As we all know, he always gives a great speech. But it strikes me that, tonight, he’s being unusually effective in putting some flesh on the bones of his “change” message. No, he’s not being much more specific than usual. But he’s at least making a thematic case that old-fashioned partisanship is holding back progress on issues from health care to the high cost of a college education.
Yet another big surprise
On CNN, Carl Bernstein just supplied the story line for at least the next few days: “Bill Clinton is a huge loser in this.” Wow. Barack Obama, 54 percent; Hillary Clinton, 27 percent. The Clinton camp was reportedly prepared to declare moral victory if they could find a way to lose by less than 10 percent percentage points [Thanks, Mike_B1]. Instead, Obama beat her by two to one.
Could you imagine what people would be saying if the polls in South Carolina had been this wrong in Clinton’s favor? And will someone (i.e., Obama) finally get some momentum out of a primary victory during this weird election year?
Dan Rea’s radio days
I’ve got a profile of Dan Rea in the new issue of CommonWealth Magazine. Rea, a longtime television reporter at WBZ-TV (Channel 4), is now the host of the talk show once helmed by the late David Brudnoy and Paul Sullivan at WBZ Radio (AM 1030). “NightSide with Dan Rea” is an oasis of civility in the talk-radio wars. But can it work in today’s caustic environment?
Rea’s got some tough things to say about the state of local TV news, telling me, “It was very clear to me that there was a direction of television news that was not going to be reversed, and I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to continue doing television news as I was doing it.” He added:
Local television news is one of the great purveyors of racism of our time. They don’t understand that. But if you are somebody who lives out in one of the 128 or 495 suburbs, and never have a reason to really interact with people of color, the only time you’re going to see young black males is when they’re being arraigned, they’re being arrested, or they’re dying in the street. We ignore the 99 percent of the kids in that community who are trying to do the right thing, trying to go to school, trying to participate in community programs and athletics.
Rea is probably best known for his years-long efforts on behalf of Joseph Salvati, wrongly convicted of murder because of the false testimony of a government-protected witness.
Globe denies layoff story
Globe spokesman Al Larkin calls the Metro report “factually incorrect,” according to accounts by the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly and the Herald’s Christine McConville, although he doesn’t rule out the possibility of some layoffs.
Credit where it’s due: Looks like Lisa van der Pool of the Boston Business Journal was the first to report the Globe’s denial. Meanwhile, in today’s Metro, Saul Williams says he stands by his story. (9:40 a.m.)
Can the Globe really lay off “hundreds”?
This item in Metro Boston looks pretty alarming. But if the Boston Globe lays off “hundreds,” as Metro claims, wouldn’t that pretty much empty out the building? And wasn’t it just yesterday that Joe Keohane reported at Boston Daily that the Globe had messed up a story about downsizing at Metro? And aren’t the Globe and Metro corporate cousins? And isn’t it a full moon tonight? (Close.)
The Newspaper Guild is taking the Metro report seriously. This one obviously bears watching. But I’m skeptical about the prospect of “hundreds of layoffs” — and I hope I’m proven right, given what it would mean for journalism (and journalists) in Boston.
(Not) banned in West Roxbury
Anti-gay activist Robert Joyce is trying to get my old paper, the Boston Phoenix, banned in West Roxbury, the Roslindale Transcript reports. Joyce says he doesn’t like the Phoenix’s adult-oriented classified ads, although he adds that it would be OK if escort services offered chicken dinners.
One of Joyce’s targets, liquor store owner Gary Park, says Joyce threatened him if he continued to carry the Phoenix. Jessica Smith writes:
“He [Joyce] walked in here and instead of talking like a gentleman, he started making threats and giving me ultimatums,” said Park.
The threats include promises of a protest. Joyce said that while the group has yet to apply for a permit to protest, his organization was looking for volunteers to hold signs and to organize such an event. Still, that did not sway the man who owns Gary’s Liquors.
Park said he does not intend to stop carrying the publication that he has had in his store for years and is available for free all over the commonwealth.
“Mr. Joyce has way too much time on his hands. He should be helping homeless people and the elderly. If he doesn’t like the paper, then don’t come pick it up,” said Park, who stressed that his business caters to individuals who are age 21 and older.
Someone should tell Joyce that picking up a copy of the Phoenix every week is not mandatory. Although I recommend it.
By the way, the name of Joyce’s organization is the delightfully Orwellian Support Community Decency Inc. (Via Universal Hub, which also links to this story in the West Roxbury Bulletin.)
Googling the New York Times
In my latest for the Guardian, I expand on John Ellis’ intriguing idea that Google ought to consider buying the New York Times Co.
More bad news for casino proponents
Another day, another round-up of news suggesting that Gov. Deval Patrick’s proposal to build three gambling casinos in Massachusetts, and a bid by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe to construct the world’s largest casino in Middleborough, are as happening as Fred Thompson’s presidential campaign. This morning we consider four developments.
1. In the Herald, Dave Wedge reports that revenue from three casinos in Detroit is dropping like a rock, with tax money for the state of Michigan falling by $10 million over the past year. Wedge quotes a Detroit autoworker named Mark Hauswirth thusly: “They ruin the city. People blow all their money. It don’t help nobody but the people who own them.” Hauswirth knows whereof he speaks: Wedge interviewed him at, yes, a casino.
Are analogies fair? I don’t know. Building three casinos in a depressed city like Detroit is hardly the same as spreading them out in a relatively prosperous state like Massachusetts. But local casino critics like state Rep. Dan Bosley have been warning us that casinos don’t generate anywhere near as much money as proponents like to think. The Detroit experience definitely falls in line with that.
2. House Speaker Sal DiMasi disses Patrick big-time in today’s Globe, telling reporter Matt Viser that he’s endorsing Hillary Clinton for president because Barack Obama is too inexperienced — just like Patrick.
“I think Massachusetts will look at it to find out what they can see in Obama with respect to what they did with their vote for Governor Patrick,” DiMasi is quoted as saying. “To be perfectly honest, I really don’t want my president to be in there in a learning process for the first six months to a year. It’s too important.”
I’ve heard the Obama-Patrick comparison many times, and I find it borderline offensive. What do they have in common other than a political consultant (David Axelrod) and, oh yes, the fact that they are both African-American? But Media Nation is in tea leaf-reading mode today. And the leaves tell me that DiMasi has decided to take the gloves off after a period of relative calm. Since DiMasi has already made it clear that he opposes Patrick’s casino plan, his outspokenness suggests that he won’t mind killing it once and for all.
3. The Globe’s Frank Phillips informs us that Patrick “has set up a novel political fund-raising system that allows him to skirt the state’s campaign finance law by channeling big contributions through the state Democratic Party, which, in turn, has paid off hundreds of thousands of dollars of the governor’s political expenses.”
If this were a big deal, I’d expect that Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts, would be upset. Instead, Phillips writes that Wilmot “found nothing about Patrick’s strategy that prompted alarm.” Still, it places Patrick on the defense once again, hampering his ability to move his agenda forward. When it comes to casinos, that’s a good thing.
4. Finally, it turns out that the proposed site of the Middleborough casino may be the home of a rare species of turtle called the northern red-bellied cooter. Gladys Kravitz explains why it matters — although Alicia Elwell, writing in the Brockton Enterprise, reports that maybe the turtle doesn’t live there after all.
Much wrangling ahead, you can be sure.
More powerful than Googlezon!*
One of my favorite bomb-tossers, John Ellis, has uncorked a doozy. In a column for the Web site RealClearMarkets, Ellis proposes that Google make an offer to the New York Times Co. that it can’t refuse. Ellis’ arguments:
- Mega-wealthy Google could easily afford to buy the Times Co., the price of which will only keep dropping.
- Even though the Times Co.’s controlling stock is owned by members of the Sulzberger family, who don’t want to sell, there’s a point beyond which the family can no longer screw other shareholders.
- Rupert Murdoch seems determined to transform the Wall Street Journal into a serious competitor to the Times on all kinds of news, not just financial — and he can afford to run the Journal at a loss.
- Google, like Murdoch, doesn’t need to turn a profit with a small investment like the Times — but may make money anyway if it can leverage Times content across multiple platforms.
- Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. isn’t getting it done, and has been in charge for so long now that it seems clear that’s not going to change.
Ellis, a former Boston Globe columnist, offers some provocation for us locals as well, suggesting that Google could get the price down to a mere $3 billion or so by selling off the Times Co.’s other properties, including the Globe, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and its share of the Red Sox and of New England Sports Network. (If the right buyer for the Globe can be found? Go ahead, make my day. But that’s a big if.)
Ellis’ piece is a suggestion, not a prediction. Still, it’s worth noting that in October 2006, when it looked as though a group headed by retired General Electric chairman Jack Welch might buy the Globe, Ellis wrote: “Mr. Sulzberger would be a fool, of course, to sell the Globe to anyone at this juncture.”
He was exactly right. Which raises the question of whether Times Co. executives now would be fools not to sell the Globe.
Ellis’ proposal is logical, if unlikely to happen. But given that all of our great news organizations are going to have to find new, once-unthinkable ways of surviving, I can imagine a worse fate for the Times than landing in the arms of Google, which generally, though not always, lives up to its “don’t be evil” philosophy. Better Google than Murdoch, certainly. (Via Romenesko.)
*Click here for reference.
An ugly Democratic split
My former Boston Phoenix colleague Al Giordano, on leave from the Narco News Bulletin, has been blogging the presidential campaign this winter. He’s got a particularly detailed and perceptive post on the Nevada Democratic caucuses, in which he offers some thoughts — backed up by first-hand reporting — on the increasingly ugly split between pro-Obama African-Americans and pro-Clinton Latinos. Giordano writes:
Now, I’m a connoisseur of ugliness in all its forms, I find it mostly entertaining, but the part of yesterday’s caucus that was so ugly as to be distressing was to see the Hispanic and black communities so polarized: The Clinton caucusers were predominantly Hispanic-American and the Obama caucusers were predominantly African-American — most on both sides were women — and they shouted and taunted each other with boos, cat-calls, hisses, thumbs down, and at one point one man on the Obama side began chanting, “I did not have sex with that woman!”
He concludes: “Frankly, unless events conspire during this 2008 Democratic primary process to reverse those truly ugly developments, any Democrat that thinks that November is already won is a fool that is not to be taken seriously from here on out.” (Thanks to Media Nation reader C.M.)