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Plutocratic columnist goes after working stiff
By adamg on Tue, 06/16/2009 - 9:56am
A columnist who pulls down almost seven figures a year, lives in a Wellesley manse and went to Deerfield Academy takes some cheap shots today at some guy who went to Boston State, whose father was a Boston cop and whose grandmother was an early union organizer.
Dan Kennedy fills in the background on Howie Carr's hatchet job on Globe Newspaper Guild president Dan Totten.
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Comments
Howie Carr? A bloviating
Howie Carr? A bloviating asshole? REALLY?
I can't wait for the Herald to fold. Then radio will die and we'll be rid of this dolt for good.
Howie's main problem is that it's too easy for him
You gotta admit, the gratuitous snark at Totten aside, it was
a pretty funny column. I mean, this is the outfit that gives
us regular doses of Wealth Beat Writer Sarah Schweitzer. And
that letter that they sent to Pinch read like it was composed
by a bunch of Yale legacies that had been denied entry
to Skull and Bones.
Most of the "reporting" I read in the Globe sounds like it's
coming from blow-ins who couldn't tell you the difference
between Monument Square and Maverick Square.
spirited jousting vs. mean-spirited thuggishness
In any city where you've got daily newspapers competing, there's going to be some punchy back-and-forth between columnists.
But Howie the Hater is showing that he's the kinda guy who wants to eliminate his perceived enemies. In that sense, he's no better than many of the hacks and thugs he so often writes about. And for him to come at it with this faux sense of working class populism and victimization is just ludicrous.
The guys in that negotiating room are sweating blood and jobs right now. It's about livelihoods and the survival of a daily newspaper. The Globe has many faults, but the city would be diminished without it, as it would be if the Herald folded.
What level of playful, gentle competition would suit you?
Not to defend Howie Carr, but whining about how he shouldn't go for the jugular but should instead just punch the Globe in the shoulder is missing the point. As pointed out by Dan Kennedy and others, when the Herald was on the brink some years ago, hardly a tear was shed at the Globe. Whether or not the Globe helped push the Herald to that point is debatable, but expecting the Herald to help out a rival at this point in the game is pretty naive.
Also, re: Howie's working-class populism and victimization, you clearly don't know your history here: Before the Globe canned him in 1998 or so, Mike Barnicle had a long and profitable stint in the working-class-victim pulpit, which got to be pretty galling for many people, given that he wrote for the Globe-- which had become a largely suburban-focussed paper by the time Barnicle became a star-- and lived in Lincoln or somewhere like that.
So Barnicle was a faker, too
Bit of a strawman in this discussion given that Barnicle hasn't written for the Globe in ages.
Clearly you're not Irish...
...as 11 years is a blink of an eye when it comes to holding grudges.
You still owe me a quarter from back in '84, by the way.
Ah, well, then, carry on!
Since the Globe still has a designated Irish Guy columnist, sure, makes sense.
About that quarter, now that I've gotten my settlement from the online porn scum, I guess I can finally pay you.
A faker? As commenter George
A faker? As commenter George said:
Plutocrat? The premise of Kennedy's blog post is ridiculous. Howie mentioned the guy once in passing, so Dan goes straight to a bizarre class-based victim card. And of course, Dan Kennedy knows Howie's background.
There are two differences between Howie Carr and Dan Kennedy. First, Howie is entertaining, rather than painfully earnest. Second, the direction of the shooting. Dan Kennedy didn't care about pension reform until it got in the way of raising taxes. Howie Carr has made a career on exposing pension high-jinx.
Howie Carr has done more to expose corruption in the state of Massachusetts in the last generation than the next ten journalists combined. In order to do a story on cops parking illegally in front of Boston Police Headquarters, the Globe had to use a former employeeNortheastern instructor and his college students to do the work. When we had a Senate President/University system President who was protecting his serial killer brother, Howie Carr took him on to the point of death threats. The Globe? .
Of course, if you don't like his politics, then all of that never really happened. Right?
Brighton Billy misconstrues
Life is too short to respond to every cheap shot artist, but ya gotta love posts like Brighton Billy's. Just feedin' around the bottom, waiting for someone to say something that he can twist around, and then firing a few insults based on the words & intent he's invented.
My criticizing Howie's anti-Globe rants is far from "expecting the Herald to help out a rival," but this gives BB a chance to label me as "pretty naive."
As for Barnicle, the original post to which I responded wasn't about Barnicle, yet according to BB I "clearly don't know" my Boston history because I didn't mention Barnicle. (For the record, I'm no fan of Barnicle. In fact, Howie Carr has done a lot more to expose corruption in Mass politics, and he deserves credit for that.)
Sheesh...
And I guess I can always count on you to get snippy, David
If that _is_ your real name.
I actually wasn't insulting you, but if you're going to get riled up every time someone points out a gap in your knowledge and/or logic, I can live with you taking offense. You seem to take offense easily; God knows hows you survive in this town... anyway, I didn't "twist around" any of your words; I didn't need to. My points were:
1. The Globe, at best, would've shed no tears if the Herald had died, as has seemed more than possible on at least two occasions in recent years. At worst, there are more than a few reasonably sane and credible people who feel that the Globe actively tried to help bring this about. Do I believe that to be the case? What _I_ believe isn't the point-- I'm just pointing that there are people who are smarter than me-- and you-- who do.
2. In questioning Howie Carr's working-class cred, in the context of Howie speaking as the voice of the Herald (which, arguably, he does) without recognizing that the Globe does the same thing, or at least used to do the same thing, is to expose the fact that you don't know the battlefield here. This is business, _and_ it's personal, and to call for Carr to pull his punches so that Boston can remain a two-newspaper town is, in fact, painfully naive. I did not twist your words here-- you wrote that Carr's column put people's livelihoods and the survival of the newspaper in danger, and that, somehow, the column was helping to put people out of work. Which it is not: Decline in the industry and bad management is.
But for your sake, let's leave aside reality for a moment and ponder this one: If, somehow, the Globe's survival depended on Howie Carr's pulling his punches-- if that was one and only factor-- would you have him do it? Would you tell someone what to write, and not write, in the interests of preserving the Globe? In short, would you muzzle the free speech of someone you don't agree with in favor of someone you do? Because that's what you're calling for here.
Oy...
...and double oy.