October 2013 – Page 2

Why I won’t miss the Hilltop Steak House

Here is what I’m going to miss about the Hilltop Steak House, which announced this week that it will soon be closing its doors: driving past it during the holidays and looking at the fiberglass cattle wearing Santa hats. And — well, that’s it.

The demise of an icon is always sad. Once the country’s appetite for huge cuts of steak started to diminish, the Hilltop’s enormous size no doubt worked against it. Maybe it could have continued indefinitely if it had occupied a much smaller, cheaper space.

But unlike another Boston icon, Legal Sea Foods, the Hilltop never made any concessions to the 21st century. Legal has long since moved past broiled schrod and fried shrimp. Its menu is thoroughly modern and up to date. But at the Hilltop it is still the same old thing — salad, baked potato and a large, fresh but rather flavorless slab-o-meat.

The last time I went to the Hilltop was maybe 10 years ago. I brought my son because I thought he’d enjoy the experience; I hadn’t been in ages myself. Neither of us was impressed. My tastes had moved on, and his had never developed in that direction.

My wife and I enjoyed an occasional trip to the Hilltop in the 1980s, when you’d stand in line for a half-hour to an hour before being herded into one of its gigantic, Western-theme dining rooms.

But that was a long time ago.

Photo (cc) by splityard and published under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Floyd Abrams throws a curveball

Legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams delivered the Richard S. Salant Lecture on Freedom of the Press on Thursday evening at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. And it was something of a surprise.

Rather than railing against the evils of government censorship, Abrams instead chose to focus on situations in which he believes the media have abused their freedoms. He was especially criticial of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks — not a new stance for him, but nevertheless counterintuitive given Abrams’ fierce defense of the First Amendment.

I put together a Storify about Abrams’ talk, which you can view by clicking here.

At the Times, quoting the voices in their heads

What is the point of this pointless speculation in an otherwise straightforward piece on U.S. raids in Libya and Somalia, New York Times?

With President Obama locked in a standoff with Congressional Republicans and his leadership criticized for a policy reversal in Syria, the raids could fuel accusations among his critics that the administration was eager for a showy foreign policy victory.

No sourcing. But if anyone in the Republican Party were to go there, it might be House Speaker John Boehner. Well, here’s Boehner on ABC’s “This Week”:

I’m very confident that both of these efforts were successful. I’m going to congratulate all of those in the U.S. intelligence operations, our troops, FBI, all those who were involved.

Listen, the threat of al Qaeda and their affiliates remains. And America has continued to be vigilant. And this is a great example of our dedicated forces on the security side, intelligence side, and our military and their capability to track these people down.

What was the Times thinking? Or to put it another way: Why weren’t they thinking?

Hitting the road for “The Wired City”

I’ll be doing three events for “The Wired City” during the next week.

This Saturday, Oct. 5, I’ll be at the Tewksbury Public Library, 300 Chandler St., at 2 p.m.
On Tuesday, Oct. 8, I’ll be at East Bridgewater High School talking with my friend Steve Brown of WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) from 7:30 to 9 p.m.
And on Wednesday, Oct. 9, I’ll be speaking at Northeastern’s Snell Library from noon to 1:30 p.m.

All three are free and open to the public.