Kevin Cullen

Kevin Cullen buried the lead on Blue Cross Blue Shield

adamg — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 15:07:18 +0000

Yeah, how dare Deval Patrick not excoriate Blue Cross Blue Shield for the $28 million it's paid out to its last two departing CEOs.

But I really wanted to hear more about the guy in Weymouth Cullen gets to at the very end of his column, who had to lend his daughter $2,000 to pay for the surgery on his granddaughter that the giant insurer wouldn't pay. It's an interesting followup to the Herald's report about the guy whose insurance Blue Cross threatened to cut off because his premium payment was 10 cents short. It's stories like those that are going to get the Attorney General (who, unlike the governor, actually oversees charities and non-profits) to maybe do some investigatin'.

It's summertime and the livin' is easy on Morrissey Boulevard

adamg — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:57:26 +0000

So last summer, Kevin Cullen spent his summer vacation in Delaware. And now we know he spent his summer vacation this year in New Jersey. Maybe next summer, if the Globe still offers employees vacations, it can just leave his space blank the day after his break, so readers can write down their own thoughts.

The ties that bind in Massachusetts tend to be green

adamg — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:02:41 +0000

Kevin Cullen does a nice job explaining how a company that paid a $50-million fine for supplying substandard concrete for the Big Dig is now getting state road contracts again.

I was going to say something about Kevin Cullen's column today

adamg — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:12:21 +0000

But Michael Gee says it a lot better.

Cullen: NYT Co. as loan shark

neilv — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:39:32 +0000

Globe columnist Cullen likens relationship between Globe and NYT Co. to that between debtor and loan shark. Overall, it reads like a resigned realist, laying it out.

This installment of the loansharking metaphor is relatively free of violence, but tune in for the next exciting episode.

If Kevin Cullen wrote the tax code

adamg — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:57:23 +0000

People wouldn't have to pay taxes if they're lovable scamps. It's right up there with his let Townies kill a Vermonter before they die plan.

Where's the video the FBI released on Chuck Turner?

adamg — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:20:24 +0000

Kevin Cullen sticks up for Chuck Turner today, decrying the court order that prevents him from publicly discussing any pre-trial evidence the feds hand over to his lawyers.

Three things:

Is it a bit odd that Cullen is writing about the court order when the Globe itself has yet to report on it? That might explain why he doesn't discuss the part of the order in which the judge slaps around the U.S. Attorney's office for its prosecution of the case to date.

Second, the Caped Columnist really should find his own voice instead of imitating Howie Carr and making up monickers for the people he writes about ("Comrade Turner," how droll).

Third, Tovarisch Cullen places great emphasis on video of Turner allegedly accepting a bribe:

Anybody who hasn't seen that video, or read or heard talk about it, is either dead, deaf, or blind, and in any case is so insulated from everyday life as to preclude them from being qualified to sit in judgment of a parking violation, much less a man's liberty.

Last I checked, I still have a pulse; I can hear you, my loyal reader, whining about me bashing Cullen yet again; and I can see Cullen's lead, something about Kate Winslet, perfectly fine. And yet, I've never seen that video!

Where is it? I've certainly seen the screen capture (or as Clever Kev might call it, "the photo") the feds released, purportedly from a video. But actual movin' pictures of Chuck Turner being handed a wad of bills? Anybody have a URL for that?

Globe Metro columnists set their sights low

adamg — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 13:02:19 +0000

Yesterday, Kevin Cullen declared Boston the Worst City in the World because we haven't seen fit to temporarily rename a street after some rock band that played here once. Hey, Kevin, I'm personally outraged there's no plaque commemorating the time the seminal rock band the B-52s played the Orpheum back in the early 1980s, whom can I call, and can I count on your support?

Today, Adrian Walker does one of his patented rewrite jobs and explains that a) There's a big hole in the middle of Downtown Crossing, b) Tom Menino refused to walk by it the other day and c) The city's in a heap of financial trouble. Absolutely none of which we'd read in any Globe stories over the past week, right?

The yin and yang of metro columnists

adamg — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:01:47 +0000

Yesterday, Yvonne Abraham brought us to tears with her column about the loving couple married for 62 years who died within hours of each other.

Today, Kevin Cullen tries to get us mad at Vermont because a thug from Charlestown out for some country air or something up there went after a guy with an ax and wound up getting himself killed.

What will tomorrow bring? No doubt Adrian Walker will have us gripping the edges of our seats with his thoughts on Bob DeLeo.

Why the Globe ran that op-ed piece by a murdering dictator

adamg — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 16:57:37 +0000

As Adam Reilly notes, Kevin Cullen can write a great column when he wants to. Today, Cullen dissects America's newest op-ed sensation, Libyan Thug in Chief Muammar Qaddafi, whose musings on Palestine the New York Times ran today, a few weeks after the Globe ran his plea for the U.S. to leave Russia alone.

Cullen does this through the lens of a local resident whose brother Qaddaffi has kept locked up for years for daring to call for free speech in Libya. Along the way, Cullen asked Globe editors why they ran that piece, for which a Washington, D.C. public-relations firm was paid (no doubt quite nicely) to pitch:

... A Globe editor said that after receiving the pitch from the PR firm, the paper called the Libyan embassy in Washington to confirm Khadafy wrote the piece. Satisfied with its authenticity, and with editors believing it was "well reasoned," the paper ran it. ...

Kevin Cullen brings out his inner Howie Carr

adamg — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:29:05 +0000

South Shore Pragmatist read Kevin Cullen's column today, at first wondered when the Globe hired Howie Carr, then realized it was just Cullen doing a little play acting, right down to the made-up nicknames for sleazy solons, at least until Cullen realized he still works for the Globe and actually had to write something original, which he finally got to in the bottom third of the column.

Maybe Kevin Cullen should stick to writing about mobsters

adamg — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:58:06 +0000

Aaron Weber explains why Cullen's recent Ungrateful Sallie Mae column does a good job at pulling at the heart strings (family of a dead Marine having trouble getting the company to forgive $100,000 in student loans he took out), but does a terrible job explaining why the family might still owe the money. And that, Weber (who works in the loan field) concludes, might be because Cullen couldn't be bothered to ask basic questions:

... Is it budget cutbacks that prevent Kevin Cullen from doing any actual leg-work on his articles? Because really, there's nothing to this piece except that it sucks to die and it sucks to borrow money and not be able to repay it, and that's not actually news.

Globe metro columnists finally have a good week

adamg — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:06:05 +0000

They must've been eating their columnist Wheaties, because last week we didn't have a single column about state fairs in other parts of the country or boring thumbsuckers called in at the last moment. They actually worked it. Yay, Globe metro columnists!

Anything interesting happening in Boston, Kevin?

adamg — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:34:40 +0000

Guess not.

Kevin Cullen: My readers are stupider than I am

adamg — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 13:10:45 +0000

Something to be proud of, one supposes.