Month: November 2007

Politics and the BPL (II)

Fired Boston Public Library president Bernard Margolis goes after Mayor Tom Menino in today’s lead story in the Boston Globe. And Margolis’ comments are in perfect accord with this week’s Boston Phoenix editorial, which I flagged last Friday.

According to Margolis, the mayor had actually rebuffed his efforts to strengthen the branch libraries — a shortcoming supposedly responsible for Margolis’ ouster — and then turned around and used that as an excuse to get rid of him.

Globe reporter Donovan Slack’s story includes this:

Margolis said he knew in May that his contract would not be renewed, when [Menino chief of staff Judith] Kurland visited him at the library. After taking a tour and perusing 17th-century documents from the Bay Colony, she delivered the news.

“She said, ‘I want to tell you that your contract will not be renewed when it’s up next year,’ ” Margolis said. “She said, ‘If the trustees don’t go along with it, they will be removed.’ “

Kurland confirmed that she had told Margolis his contract would not be renewed, but she denied that she had talked to him about replacing trustees not willing to go along. “What I said was, ‘We do have the votes not to reappoint, if you want us to take a vote on it,’ ” Kurland said.

The only way Menino can make amends for this stunning exercise in political bullying is to bring in a first-class replacement for Margolis. We’ll see.

Welcome back, Bruce

A couple of months ago I wrote an exceedingly unkind commentary for the Guardian about Bruce Springsteen’s then-forthcoming album, “Magic.” I thought the single released in advance of the album, “Radio Nowhere,” sounded generic enough to have been recorded by a Springsteen imitator. Given that his last two albums of original material were the loathsome “The Rising” (2003) and the instantly forgettable “Devils & Dust” (2005), I didn’t hold out much hope for “Magic.”

Well, now. I’ve been listening to “Magic” for a month, and I’m both chagrined at my earlier haste and pleasantly surprised. I still don’t like “Radio Nowhere,” but it’s not so bad when it kicks off his best album in many years. I realize I’m late to the party here, but I have to buy my CDs like everyone else. I figured I’d at least have my say before Springsteen hits Boston later this week.

What gives “Magic” its strength is that Springsteen has abandoned the strained attempts at profundity that marred “The Rising” and “Devils.” I’m hardly the first to say this (Springsteen himself says it here), but “Magic” is a pop album — the closest he’s come to such an achievement since “Tunnel of Love” (1987). “Tunnel,” in turn, might be his last completely satisfying album, depending on how you feel about “The Ghost of Tom Joad” (1995). I like “Tom Joad,” but I realize that a lot of people don’t.

Smack dab in the middle of “Magic” is “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” perhaps the most perfect little pop song Springsteen has ever written. The underlying melancholy in the chorus — “The girls in their summer clothes, pass me by” — befits someone in his late 50s.

It’s not all confection by any means. There’s a current of antiwar sentiment here, stated most explicitly on “Last to Die.” The album is full of highlights, but right now I’m loving “You’ll Be Coming Down” and “Your Own Worst Enemy,” two relaxed, mid-tempo rockers. Bruce’s confidence in his material shines through in his singing, too — he’s dropped some the annoying tics that had crept in over the years, such as swallowing the ends of his lines.

A word, though, about Brendan O’Brien’s production: terrible. I don’t understand what Springsteen sees in this guy. I understand that Springsteen wants to update his sound, and some of O’Brien’s little flourishes, like the strings that open “Girls,” are nice. But the sound is muddy and distorted throughout. “Magic” is almost OK on my iPod, but it’s nearly unlistenable in my car. It’s as if I’m listening to a radio station that’s not quite tuned in.

Maybe recording last year’s fine album of old folk songs, “We Shall Overcome,” re-energized Springsteen’s writing. Other than “Girls in Their Summer Clothes,” I don’t know if we’ll be humming any of these 10 years from now. But this is a genuine comeback.

Taranto’s wrong, too

Maybe after Rupe closes the deal, he’ll let Wall Street Journal commentators get LexisNexis accounts. The lack thereof is the only explanation I can think of for James Taranto’s endorsement of David Brooks’ factually deficient claim that Ronald Reagan’s speech in Philadelphia, Miss., was not a big deal during the 1980 campaign.

As I demonstrated last week, it was an enormous issue, with a number of media outlets reporting on what some saw as racial insensitivity on Reagan’s part, and with Jimmy Carter’s campaign beating the drums on several occasions.

Yet Taranto writes: “Why does Reagan’s Philadelphia speech loom so much larger in today’s liberal imagination than it did when Reagan was alive and active in politics? Because today’s liberals yearn for their elders’ moral authority.” Nice line. Too bad it depends on believing something that isn’t true. Taranto is generally one of the sharper knives in the drawer, but he’s wrong about this.

Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood. Some commenters to my previous item think I’m accusing Reagan of having been a racist. I’m not, although he clearly didn’t mind playing racial politics on occasion. My interest in this item is based solely on Brooks’ factually incorrect notion that the Philadelphia speech was not a big deal until recently. In fact, it was one of the biggest issues of the 1980 campaign. I remember it as someone who lived through it, and my research shows that I’m right and Brooks is wrong.

Hat tip on this to Media Nation reader MTS.

An awkward moment for Obama

My friend and former Phoenix colleague Michael Crowley has beaten me to it.

Yesterday I was listening to the podcast of “Meet the Press,” which this week featured Sen. Barack Obama. For the most part, it was standard-issue Tim Russert, as Obama easily batted away questions of the tired old “how can you be for campaign-finance reform when you raise money from special interests” variety.

But, as I was driving past Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Custom House, I nearly had to pull over for this exchange:

Russert: [O]ther critics will say that you’ve not been a leader against the war, and they point to this: In July of ’04, Barack Obama, “I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don’t know,” in terms of how you would have voted on the war. And then this: “There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage.” That was July of ’04. And this: “I think” there’s “some room for disagreement in that initial decision to vote for authorization of the war.” It doesn’t seem that you are firmly wedded against the war, and that you left some wiggle room that, if you had been in the Senate, you may have voted for it.

Obama: Now, Tim, that first quote was made with an interview with a guy named Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” during the convention when we had a nominee for the presidency and a vice president, both of whom had voted for the war. And so it, it probably was the wrong time for me to be making a strong case against our party’s nominees’ decisions when it came to Iraq.

Obama — shading the truth then, telling it straight now? Not a very good campaign slogan. Or as Crowley writes, “Obama might argue that there’s a difference between speaking as a nominee and speaking about the nominee. Still, even by his own account, this episode hardly seems to live up to the tough standards he set last night” — referring to a rousing speech Obama had given in Iowa the night before.

In July 2004, Obama went beyond cooling down his rhetoric in order to accommodate John Kerry and John Edwards, and his explanation for that now is cynical. Obama’s flagging campaign has caught a few sparks in the past week. It will be interesting to see whether he did himself any real damage yesterday.

Update: Media Matters reports that Russert creatively sliced and diced Obama’s comments from three years ago. No surprise there. But what concerns me is what Obama said yesterday.

Why casinos won’t pay off

Boston Globe Magazine columnist Tom Keane offers a basic math lesson: “Does anyone seriously believe that Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun will sit idly by while a vast chunk of their business disappears? As the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation pointed out recently, like any good competitor, they’ll fight back. They’ll drop room rates, improve entertainment, and spruce up the buffet tables. Most important, they — and the states they’re in — will be compelled to offer gamblers better odds.”

My standard disclosure.

Gamble Deval’s way — or go to jail

Gov. Deval Patrick, who is trying to foist three gambling casinos on the state, wants to make it a criminal offense — punishable by up to two years in prison and a $25,000 fine — to place a bet over the Internet. Crime, traffic and the associated disruption caused by a casino coming to your town? No problem. Gambling in the privacy of your home? Problem.

“If you were cynical about it, you’d think that they’re trying to set up a monopoly for the casinos,” David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, tells the Boston Globe’s Matt Viser.

Well, by all means, let’s be cynical about it. What could this possibly be about other than making sure the state scoops up every available nickel produced by gambling?

Among other things, Patrick’s go-straight-to-jail provision has managed to alienate U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, who had spoken in favor of Patrick’s casino plan just recently. Frank tells the Globe, “Why is gambling in a casino OK and gambling on the Internet is not? He’s making a big mistake. He’s giving opponents an argument against him.” Nice work, Governor.

In two other casino-related developments, it appears that the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is moving backwards in its bid to build a casino in Middleborough.

First, Boston Herald reporter Scott Van Voorhis writes that federal regulators may move to take some of the allure out of the high-stakes video bingo parlors that Indian tribes are allowed to open even in the face of state opposition. The idea is that such bingo games would have to look more like bingo and less like slot machines. This could damage the argument advanced by some pro-casino forces that if Patrick’s proposal is defeated, the Mashpee will open a sort-of casino anyway.

Van Voorhis’ piece is a follow-up to a story first broken on Oct. 29 by George Brennan in the Cape Cod Times.

Second, tribal leaders have reportedly been talking out of both sides of their mouths on the matter of whether they will enter the Patrick sweepstakes or instead pursue their gambling plans under the federal route. Boston magazine’s Jason Schwartz explains.

The most recent version of my standard disclosure.

Wrong about Reagan

New York Times columnist David Brooks today claims that Ronald Reagan is being retroactively tainted by a partisan liberal smear of recent vintage. He writes:

It’s a distortion that’s been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

What dastardly deed is Brooks referring to? In August 1980, Reagan’s campaign managers decided to kick off the post-convention final push by having the Gipper appear in Philadelphia, Miss., a shrine to the civil-rights movement thanks to the murder of three young activists 16 years earlier. Reagan spoke to a white crowd and endorsed “states’ rights,” code for segregation. This, Brooks fulminates, is — in some sort of latter-day re-invention — being “taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism.”

But though Brooks wants you to believe that the idea of Reagan’s general-election campaign beginning with a racially insensitive act is a new one, he’s careful to add the caveat that it’s “been around for a while.” Well, yes. I followed the 1980 campaign avidly. And I distinctly remember that Reagan was accused at the time, repeatedly and vociferously, of playing to the prejudices of white southern voters.

Here’s a sampling of coverage from the 1980 campaign:

  • Newsweek, Aug. 18: “Reagan’s courtship of the black vote last week started out in a way that made many blacks suspicious. Speaking to a nearly all-white crowd at a county fair in Philadelphia, Miss. — the town where three civil-rights workers were murdered in 1964 — he spoke in favor of states’ rights, the code words for segregation in the 1950s.”
  • U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 25: “In early August, Reagan made a three-day trip to Mississippi, New York and Chicago that attracted mixed reviews. He spoke to a mostly white audience at the Neshoba County (Miss.) Fair and declared support for states’ rights. The outing may have helped him in a state that Carter narrowly carried in 1976, but it drew criticism from blacks. Neshoba County is where three civil-rights workers were slain by Ku Klux Klansmen in 1964 with the help of local lawmen.”
  • The Associated Press, Sept. 16: “It was the pulpit of the late Martin Luther King Jr., and Carter invoked his memory in urging that blacks exercise their hard-won right to cast ballots. ‘You’ve seen in this campaign the stirrings of hate and the rebirth of code words like states’ rights in a speech in Mississippi and a campaign reference to the Ku Klux Klan relating to the South,’ Carter said. ‘That is a message which creates a cloud on the political horizon.’ “
  • The Washington Post, Sept. 28: “Philadelphia, Miss., was the worst place in the world to mention ‘states’ rights.’ Whatever the term might mean to Ronald Reagan now and whatever it might mean to others, it means something else to Jimmy Carter. It was always a code phrase for racism. It did not mean that the state had some sort of right to tell the government to shove it when it came to occupational safety. It meant, bluntly, that the state could deprive blacks of their civil rights and there wasn’t a thing the federal government could do about it.”
  • The New York Times, Oct. 15: “Andrew Young, campaigning on behalf of President Carter, told an audience in Ohio last week that Ronald Reagan’s advocacy of ‘state’s rights’ in a speech last August in Philadelphia, Miss., ‘looks like a code word to me that it’s going to be all right to kill niggers when he’s President.’ ” (The White House distanced itself from that one.)

I could go on (and on), but you get the idea. The point is that, despite what Brooks would like you to believe, Reagan’s pit stop in Mississippi was one of the most controversial moments in the 1980 campaign. Liberals didn’t start attacking Reagan over that visit a few months ago — they did it repeatedly 27 years ago.

You don’t have to believe Reagan was a racist. You just have to look at the record. The truth is contained in Brooks’ caveat; the main thrust of his column is a gross distortion.

More on Boston.com

Two more points about the redesigned Boston Globe site at Boston.com:

  • Once you get past an ad and a few teasers (including one for “Government Center,” a terrific resource that can be hard to find), a good chunk of the right-hand column is taken up with “Reporter’s Questions” — possible future stories for which reporters are seeking information. This feature has been around for years, but I’ve never seen it displayed so prominently. All smart news organizations are looking for ways to build communities around their journalism, and this is one way to do it.
  • The blogs may be getting short shrift on the Boston.com front, but they’re being promoted heavily on the Globe page. Just scroll down the left-hand column a bit. So are the podcasts, which have been organized and promoted in such a way that I may give a few a try now.

Politics and the BPL

So what is the real reason that Bernard Margolis is being forced out of his job as president of the Boston Public Library? To read the Boston Globe’s coverage, you’d think Margolis had all but ignored the neighborhood branches over the past 10 years. A Globe editorial endorses that view.

But a Boston Phoenix editorial this week places the blame squarely on Mayor Tom Menino, who reportedly has never liked Margolis, and who has decided to indulge his penchant for stacking his administration with loyalists rather than put up with an independent-thinking visionary.

According to the Phoenix, three BPL trustees held Menino off from acting on his worst instincts over the years — former Globe publisher William Taylor, former Massachusetts Senate and UMass president Bill Bulger and state Rep. Angelo Scaccia. But Taylor is no longer a trustee, Bulger and Scaccia have lost clout, and Menino is now free to do what he pleases.

Here’s the heart of the editorial:

Now that Margolis’s firing is about to be made official, the city is being treated to a campaign of disinformation suggesting that, while Margolis was good for the historic central library in Copley Square, his track record in the branches was lacking. This is rubbish, so out of line with reality that it approaches a big-lie strategy: tell a whopper with enough conviction and frequency and you can get the public to believe it. It will probably work. Also wrested out of context are recycled versions of Margolis’s unwillingness to install Internet filters — except for children — on library computers. Free speech may be uncomfortable at times, but it should never be so in a library.

I covered the filter controversy for the Phoenix back in 1997, shortly after Margolis had arrived, and I was impressed with his sophisticated, sensitive approach. He easily could have sided with Menino and engaged in out-and-out censorship, or taken an absolutist free-speech view and refused to install any filters. Instead, he found intelligent middle ground.

Ten years is a long time to run a major cultural institution such as the BPL. If the trustees replace Margolis with someone of equal stature, but perhaps with a different set of priorities, then no harm will have been done except the damage that’s already been unfairly visited upon Margolis’ reputation.

But the Phoenix editorial makes a convincing case that Margolis is being let go for all the wrong reasons. Those of us who love libraries ought to be concerned.

Photo (cc) by seahills1. Some rights reserved.