Author: Dan Kennedy

Just say no to the casino

One of the very first things you see when you visit Casino-friend.com — a Web site started by supporters of the proposed Middleborough casino — is an insinuation that casino opponents are in league with the Ku Klux Klan. The site touts an “editorial” calling on an anti-casino group, Casinofacts.org, “to repudiate bigotry, prejudce and hate and any connection with a national group called by a major Indian magazine ‘The Ku Klux Klan of Indian country.'”

Guilt by association, a demand to repudiate something that has nothing to do with the honest efforts of folks who don’t want to see their town destroyed — oh, yes. It’s obvious that the pro-casino forces will stop at nothing. Money doesn’t talk, it screams.

I grew up in Middleborough. I moved away many years ago, and thus cannot claim to be a stakeholder in this debate. But there’s really no question about what the impact will be if this monstrosity ever gets built:

  • The rural character of the town will be destroyed forever.
  • The highways and roads will be choked with traffic.
  • Crime and police activity will increase significantly, as the Globe reported on Sunday.

I hope the casino gets voted down at the special outdoor town meeting that’s been called for this weekend. But if it passes, I hope Gov. Deval Patrick slams on the brakes. A casino would severely harm the quality of life in Middleborough for generations to come. A chaotic public gathering, held just a few days after the agreement between town officials and the Wampanoags was made public, is no way to resolve this. I also question whether even a majority should have the right to do this to fellow townspeople.

The best way to resolve this is to kill it now.

On top of the world

Right around lunchtime on Saturday, Sept. 28, 1968, I struggled to the top of Mt. Pierce, also known as Mt. Clinton. I was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, out of shape, out of breath, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.

At 4,310 feet in elevation, Pierce was the first 4,000-foot mountain I had ever hiked; for that matter, it was the first mountain of any size whose summit I had reached. By the end of the day, I would also hike to the top of Mt. Pleasant (now Mt. Eisenhower). We camped at Lakes of the Clouds, an activity that, because of the fragile alpine vegetation, would become a federal crime within a few years. The next morning, beset by clouds, wind and rime ice, we struggled to the top of Mt. Washington (6,288 feet), the highest peak in New England and home to what is often described as the worst weather in the world.

Once I got over my never-again reaction, I was hooked. I learned that there are 48 peaks in New Hampshire of 4,000 feet or more, and that a few serious hikers set out to reach them all. I plugged away, hitting a lot in the ’70s and a few in the ’80s and ’90s. Starting in 2000, when my son, Tim, was old enough to come with me, I resolved to finish the list before I was too old and decrepit to do it anymore.

This past Saturday, just shy of my 51st birthday, I made it. It took me nearly 39 years, which might be some sort of a record — albeit a very different record from the one set by an ultramarathoner named Tim Seaver a few year ago. Seaver did all 48 mountains in less than four days.

My son and I drove to Lincoln, N.H., on Friday, and set up camp at Big Rock. It rained all night, which made me wonder about the forecast of blue skies for Saturday. As it turned out, the weather was almost perfect — cool and not too sunny, if a bit on the humid side. We started out along the Hancock Notch Trail, from the Kancamagus Highway, at 9:30 a.m. The footing was flat and easy, and by a little after 11 we had reached the split on the Hancock Loop Trail, which would take us to the north and south peaks of Mt. Hancock — summits number 47 and 48.

Which one to take first? The hike up the north peak was a bit longer (0.7 mile as opposed to 0.5), and also steeper, with rougher footing. Tim and I decided to go up the north side so that we wouldn’t have to hike down it and risk our necks. It turned out to be a good decision — there was a lot of loose rock, and there’s no way we would have wanted to try to descend along that route.

The hike to the top was pretty much straight up, and we had to pause frequently to catch our breath. We reached the summit around noon. There was a great view from the nearby outlook, and I wish we’d stayed longer. But I wanted to make it to my final summit as soon as possible.

We hit the summit of the south peak right around 1 p.m. I’d done it. It was also Tim’s 17th 4,000-footer, so he’s well on his way. A guy from Worcester named Steve, who was hiking with his girlfriend and another couple, took our picture. Steve, who’s also 51, has 47 summits under his belt, and is planning to make it to number 48 — Mt. Isolation — next weekend.

We made it back to the car before 4 p.m. and headed off to the Yankee Smokehouse. And thus ended a journey that took in parts of five decades. I’m sending in my application to the Four Thousand Footer Club today.

Policing the fashion police

Guy Trebay’s story in the Sunday New York Times on how the presidential candidates dress was intended as a bit of Style-section fluff. It is, unfortunately, a mess, botched both by Trebay and his editors. Consider:

  • We are told that John McCain has been made sport of for wearing a “so-called ‘gay sweater,’ a V-neck worn over a T-shirt.” Well, maybe he has, but the accompanying photo shows McCain wearing a V-neck sweater over a shirt with a collar. How gay is that? Media Nation has no idea.
  • Trebay informs us of the dangers that lurk for candidates who take their wardrobe too seriously: “They risk becoming Al Gore in earth tones, … to cite a famously lampooned misstep the former presidential candidate undertook on the advice of Naomi Wolf, then his image consultant.” Well, now. If there’s a piece of campaign mythology that’s been debunked more thoroughly than that one, I’m not aware of it. Here’s the Daily Howler on the Gore-Wolf matter.
  • Just two sentences later, Trebay writes: “They risk John Kerry’s damaging decision to turn up on television tinted the tangerine hue of a Mystic Tan.” Uh, no. That was Gore, in the first debate in 2000. [Note: See correction, below.]
  • In a reference to Hillary Clinton, Trebay writes that “National Review contributor Myrna Blyth recently characterized [her] as Hairband Hillary, the first lady whose unsteady self-image led to frequent coiffure changes and endearing wardrobe missteps.” I could find absolutely no reference to “Hairband Hillary,” either on Google or LexisNexis. But I did find this, from Blyth’s blog: “Don’t forget that, when she was First Lady, Hillary used to change the way she did her hair every 20 minutes or so. A new look for every presidential crisis, major or minor. Remember the hair band, the flip, the long-gone shoulder-sweeping curls?”

Close enough? Maybe; Trebay didn’t actually put Hairband Hillary in quotation marks. And perhaps the phrase is out there somewhere, even though I couldn’t find it. But what are we to make of the cutline? “READ MY PANTSUIT Hillary Clinton eschews power suits. Railbirds note that she has also lost her trademark hairband.” Her “trademark hairband”? I’m pretty sure Clinton hasn’t worn a headband since the 1992 campaign.

Even froth is unsatisfying when it’s riddled with errors.

And, oh yeah, what’s with the “railbird” reference?

Correction: Oh, there’s nothing I like more than having to correct an item in which I make fun of others’ errors. But it has to be done. There was something about John Kerry’s orange tan during the 2004 campaign, and I had completely forgotten it. See this. Not that it’s any excuse, but the incident was not nearly as well-known as Al Gore’s orange appearance in 2000.

Update: You will not be surprised to learn that former Globe fiction writer Mike Barnicle thoroughly screwed up the “earth tones” thing while filling in on “Hardball” last week, and that he refused to be corrected by Wolf herself. The Daily Howler reports.

Surf’s out

I’ve never heard of Luke Pritchard or his band, the Kooks, but I’ve got to agree with him: the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds,” despite the presence of a few great songs, like “God Only Knows” and “Caroline, No,” is hugely overrated.

A feature on “Pet Sounds” and other overrated albums appears in today’s Globe, but it’s not online. It turns out to be a reprint from the Guardian — you’ll find it here.

Recently I’ve been trying really hard to fall in love with “Smile,” Brian Wilson’s follow-up to “Pet Sounds,” which he finally finished in 2004. Uh, I don’t think so — although I like “Surf’s Up,” even if it doesn’t sound quite as weirdly compelling as the original late-’60s version.

Live and local

Adam Reilly reports on Paul La Camera’s ongoing campaign to transform WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) into more of a local news force.

One of the initiatives Reilly mentions — a newsmagazine show to be called “Radio Boston,” hosted by former WCVB-TV (Channel 5) reporter David Boeri — won’t debut for another couple of months, but it already has an online presence. It’s supposed to be a “weekly show about the life of the city, its suburbs, and its people.” Well, that does cover just about everything.

The old argument against doing a show like “Radio Boston” was that there’s no such thing as appointment listening on the radio — if the program were scheduled for, say, Saturdays at 3 p.m., and you’re never in your car at that hour, then you’d never hear it. Far better to do local coverage in chunks and drop it into “Morning Edition.”

Now, though, WBUR can easily offer “Radio Boston” as a podcast so that you can listen to it whenever you like. Which I’m looking forward to doing.

By the way, I looked at La Camera’s efforts to take WBUR in a more local direction last year in CommonWealth Magazine.

Bailey shoots back

Globe columnist Steve Bailey goes after “the loony gun lobby,” which has worked itself into a lather because a squishy gun deal he wrote about a few years ago — and talked about on the radio recently — turns out to have been charged to his Globe expense account. According to Bailey, authorities have now confiscated the gun. He writes:

This is how it works. Intimidation is the stock in trade of the National Rifle Association and all the NRA knock-offs out there. Dare to say we need fewer, not more guns in this country, dare to say we need a uniform system for monitoring gun sales in this country and you become a target to be hunted down. Democrats and Republicans have allowed themselves to be cowed by this one-issue bloc for too long.

Of course, in this case Bailey is referring to an NRA knock-off — the Second Amendment Foundation, whose leader, Alan Gottlieb, Bailey reports, has had some problems with the Tax Man that were serious enough to strip him of his own right to pack heat, at least temporarily.

More: I want to address the idiotic notion that Bailey was involved in an illegal “straw purchase,” which at least one Media Nation commenter has fallen for. What straw purchase? Bailey gave money to Walter Belair, a former prison guard, in order to buy a gun. Belair didn’t buy the gun for Bailey; he bought it for himself, and, indeed, kept it until it was confiscated by the feds.

The last I checked, you’re still allowed to give people money. Bailey had no responsibility for what Belair chose to do with the money unless he had advance knowledge that Belair was going to use it to break the law. In fact, Belair’s purchase was entirely legal — that was the point of Bailey’s 2005 column. It strikes me as a virtual certainty that the feds will soon be returning Belair’s property to him.

Targeting the Globe

Visit the Web site of the Second Amendment Foundation — a pro-gun lobbying group — and here’s what you’ll find:

  • “SAF Files Ohio Lawsuit …”
  • “SAF Sues Library System …”
  • “SAF Files Texas Lawsuit …”
  • “SAF Files Amici Curiae Brief …”
  • “SAF Sues To Overturn …”

Keep that in mind as you read this Herald story about the foundation’s efforts to have Globe columnist Steve Bailey fired over an allegedly illegal 2005 gun purchase he was involved in while researching a piece on lax gun laws. (Why now? Bailey talked about it on Tom Finneran’s WRKO program recently.)

As former prosecutor Randy Chapman, who heads the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, tells the Herald, “I don’t see a criminal intent there. I just see someone facilitating a news story.” The Herald also notes that the SAF has gone after Sam Donaldson, too.

Here is the SAF press release on Bailey, in which the Globe is helpfully identified as being “owned by the anti-gun New York Times.” And here is Bailey’s 2005 column.

I hope the lawyers don’t tell Bailey he can’t write about this. It’s ridiculous, and the Globe ought to stand up to the Second Amendment Foundation, which makes the National Rifle Association look reasonable by comparison.