Former Boston Herald (and Phoenix) sports columnist Michael Gee today absolutely unloads on the Globe. Gee’s a good enough writer that it doesn’t seem completely out of context or gratuitous when the F-bombs start flying. But whoa!
In particular, Gee sees Brian McGrory’s suggestion that Green Rainbow Party candidate Grace Ross get out of the governor’s race as evidence of the Globe’s institutional arrogance — an arrogance that’s now as laughable as it is irritating, given the paper’s declining readership and advertising revenue. Only that’s not, ahem, how Gee puts it.
Via Universal Hub.
And speaking of the governor’s race, I finally got to hear last night’s debate. Let me try to make amends for being so late to the scene by giving you my Official Generic David Gergen Question, good for any debate and all occasions: I’d like to ask you an incredibly complex question about a troubling social problem that experts have been struggling with for decades. You each have 20 seconds.
Update: Kevin has a similar observation about Gergen, except that he cuts him more slack than I’m willing to.
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Anonymous
Never had the occasion to read much of Gee but he just won me over. He may not have been cut out to be a teacher but he has the Globe focussed in HD. Like the members of a formerly exclusive country club that haven’t received the memo, Globies insist that A.)they’re much smarter than the rest of us and B.) someone cares. If I wanted to listen to pedantic pseudo-intellectuals, I could hang around Harvard Square for free.
Mike from Norwell
Gee, for such a Casper milk toast guy when he was covering sports at the Herald or the occasional gig on WEEI, Gee sure can type a good rant; don’t think he could do it in person though.However, I don’t think that it is too much to ask for at least one debate between Patrick and Healy, w/o Ross and Mihos. I don’t remember Presidential debates w/ the cast of fringe candidates up on the podium.Given that it is likely that Patrick is going to take this thing, I’d like to hear more than “Yes We Can” as a bromide. Property tax relief? Sounds great, but where do you get those funds for state aid? His promise that we increase state aid, but the towns only get it if they promise to cut property taxes correspondingly (as I heard him say at noon today w/ Eagan and Braude) sounds like a zero sum game to me. How does that help towns with override votes for services? He’s expounding expanded commitments for schools, such as all day kindergarten, but how do towns do that with no increase in revenues?And I’d also like to hear something other than pinning everything on the Romney/Healey administration for the cut in local aid. I really don’t remember the house/senate cowering over the last 4 years, rubber-stamping every proposal. Disingenuous at best.Let’s face facts here. Our state saw a huge runup in revenue in the late 90s due to tech and .com companies. Commitments were made based on static projections of tax revenue, and the bill came due when these former high flying tech mavens had to get second jobs bartending to make ends meet (reminds me of 1986, when the state saw record capital gains receipts – of course noone had factored in the passage of TRA ’86, which induced everyone to accelerate sales to take advantage of favorable tax treatment, but that’s another rant).
Amusedbutinformedobserver
The only thing Michael “sloe eyes sabra” Gee knows about the Boston Globe is that it’s one of many publications that wouldn’t touch him with ten-foot pica pole
mike_b1
mike, i think you mean “Caspar Milquetoast.” That is, if you were referencing the old Webster comic strip character.
mike_b1
There’s something so apropos about “Gee” and “whiz” sharing the same hedline.