Friday, March 10, 2006
'The books have to be bad news': It might be easy to dismiss all the attention surrounding the new Whitey books by Kevin and Howie as nothing more than hucksterism. But there is a very serious side to all of this. Take William Weld, who's now running for governor of New York. From an AP story yesterday in Newsday:
" 'The books have to be bad news,' said Maurice Carroll of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. 'I don't think (Weld) is a crook or anything like that, that's silly.
"He said the coverage shouldn't create 'significant trouble ... But it could remind people he's from Massachusetts, who might say, `Why doesn't he go back to Massachusetts?'
"Carroll, a veteran New York political observer, said Massachusetts politics is complex with its occasional intermingling of characters from the political and crime worlds.
"That was the Boston backdrop for one of Weld's novels, 'Mackerel by Moonlight.' It's a 1998 thriller about a federal prosecutor in New York with helpful crime world allies who moves to Boston to run for office."
Ha, ha, ha. 'Occasional intermingling of characters from the political and crime worlds.' Get it? That old Bill Weld. Very clever, isn't he? Bottom line: Weld should have known what was going on when he was U.S. Attorney and later governor, just as surely as he should have known about what was happening at Decker College when he was running that diploma factory. ...
As for Howie, go ahead. Make fun of him. He's selling a book. It's hucksterism. Sure. But when '60 Minutes,' Weld and others in the MSM were yucking it up last decade over Billy's and Whitey's antics, Howie and guys like Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill were digging away. As Chris Lydon once put it:
"Howie is the only writer in Boston with the tenacity to learn the whole Bulger story, and the balls to tell it--not only to relate it in infinite detail (look for Howie's Whitey Watch here) but to laugh in the Bulgers' faces with jokes about The Caucasian, The Corrupt Midget and the Crime Family. These were jokes that he had to know could have cost him his life. The Bulgers had jokes, too, like the word passed from Whitey's liquor store in South Boston that they had a dumpster out back with Howie Carr's name on it."
I think Howie has earned the right to mock Kevin Weeks on the front page. ... But the best part of all of this? Bill Weld isn't laughing anymore. ... BTW: I'm a colleague of Howie at the Herald.
Update -- Sorry. Forgot to link to Howie's front-page blurbed column. It's a classic. He mocks Kevin, dismisses Week's James Bond assassination tale, pokes fun at '60 Minutes,' and shamelessly hawks his book ("available in fine book stores everywhere."). ...
" 'The books have to be bad news,' said Maurice Carroll of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. 'I don't think (Weld) is a crook or anything like that, that's silly.
"He said the coverage shouldn't create 'significant trouble ... But it could remind people he's from Massachusetts, who might say, `Why doesn't he go back to Massachusetts?'
"Carroll, a veteran New York political observer, said Massachusetts politics is complex with its occasional intermingling of characters from the political and crime worlds.
"That was the Boston backdrop for one of Weld's novels, 'Mackerel by Moonlight.' It's a 1998 thriller about a federal prosecutor in New York with helpful crime world allies who moves to Boston to run for office."
Ha, ha, ha. 'Occasional intermingling of characters from the political and crime worlds.' Get it? That old Bill Weld. Very clever, isn't he? Bottom line: Weld should have known what was going on when he was U.S. Attorney and later governor, just as surely as he should have known about what was happening at Decker College when he was running that diploma factory. ...
As for Howie, go ahead. Make fun of him. He's selling a book. It's hucksterism. Sure. But when '60 Minutes,' Weld and others in the MSM were yucking it up last decade over Billy's and Whitey's antics, Howie and guys like Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill were digging away. As Chris Lydon once put it:
"Howie is the only writer in Boston with the tenacity to learn the whole Bulger story, and the balls to tell it--not only to relate it in infinite detail (look for Howie's Whitey Watch here) but to laugh in the Bulgers' faces with jokes about The Caucasian, The Corrupt Midget and the Crime Family. These were jokes that he had to know could have cost him his life. The Bulgers had jokes, too, like the word passed from Whitey's liquor store in South Boston that they had a dumpster out back with Howie Carr's name on it."
I think Howie has earned the right to mock Kevin Weeks on the front page. ... But the best part of all of this? Bill Weld isn't laughing anymore. ... BTW: I'm a colleague of Howie at the Herald.
Update -- Sorry. Forgot to link to Howie's front-page blurbed column. It's a classic. He mocks Kevin, dismisses Week's James Bond assassination tale, pokes fun at '60 Minutes,' and shamelessly hawks his book ("available in fine book stores everywhere."). ...
