BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
BATTLE OF THE SNAKES. In
case you missed it, there has been some excellent eye-boinking going
on in the pages of the Boston Herald between columnists Howie
Carr and Mike Barnicle. I would say there's tension in the newsroom,
except that both specialize in making themselves as scarce as
possible. (Neither one is a full-time staffer.)
On April 29, Barnicle
wrote
(sub. req.) his first recognizably Barnicle-like column since his
return to the Boston newspaper wars earlier this year. That is, he
penned a shameless suck-up piece about House Speaker Tom Finneran,
currently under
investigation for his
testimony in a court case over redistricting, testimony that may have
been just a tad disingenuous.
My favorite Barnicle line: "When he
[Finneran] arrived in the Legislature, the witch at the
public stake was Kevin Harrington, the Senate president who got
hounded out over a signature on a campaign check." Poor Kevin
Harrington! As with a lot of what Barnicle writes, this is
technically true, but it ignores the fact that a signature on a
campaign check can be a serious matter depending on whose signature
you're talking about, and whether the person to whom it belongs has
any recollection of ever having written it on said check. On course,
a lot of what Barnicle has written over the years isn't true,
technically or otherwise.
For good measure, Barnicle compared
Finneran to Ted Williams, Eric Clapton, and Michelangelo. Hand me the
barf bag.
Carr, who's been referring to
himself on his WRKO Radio (AM 680) show as the Herald's
"non-fiction columnist" since the Barnicle comeback, lashed
back (sub. req.) yesterday
with a tough column on the friends of "Tommy Taxes" - the lobbyists,
the ex-pols, and others who have showered Finneran with so many
campaign contributions that he had nearly $500,000 in the till at the
end of last year.
Carr also drops this
bomblet:
It's astounding that with
friends like these, Tommy Taxes could be teetering on the edge of
an indictment. He's even had press vermin penning fiction about
what a swell guy he is, and guess what - the pipe artist's wife
maxed out to Tommy Taxes with a $500 contribution. Odd that
the hack forgot to mention his wife's largesse in his
piece.
That, of course, is a reference to
Barnicle's wife, Anne Finucane, an executive vice-president at
FleetBoston Financial and perhaps the most powerful woman in
town.
Now, I don't want to go overboard
in praise of the sneering Carr. To say that Finneran is "on the edge
of an indictment" is a bit like saying that George W. Bush is on the
edge of impeachment. That is, some of us might wish it to be true,
but there is no evidence for it.
But if this is to be a battle of
the snakes, my snake is Howie. Scales down.
TODAY'S TORTURE HIGHLIGHTS.
I can't find more than a fragmentary mention this morning of an
allegation that an American soldier put a harness on a 70-year-old
Iraqi woman and rode her like a donkey. Andrew Miga includes
a reference in his Boston Herald roundup. This, obviously,
bears watching.
The Washington Post has
obtained more
photos from Abu Ghraib.
New York Times columnist
Thomas
Friedman, a liberal
supporter of the war in Iraq, calls for Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld to resign.
NEW IN THIS WEEK'S
PHOENIX. Stuck
in neutral: Democrats fret
as John Kerry's presidential campaign falters in the face of George
W. Bush's $50 million assault.
posted at 9:13 AM |
|
link
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
