ushered in a new one as editor of Los Angeles City Beat.
But rewind a decade, when Commie Girl was born after taking over an OC Weekly nightlife column. Schoenkopf insisted her commentary be told through her unique filters: a 25-yr-old socialist, Catholic-Jewish, educated, single mother. About five years later, a little partied-out, her column evolved into pure politics.