BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004
MENINO SLAMS KERRY. Oh, my.
Boston mayor Tom Menino is going public with his anger at Senator
John Kerry. Kerry's been indecisive, to say the least, in trying to
balance his desire not to offend the Boston Police Patrolmen's
Association and his need to maintain a good relationship with Menino
heading into the Democratic National Convention.
Today's Boston Herald
lead
story, by David Guarino and
Noelle Straub, quotes Menino as calling Kerry's campaign
"small-minded" and "incompetent." Menino, understandably, is
exercised over Kerry's decision not to speak at a gathering of the US
Conference of Mayors, hosted by Menino, rather than cross the police
union's picket-line-that-isn't-really-a-picket-line. The mayor's also pissed at Kerry-camp leaks alleging that Menino hung up on Kerry sometime Sunday. Menino told the
Herald:
Maybe they should use some
of their energies to get their message across to the American
people instead of trying to destroy the integrity of someone who
is on their team, to try to discredit someone on their team. They
have better things to do.
The only truly surprising thing is
that Menino decided to unload even though media sentiment has been
going his way, with most commentators castigating Kerry for refusing
to stand up to a union whose aggressive tactics have been widely
criticized.
In today's Boston Globe, for
instance, Glen Johnson reports
that Kerry's critics - and some supporters - think the senator's
machinations over the mayors' conference were "protracted, messy, and
guided by self-interest."
Globe columnist Scot Lehigh
quotes
Menino as saying that this could have been a "Sister Souljah" moment
for Kerry - that is, an opportunity to stand up to an important
Democratic constituency that's out of line, as Bill Clinton did in
1992 in speaking out against a rap singer who'd talked about killing
white people.
With things going Menino's way, he
could have just sat back and enjoyed it, and allowed Kerry to stew in
a mess of his own making. But that's not how the mayor does things.
He had to get it off his chest even though most people already agree
with him.
posted at 9:25 AM |
2 comments
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2 Comments:
Considering all the heat the Mayor is taking over the DNC, it is not particularly strange that he would broadside Kerry over the snub. Menino is turning the city upside down for Kerry's sake and Kerry can't even be bothered to cross a picket line to do a little dog-and-pony for the assembled mayors, that is, Menino's guests?
I'm not wildly enthusiastic about our Mayor, but he's a decent, competent, and unpretentious man who has, by and large, served the citizens of Boston well, even very well.
Kerry, on the other hand, is a chump. A chump.
"Globe columnist Scot Lehigh quotes Menino as saying that this could have been a "Sister Souljah" moment for Kerry - that is, an opportunity to stand up to an important Democratic constituency that's out of line, as Bill Clinton did in 1992 in speaking out against a rap singer who'd talked about killing white people."
So rap artists that talk about killing white people rank as an important Democratic constituency?
At what point do media whores quit referring to the non-controversial stand Clinton took against violent rap? It was meaningless, but easy to use as a metaphor, which describes 99% of political coverage in the U.S.A.
You need to take your game up a notch, Dan. Kerry owes his skin to the Firemen unions. He isn't going to cross them, no matter how much some right wing hacks would love it.
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
