Taken just before noon on Friday.
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Stomping around the Danvers Rail Trail
On Saturday and Sunday I ran the length of the Danvers Rail Trail, first heading out to the Peabody line and then to Route 97 in Topsfield the next day. Today I returned with my iPhone and took some pictures on the Swampwalk, near the Topsfield line, and on the trail itself.
The trail has been quite a boon to the town, and it continues all the way to the center of Topsfield.
Why liberals should be rooting for Romney
In my latest for the Huffington Post, I argue that liberals should be rooting for Mitt Romney to win the nomination. If he fails, it could be disastrous for the country, for the Republican Party and even for the Obama presidency. I’ll be talking about my piece tonight between 8 and 9 p.m. with Ian Masters, host of the radio program “Background Briefing.”
Labor unrest hits the Union Leader
Some serious labor unrest has hit the New Hampshire Union Leader, as the Manchester Newspaper Guild voted 76-0 on Wednesday to turn down a contract proposal. According to the Guild, management has threatened to lay off six employees and implement a 10 percent pay cut if the two sides can’t reach an agreement by Monday.
The Guild claims that management “has demanded an across-the-board, 10-percent reduction in Guild salaries, cuts in sick time, a longer work week, the revocation of protections for full-time jobs, and the elimination of unpaid union leave, among other givebacks.”
Tony Schinella of Patch recently reported that the Guild picketed a Rick Perry event and wants all presidential candidates seeking an endorsement from the Union Leader to ask that management “bargain respectfully with its unions.”
The Union Leader does not appear to have covered the contract dispute in its own pages. Management is, of course, welcome to respond in the comments.
The photo, which accompanies the Patch story linked above, was provided to Patch by the Newspaper Guild.
Yes, the Weather Underground again
Former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers’ reputation, such as it is, rests on his assertion that the radical organization, for all its violent rhetoric and activities, never killed or injured anyone other than three of its own members who died while making a bomb.
In a 2008 interview on the NPR show “Fresh Air,” Ayers told host Terry Gross, “The Weather Underground never killed a police officer, never tried to and never did.” And despite taking responsibility for a series of bombings, he added, “It never targeted people, it never meant to hurt or injure anyone, and thank God it never did hurt or injure anyone.”
Which is why today’s Boston Globe story on the death of William “Lefty” Gilday is such a stunner. Gilday and two radicals from Brandeis University, Susan Saxe and Katherine Ann Power, murdered Boston police officer Walter Schroeder in the course of committing a bank robbery. Reporter David Abel writes of an interview he conducted with Gilday last June, when he was dying of Parkinson’s disease:
Still, he had a lucid memory of the morning of Sept. 23, 1970, when he helped a radical group from the Weather Underground rob a Brighton branch of the State Street Bank and Trust Co.
“I wish we never would have gone to the bank that day,” he said of the group’s failed effort to finance their movement against the Vietnam War.
Now, there are people who have long believed the Weather Underground was involved in Schroeder’s death, but there has never been any evidence beyond a few hints here and there. Same with the killing of a police officer in San Francisco, which remains an unsolved crime. Two years ago I got dragged into this controversy when my old pal Michael Graham mocked a semi-sympathetic commentary about Ayers that I wrote for the Guardian, and noted that an FBI website had linked the Weather Underground to the Schroeder killing.
In fact, it was an error — the FBI had never believed any such thing, and after I contacted the agency, the reference was removed. An agency spokesman went so far as to say that a couple of references in a 1975 Senate report claiming that Saxe and Power were involved in the Weather Underground did not appear to match what the FBI believed. You can read all about that here. After double-checking this morning, I verified that today was the first time the Globe has ever reported the Weather Underground was involved in Schroeder’s death, despite numerous references to Gilday, Saxe and Power’s involvement in violent radicalism.
Given that, for Gilday to assert that he was involved in the Weather Underground after all these years is a huge development. I sent Abel and email this morning and asked how it came about. Here’s his response:
The reference to the Weather Underground came directly from Lefty, during our interview, in addition to other memories from the era, such as how he stole Abby Hoffman’s books. He didn’t dwell on it, and I didn’t press him on the question of whether he was really a member of the Weather Underground, as I had not known that that was something anyone had questioned. He told me that he decided to join a few other folks who he considered “revolutionaries” and they got him connected to the folks in the Weather Underground.
I’d say Abel has got hold of a hell of a story, and I look forward to his following it up. Unfortunately, Gilday does not mention the Weather Underground in the video that accompanies Abel’s story. But perhaps he does in some outtakes that could be posted. And yes, of course, tying Gilday directly to the Weather Underground will likely prove impossible. It’s not like the WU had a hierarchy, dues and membership cards.
Needless to say, the only people in this story who any of us should care about are Officer Schroeder and his family, including his nine children. Here is an online tribute set up in his memory.
Clif Garboden, 1948-2011
Early yesterday afternoon I received some very sad news. Clif Garboden, former managing editor of the Boston Phoenix, had died. It was not entirely unexpected. Clif had gone through devastating treatments for cancer a half-dozen years ago, and had recently been diagnosed with a recurrence. He died of pneumonia before treatments could really get under way.
Clif was simultaneously a caustic, profane social critic and an unabashed idealist — two qualities that I think are often found together.
His 2004 outburst following the election results, “Screw You, America,” is a classic example of the former. I remembered every word of it when I re-read it this morning — it’s that good.
His essay for the Phoenix’s 40th-anniversary issue was an example of the latter. Clif genuinely, deeply believed that we in the alternative press were doing God’s work in holding powerful institutions accountable. It was a bracing idea, and something to ponder when the day-to-day frustrations of journalism were getting us down.
Clif’s contributions to the Phoenix were legion, ranging from his hilarious “Hot Dots” television listings to his leadership in the creation and growth of ThePhoenix.com — a site regularly recognized for its excellence by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, an organization of which he was a past president. (Here is a tribute posted at AAN.org.)
Indeed, he did so much that it’s sometimes forgotten he was also a first-rate photographer. Here is his Flickr photostream. When Howard Zinn died a little over a year ago, Clif let me publish a photo he had taken of Zinn during a 1967 debate over the Vietnam War. The richness of tone and lighting is striking. As Clif once explained of his student days at the BU News:
In the darkroom, we pushed standard black-and-white film to wantonly high speeds with specialty developing concoctions so we could shoot everything with available light — imparting an atmospheric, realistic look to our pictures and abandoning the flat, grain-less, over-lit direct-flash intrusiveness of standard press photography.
Tributes to Clif are pouring in on Facebook and at ThePhoenix.com. The lives of all of us who were fortunate to know him were enriched by the experience. He possessed a great soul, and we are all going to miss him deeply. I already do.
What’s behind Keith Olbermann’s departure?
The talk of Twitter tonight is Keith Olbermann’s surprise announcement that he is leaving MSNBC. His sign-off was short, reasonably gracious and completely unexpected (video here).
We’ll need to wait for the facts to come in before we know exactly what was behind Olbermann’s departure. But there have been signs for some time that he and MSNBC might part company, starting with the hiring of Lawrence O’Donnell to host what had been a 10 p.m. rebroadcast of Olbermann’s 8 p.m. show. (I hadn’t seen much of Keith since the move.) New York Times reporter Brian Stelter tweets that the O’Donnell hire was a “hedge” against the possibility that Olbermann would leave.
Given Olbermann’s reputation for being volatile and difficult, I thought he might quit after he got suspended last fall for making political donations without permission. He came back, but he seemed diminished after that. In recent months, Rachel Maddow has emerged as the face of MSNBC, hosting a series of public events at the 92nd Street Y*. Her hour-long exchange with Jon Stewart was the most intelligent conversation about the news that I saw in 2010.
Cable giant Comcast, as we all know, just won approval for its acquisition of NBC Universal, which includes MSNBC. Could this be one of those Comcastic moves we all love? Not likely. For Comcast executives to move against Olbermann so quickly would suggest an unimaginable political tone-deafness. And I can’t picture Olbermann signing off without saying anything if that were the case.
MSNBC executives tonight should be thanking their stars that Olbermann came along when he did. It was he who led the way toward transforming the operation into a liberal alternative to Fox News — a profitable network that, though still far behind Fox, kicks CNN’s tail in the ratings.
Maddow, who’s friends with Olbermann, will be live on Bill Maher’s show in a few minutes. I don’t subscribe to HBO, but perhaps she’ll shed some light on what happened.
*Correction: I originally referred to the “92nd Street YMCA.” In fact, it is affiliated with a Jewish organization, the YMHA.
Photo (cc) by Adam Fagen and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Obama lucks into a decisive moment
From a political and perhaps also from a substantive perspective, it strikes me that President Obama got very lucky when Gen. Stanley McChrystal self-destructed in the pages of Rolling Stone. By putting Gen. David Petraeus in charge, Obama has given himself cover no matter what happens in Afghanistan.
Petraeus is our most respected military leader. If he is able to make significant progress in transforming Afghanistan into a functioning state that does not provide a safe haven for terrorists, then that will be a signal success. And if he can’t, then we all may reasonably conclude that no one can. That’s oversimplification, but it’s also reality.
“What Petraeus brings to this war is discipline and an understanding of history. Both of these are needed right now in a moment where the U.S. effort is failing,” writes Charles Sennott, executive editor of GlobalPost.
Obama also got lucky in that he was handed an opportunity to show he understands how to administer a well-deserved public ass-kicking. “Didn’t expect Obama to put McChrystal through such an elaborate ritual humiliation,” journalist John McQuaid tweeted approvingly yesterday.
I agree. Like Josh Marshall, I feared that Obama would find some way to split the difference. Instead, the president reminded us all of what it means to have a military that answers to civilian leadership.
More: Jay Rosen trashes Politico to good effect.
Elena Kagan and free speech
Does Solicitor General Elena Kagan have a problem with the First Amendment?
After President Obama announced Kagan as his choice to replacing retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, liberal and left-wing commentators zeroed in on her unflagging support for broad executive authority.
But there are reasons to be concerned about her commitment to freedom of expression as well.
In 2002, I singled out Harvard University for a Dishonorable Mention in the Phoenix Muzzle Awards for banning military recruiters from campus over its discriminatory policies against gay men and lesbians. Kagan did not become dean of Harvard Law School until 2003, but her support for that ban has quickly emerged as an issue in her confirmation.
(In 2004, for good measure, I gave then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld a Muzzle for forcing the matter by threatening to cut off federal funds to colleges and universities that banned recruiters.)
More recently, Kagan appeared before the Supreme Court to defend a federal law prohibiting the depiction of animal cruelty. As solicitor general, she was merely doing her job. But University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, a former colleague of Kagan’s, recently told NPR’s “On the Media” that she went above and beyond the call of duty, proposing a case-by-case balancing test that could have posed a serious threat to freedom of speech. Stone said:
It really was a dangerous argument for the Solicitor General to make. It would have, if accepted, completely revolutionized a large part of First Amendment doctrine, losing the gains we’ve made throughout the 20th century…. Kagan would probably say she inherited this case; when she became solicitor general it was already in process. Nonetheless, I have to say that I was surprised that Elena didn’t take a red pen and scratch those parts of the brief out.
Kagan also argued vigorously against the notion that corporations should be allowed to spend freely on political speech, as stipulated in the recent Citizens United decision. And Obama cited that decision as one of his reasons for appointing her. I have mixed feelings about the ruling — like my Muzzle colleague Harvey Silverglate, I think it was directionally right, but I’m concerned about the consequences.
(By the way, Silverglate and Kyle Smeallie recently wrote an in-depth analysis for the Phoenix of Kagan’s record in anticipation of her appointment. Definitely a must-read.)
Nevertheless, Citizens United stands as yet another example of what appears to be Kagan’s approach to free speech: to cast it aside whenever it competes with her other goals and objectives.
Photo (cc) by Doc Searls via Wikimedia Commons. Some rights reserved.
