Media Nation

In two comments to Media Nation yesterday (here’s the link to the comment thread), WRKO Radio (AM 680) talk-show host Scott Allen Miller continued to insist that taxpayers are being forced to pick up the cost of lighting the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square. Miller wrote:

I didn’t say the Boston taxpayer refurbished the sign, Dan, but according to media reports last year when the sign was refurbished, the Boston taxpayer does pay to light it. Some “gift”! Would we be as supportive of an Exxon sign?

I’ve asked Miller to provide documentation, but haven’t seen any yet. I do know that of the three reports I was able to find from that event, in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and the Associated Press, none made any such assertion. (No links for the Herald and the AP because I found them in closed databases. But you can look up the Herald story online with a library card, and the AP story pretty much rehashed what was in the papers.)

At this point, I have to assume that Miller hasn’t come up with the relevant “media reports” he cited because there aren’t any. Herald reporter Laura Crimaldi posted a comment to Media Nation yesterday in which she said: “For what it’s worth, Citgo spokesman Fernando Garay told me this morning that Citgo Oil pays the electricity bill for the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square.” In today’s Herald, Crimaldi includes Garay’s comment and confirms it with Mayor Tom Menino as well.

Despite all this, if you go to the Web site for Miller’s show this morning, it still says, “Citgo is basically owned by the government of Venezuela, and the city pays to light up the sign every night.” (My emphasis.) Yet in a post on his own blog, Miller goes on at some length about his crusade to tear down the Citgo sign without ever once making the same claim. Interesting.

As for Miller’s claim that I got it wrong when I wrote that he had said taxpayers had footed the bill for refurbishing the Citgo sign, I’ll concede that I may have gotten confused. I was driving, not taking notes or rolling tape. That’s not an excuse, just reality — I was convinced I had it right. Otherwise I wouldn’t have gone with it.

Miller, on the other hand, has yet to admit he got it wrong when he said, over and over, that taxpayers have been saddled with the cost of Citgo’s electric bill every time the sign is turned on. I’m told he was going off on me yesterday morning as well. I hope he at least mentioned the URL of Media Nation.

One final thought. Miller is well within his rights to demand that the city turn off the sign in protest of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavéz’s denunciation of President Bush. But Boston City Councilor Jerry McDermott, as an elected official, has different responsibilities.

Both Miller and McDermott are advocating government censorship, in direct violation of the First Amendment. Miller, as a talk-show host, is exercising his right of free speech. McDermott, as a representative of the government, is not — he wants to use his power to silence someone whose speech he disagrees with.

And let’s not even get into the absurdity of trying to punish Chavéz by going after Citgo simply because the corporation is owned by the Venezuelan state oil company.

Anyway — enough.

This Google search shows that I’m late to the scene, but I can’t resist. If you haven’t yet discovered the Museum of Bad Album Covers, get thee hence. Warning: This classic example notwithstanding, many of the entries are not particularly workplace-friendly.

Media Nation was intrigued by state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson’s claim in today’s Boston Globe that, when she challenged and beat incumbent Bill Owens in 1992, she “never mentioned his name.”

Criticizing her apparently unsuccessful Democratic primary opponent, Sonia Chang-Díaz, for running a supposedly negative campaign, Wilkerson asserted that, by contrast, she stayed above the fray when she was first elected to the Senate 14 years ago. “I focused on what I could do for the district,” Wilkerson said.

Well. As a public service, we offer a few clips from the Globe that were published during the the 1992 race. See if you think Wilkerson’s telling it straight.

From a July 27 story:

The setting, a wine and cheese soiree at a South End garden apartment, was genteel. But Dianne Wilkerson easily shattered the refined calm with a broadside launched at Democrat Bill Owens, her principal foe in a bitter fight for the 2d Suffolk District State Senate seat.

“In four years’ time there hasn’t been one major piece of legislation that has benefited this district — not one!” Wilkerson said.

From a July 31 account of a Wilkerson-Owens debate:

“You can’t take credit for the things that work and take no responsibility for the things that don’t work,” Wilkerson said, in one of several fiery attacks on Owens. “If that’s what you get when you have a good relationship then give me a chance because I couldn’t do any worse.”

From Aug. 29:

“From 1988 to 1992 several thousand people in the 2d Suffolk District lost their homes while he was sitting up there in the State House,” Wilkerson said. “He can’t explain why he called homeowners stupid and slammed the phone down on them. Those are the people I represent.”

From a Sept. 1 account of yet another debate:

Wilkerson said Owens had engaged in a pattern of attempting to block legislation that would have helped the district.

“How could it possibly be that a history of killing every piece of legislation for the neighborhood — whether it is the Boston City Hospital, Parcel 18, the Franklin Park Zoo, or Dudley Station — is in our interest?” asked Wilkerson.

Wilkerson also accused Owens of hurting poor people by scuttling a recent fair housing pact by trying to push his own legislation. “We will have no fair housing legislation and, for that, we can thank our senator,” she said.

From Sept. 7:

The fight between state Sen. Bill Owens and challenger Dianne Wilkerson entered a bitter new phase yesterday when Wilkerson’s campaign asserted that Owens and his supporters “could well be involved” in “a campaign of intimidation, harassment, distortion, destruction and violence.” Owens immediately denied having any connection to the incidents.

In an interview, Wilkerson stopped short of explicitly blaming Owens for recent incidents she said were aimed at her campaign, including the vandalizing of her car, threatening phone calls and even the robbery at gunpoint of a Wilkerson campaign worker.

But she said, “There’s just been too many in a short period of time for me to write them off as coincidental.” She added “some people” may think “this is part of a campaign process.”

From a Sept. 13 story on the city’s problems with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development:

Dianne Wilkerson, the NAACP chapter’s vice president, blamed Owens yesterday for twice blocking legislation to allow the city to continue investigating housing discrimination cases. “This is a sad day for the city and we have Bill Owens to thank for it,” she said.

Wilkerson, a lawyer who helped negotiate the settlement, is running against Owens in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in large measure because of the stand he took against the bill, she said. “The sad thing about all this is that the people he claims to represent — people or color, poor people, gays and lesbians — are the ones who are going to be hurt the most,” she said.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like negative campaigning. And with the exception of the Sept. 7 story, Wilkerson’s complaints at least involved issues. But the truth is that Wilkerson can go on the attack as well as the next politician.

Snow on the summit of Mount Washington. Ugh.

On WRKO Radio (AM 680) this morning, Scott Allen Miller is raising a ruckus because “taxpayers” several years ago refurbished the landmark Citgo sign in Kenmore Square. Citgo, you see, is owned by the Venezuelan government, and Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, went off on President Bush yesterday.

Trouble is, Miller was wrong — in fact, Citgo refurbished the sign at its own expense, replacing the tubes with LEDs. Miller suggested that Mayor Tom Menino show the “courage” to turn off the sign. But as the Boston Globe’s Megan Tench reported in March 2005, it was actually Citgo, 20 years earlier, that wanted to turn it off, only to be told that the city wouldn’t stand for it.

Tench’s story does not say how much Citgo spent. But an op-ed piece published in the Globe the same day by U.S. Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., said it cost the company $1.5 million.

You can think what you want about Chávez’s outburst, Delahunt’s cozy relations with the Venezuelan government or whether Menino should turn off the sign. But the truth is that the refurbished sign was a gift from Venezuela to the people of Boston.

Update: Miller is challenging my account. I’ve asked for documentation. Stay tuned.

Brian Mooney has a good analysis in today’s Boston Globe on how Kerry Healey will attempt to exploit Deval Patrick’s perceived weaknesses as a tax-and-spend liberal who’s soft on crime and illegal immigration.

But is perception reality? First of all, some Media Nation readers may be surprised to learn where I’m coming from. Yes, I’m a liberal, but I am genuinely undecided about whom to vote for in November. And I’ve voted for more than my share of Republican gubernatorial candidates over the years. So what you’re about to read is hardly a knee-jerk defense of Patrick:

• Is Patrick a tax-and-spend liberal? That’s not my impression. But the notion that he and the Democratic-controlled Legislature might go on a spending spree and then have to find a way to pay for it is not unreasonable. Over and over, Patrick has said that the income tax is the wrong tax to cut because the property tax is the more onerous. Fine. Let’s see him make a specific proposal for a program that would couple increased state aid with mandatory, across-the-board property-tax reductions.
• Is Patrick soft on illegal immigration? I suppose he is. But are his two most talked-about proposals — driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and in-state college tuition rates for such immigrants who’ve gone to high school here — unreasonable? It doesn’t seem so to me. Illegal immigrants are working and driving. Our roads will be safer if we require them to get licenses. As for in-state tuition, it’s a matter of economic common sense that we want young people who live here to acquire the skills they need to keep the state prosperous. Get real: No one is going to send them back to their home countries.
• Is Patrick soft on crime? I know of nothing to suggest that this is even remotely true. If Healey wants to pull that old canard out of the Republican playbook, good luck to her. Patrick just needs to be ready.

I think Patrick is genuinely vulnerable on taxes. For many voters, electing a Republican governor to balance the Democratic everything else is a matter of common sense, even if, as the Globe’s Scot Lehigh argues, that impulse is fading.

But I don’t see why Patrick should have any problem explaining his stands on crime and illegal immigration.

Update: Tomorrow’s Boston Phoenix will offer some sound editorial advice to Patrick: “[U]sing the bully pulpit of your candidacy to educate the public won’t be enough to silence the distortions and disinformation Healey will propagate. You need to make it clear that you won’t raise taxes. You need to take the pledge.”

Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr tries to slip a fast one by his readers today. In the midst of a sneering screed denouncing Deval Patrick supporters as gay, bicycle-riding (gasp!) tax-hikers, Carr goes after Patrick for supporting in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. Carr “explains”:

And by the way, despite what you’ve read, the tuition bill Deval backs says nothing about the “children” of illegal aliens. It only says that any illegal who spent three years in a Massachusetts high school “or the equivalent thereof” is eligible for in-state tuition.

In other words, anyone in the world can get in-state tuition, as long as they’re in the U.S. illegally.

How misleading is this? If a child of illegal immigrants is born in the United States, then he is automatically a citizen, and in need of no help from Patrick or anyone else. If a child of illegal immigrants is born aboard, then that child is herself an illegal immigrant and is thus the proper focus of Patrick’s efforts.

Logically, if you tried to write a piece of legislation aimed solely at the children of illegal immigrants, you couldn’t do it. Helping such immigrants who’ve gone to high school in Massachusetts is the closest you can come, and that’s what Patrick proposes to do.

Not sure whether I’ll have any brilliant observations about yesterday’s primary election or the coverage thereof. (Not that that’s ever stopped me.) But the strangest sight by far last night was Chris Gabrieli standing about six feet to the left of Deval Patrick during Patrick’s victory speech. It was classy of Gabrieli to show up (Patrick graciously gave Tom Reilly a pass), but couldn’t someone have found him a place to sit? There he was, towering over everyone, bathed in light, awkwardly smiling and clapping as though he were submitting to some sort of hazing ritual. Weird.

I don’t want to violate AP’s copyright, so click here to see for yourself.

Like a crank you can’t shake off at the bar, I’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen that the Boston Globe will be locally owned within 10 years — maybe much sooner.

Well, now. On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published a commentary (sub. req.) urging the New York Times Co. to sell the Globe, arguing that large regional metros are in an especially bad position in the new media environment. (You didn’t know that the Journal had a Saturday edition, did you?) The commentary, by Lauren Silva and Rob Cox, is on the Breaking Views site as well (via Romenesko), so by all means have a look. Silva and Cox write:

The Boston newspaper occupies the industry’s muddled middle — a place where classified ads are moving to online upstarts like Craigslist and Google. Circulation is sliding. Big advertisers are consolidating and migrating to national media like the Times and younger readers are looking to their PCs or Blackberries for their news…. This doesn’t mean the Globe couldn’t find a loving home. The piecemeal sale of Knight-Ridder showed there are plenty of rich local worthies willing to own their local rag.

That last sentence, of course, is a reference to papers like the Philadelphia Inquirer, which recently was scooped up by local investors after Knight Ridder sold out to McClatchy.

It seems inevitable that papers such as the Globe will be locally owned, as Wall Street begins to realize that they can no longer be the profit machines of yore. So why not get a head start?

You know what they say: “Dog bites man” isn’t news. “Man bites dog” is news.

And “woman bites dog” is definitely news. I can’t provide a direct link, but it’s listed as the “Most Popular” video on CNN.com right now. (Thanks to Belle Adler.)