Any Given Sunday Edition

August 5, 2012

From our Compare and Contrast in Clear Idiomatic English desk

Sunday Boston Herald, Page One:

 

Boston Sunday Globe, Page One:

 

(Both via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages.)

Here’s the thing: There is virtually nothing of real import in the Herald today.  That’s not to say human-interest and crime stories don’t have their place, or that the Herald never runs consequential stories. Just not today.

The Globe, by contrast, has two major takeouts front page above the fold. The RFK papers story is entirely maddening (representative sample:  “‘Ethel has been given control of documents that she couldn’t even legally read because she didn’t have a security clearance,’ said a former National Archives official who had the authority to handle top secret information regarding the RFK papers.”)

The Scott Brown biopiece is a major headscratcher, making you wonder how adept Brown is at separating myth from memory, and casting some light on the more braggadocious statements he’s made lately (Papaya King, anyone?).

And that’s not even addressing the rest of the Globe’s content, which makes the contrast with the Herald even starker.

Is the hardreading staff essentially comparing Apples and PCs here? Maybe. But it’s good every once in a while to take a step back and realize what we have in this two-daily town.

 

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Kiss-fil-A Edition

August 4, 2012

Yesterday was “Same-Sex Kiss Day” at your local Chick-fil-A (which currently holds the franchise on the gay marriage rumpus), and coverage in the Boston dailies ran counter to form.

The Boston Globe played it, er, straight:

Another protest for Chick-fil-A

Supporters of gay rights hold kiss-in at mall

BURLINGTON — More than a dozen gay rights supporters joined the national debate surrounding Chick-fil-A on Friday, holding a kiss-in at the restaurant in Burlington Mall to protest the fast-food chain’s donations to antigay groups.

About 15 men and women filed into the mall’s food court shortly before 8 p.m. and stood outside Chick-fil-A, kissing each other, taking pictures, and chanting. The Massachusetts effort, organized by Join the Impact MA and GetEQUAL MA, was part of a national kiss-in campaign on Friday galvanized around the Chick-fil-A controversy.

“I think the greater point is to send a message to the CEOs of companies and politicians that it’s not OK to send money to fight against our rights,” said Keegan O’Brien, 23, of Dorchester. O’Brien, a University of Massachusetts Boston student, led parts of the protest at the mall Friday night.

And etc.

Interestingly, there was no photo with the Globe story – not in print, not on the web.

But the Herald came through with flying colors, photos included:

Protesters to Chick-fil-A: Read our lips

The Burlington Mall food court erupted in applause after about a dozen gay rights advocates descended on Chick-fil-A last night to lock lips for a national “Same-Sex Kiss Day,” a kiss-in to protest the millions of dollars they say the company has donated to anti-gay groups.

The protesters — who duct-taped signs to their T-shirts reading “Chick-fil-A funds hate groups” — were promptly escorted out by mall security. The activist smoochers marched out of the mall, handing out coupons for a “free side of bigotry” and chanting “Hey hey, ho ho! Homophobia has got to go!” as dozens of curious mall patrons followed behind snapping photos with their cellphones.

“When you are purchasing these chicken sandwiches, it’s going to these groups that promote hate against gays and lesbians,” said Sasha Kaufmann of GetEqual Massachusetts, who locked lips with fellow activist Kay Sweeney, 24, of Jamaica Plain for several minutes in front of the fast-food chain.

That’s the spirit, eh?

Herald readers, however, weren’t quite as affectionate.

 

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Tom Menino Good News/Bad News Edition

August 3, 2012

The Boston Herald wins today’s local news bakeoff with a Page One story about Tom Menino.

The good news? He might run for  another term.

The bad news? He might run for another term.

Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages:

(Oddly, the column by Joe Battenfeld not only doesn’t lead the Herald’s web site, it’s all but buried on the News & Opinion page, the caboose to a Menino/Chick-fil-A piece.)

Regardless, here’s the gist of it:

[C]lose Menino associates and other City Hall watchers say they believe the mayor will give it another go in 2013, despite a host of health problems. His fundraising reports suggest he is getting ready to run again.

The mayor has raised $225,315 in just the first seven months of the year, and has nearly $600,000 in the bank, dwarfing the fundraising of even statewide office holders who are girding to run for governor.

“All signs point to him running again,” said Hyde Park City Councilor Rob Consalvo, a close Menino ally. “The guy is working harder than ever.”

Yes, well, that’s part of the problem. Another run – likely unopposed since his challengers get not just beaten, but vaporized – would produce a knee-buckling sixth term for Menino’s, who’s successfully turned Boston into the political equivalent of Mayberry.

Except he’s not likable.

UPDATE: See the column’s Comments section for details.

 

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Elizabeth Warren’s China Sin-drome Edition

August 2, 2012

Earlier this week, U.S. Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren (D-Hardhat) released this TV commercial, which is getting heavy rotation of the local Olympics broadcast:

At the time, the spot received glancing mention in the Boston Globe, while  Garrett Quinn gave it a whack on boston.com:

In Elizabeth Warren’s new ad she trots out Tom Friedman’s favorite thing in the whole wide world: Chinese spending on infrastructure. Warren claims that we just don’t spend enough on infrastructure anymore and somehow that makes us inferior to them. The gushing over China by the likes of Warren and America’s just-do-something authoritarian of record, Friedman, is upsetting because it generally ignores the means of how they do things. People who love China tend to complain about the sausage making in our democratic system but they rarely criticize the bulldozing in the Chinese system.

Now along comes the Boston Herald editorial page, a little late to the party, but in high dudgeon to make up for it:

Warren’s China envy

Memo to Elizabeth Warren: How did China — one of the world’s most repressive regimes — get to be your role model? Explain.

The Democratic Senate candidate is airing a new TV ad in which she says, “We’ve got bridges and roads in need of repair and thousands of people in need of work. Why aren’t we rebuilding America? Our competitors are putting people to work, building a future. China invests 9 percent of its GDP in infrastructure. America? We’re at just 2.4 percent. We can do better.”

Well, of course, we could, but see here there’s this little thing called the rule of law, and the Constitution and all that other messy stuff that makes this nation the kind of place most of us would rather live in than China — potholes and all.

The editorial ends this way: “Warren’s ad also coincides with a new report that shows the federal deficit is higher today than at any time since the end of World War II and that for every second of 2011 the federal government spent $41,210 it didn’t have. Warren’s China envy notwithstanding, isn’t that enough?”

Rule of thumb: Never say we should emulate China, unless you’re talking about men’s gymnastics.

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Elizabeth Warren Saves Capitalism Edition

August 1, 2012

U.S. Senate hopeful Elizabeth Warren (D-Capital!) kicked off her Wall Street waltz with this quote in National Journal, according to Hillary Chabot in yesterday’s Boston Herald:

“Every now and again, I meet with someone who’s been very successful on Wall Street, who says, ‘I want to support your campaign because I believe you will save capitalism. I believe in capitalism, and I understand there have to be rules. And they have to be consistently enforced.’ ”

That earned Warren this front page photo in the feisty local tabloid:

It also generated this moonwalk by Warren shortly thereafter, as the Herald reported in a follow-up:

“I passed along a comment that was over the top, and it was silly for me to do so,” she told the Herald at a Somerville campaign stop.

Ya think?

Then again, ya think the Herald would leave it at that?

You should live so long. The Herald had not one, but two columns today (conveniently side-by-side) whacking Warren for the walkback, among other things.

First up, Joe Battenfeld:

Warren’s cop-out may represent a turning point in her campaign, because it’s the first time she’s actually disavowed something in such record speed.

But don’t expect Warren to go all silly on us. She is still claiming American Indian heritage, and that she created “much of the intellectual foundation” for Occupy. And she still claims she’s the sheriff who cleaned up Wall Street, despite what a few “over the top” executives may say.

Next up, Howie Carr:

How does Granny Warren do it? I mean, do you know how much time it must take, saving capitalism and simultaneously providing the “intellectual foundations” of Occupy Wall Street, which wanted to destroy capitalism?

Talk about keeping balls in the air. She’s both an Indian and “Okie to her toes.”

Do we detect a pattern emerging here? Or is the Herald just running out of dead horses to beat?

You can choose “Both of the Above” if you like.

P.S. The Boston Globe, not surprisingly, hasn’t had a word to say about this matter.

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Brian Maloney Middlesex Truck & Coach Edition

July 31, 2012

From our compare and contrast in clear idiomatic English desk

Joan Vennochi’s 7/22 Boston Globe op-ed:

A business built on hard work – and government

Moments before a jeans-clad Mitt Romney strode into a garage bay at a Roxbury truck repair company, a campaign aide carefully wiped grit from a tool chest slated to share the spotlight with the candidate.

Too much reality spoils a good picture. Just as his campaign put a gloss on the tool chest, Romney put a gloss on the truth about Middlesex Truck & Coach.

“This is not the result of government,” he declared. “This is the result of people who take risk, who have dreams, who build for themselves and for their families.”

Yet owner Brian Maloney acknowledged that his business did receive some government help, via a low-interest loan given for new development and start-ups. “The only way I was able to come here, because I had no money, was with an industrial-revenue bond,” Maloney told Jon Keller of WBZ-TV.

Joe Battenfeld 7/30 Boston Herald column:

Liberals attack

The vile, hate-filled messages started showing up soon after Mitt Romney and the national press corps left Brian Maloney’s truck repair shop in Roxbury.

“It was incredible,” Maloney tells the Herald. “It was crude, abusive, mindless garbage.”

Maloney hadn’t committed a crime, but to some Democrats and liberals he had done something far more heinous: He had dared to criticize President Obama.

Two different worlds. That’s American politics – and news media – these days.

Get used to it.

 

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Boston Globe Child Pornography Edition

July 30, 2012

Sunday’s Boston Globe featured a front-page report by Jenifer B. McKim on the monumental effort by law-enforcement officials to identify and prosecute child pornographers, who far more often than not are child rapists as well.

Photo e-mailed from Mass. man led to vast global child pornography network

As soon as they saw the terrified boy’s photo three years ago, federal agents Peter Manning and Gregory Squire had the same thought: we have to save him. The blue-eyed child, about 18 months old, was naked from the waist down and clutching a stuffed rabbit for comfort. There was no doubt he had been sexually abused. But that doesn’t begin to describe his suffering.

“He looked like he had been crying for three days,” Squire recalled in a recent interview.

It’s not as if Manning and Squire hadn’t been faced with this kind of image — and worse — before. Assigned to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations office in Boston, their job is to track down child pornographers and victims. Over the years, they’ve become painfully familiar with some of the hundreds of thousands of child pornography pictures and videos online. Many depict almost unimaginably grotesque attacks on infants and toddlers and are traded like baseball cards by men using obscure Internet outposts to revel in their depravity.

But that single image of the distraught boy with the toy bunny became a crucial piece of evidence for Manning and Squire. It had been e-mailed to them by a Milford man who thought he was sharing it with fellow child-pornography voyeurs. His miscalculation sparked an investigation that would spread around the world, thus far leading to 42 arrests and the discovery of 140 children who were violated. The youngest was 19 days old.

What follows is a stomach-turning chronicle of the painstaking process of tracking and bringing to justice predators like Robert Diduca, the Milford man who inadvertently triggered the investigation that brought down so many of his fellow rapists.

Which, in turn, is but one more example of why the Boston Globe is an invaluable civic institution that deserves to be financially supported by the local populace.

That’s not to say the Boston Herald doesn’t do solid investigative work of its own.

Just not as often and not as in-depth as the Globe.

So, yes, it’s good to live in a two-daily town.

But it’s better to live in a major-league town with a major-league newspaper.

 

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Boston Globe Feasts on Chick-fil-A Edition

July 30, 2012

The hardreading staff has already noted the Boston Herald’s insatiable appetite for the Chick-fil-A kerfuffle over gay marriage.

Now it’s the Boston Globe’s turn to chow down.

For starters, the Sunday Globe Ideas section featured numerous Letters to the Editor about the poultry rumpus. Representative sample:

Mayor deserves thanks for standing up to incendiary views of food chain’s president

We disagree with the Boston Globe editorial board, which questioned Boston Mayor Thomas Menino’s reaction to Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy’s incendiary remarks about marriage equality (“Boston shouldn’t block chain because of president’s views,” July 25).

Chick-fil-A has donated millions of dollars to organizations such as Family Research Council and Exodus International, which work to promote discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and to create a hostile climate in which homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia can thrive. These hateful actions cause real harm to millions of individuals and families across this country, and are one of the reasons that LGBT people — even here in Massachusetts — face higher rates of youth suicide attempts, youth homelessness, HIV infection rates, stress, and poor health just because of who they are.

This is not just about policies; it’s about people. For using his public position to ensure and forcefully point out the obvious — that Boston strives to be a wonderfully welcoming and affirming city for LGBT people — Menino deserves our thanks. No doubt, his leadership has improved and even saved lives.

Meanwhile, Chick-fil-A’s Cathy is also learning a lesson in the obvious: It does not pay to discriminate.

Kara S. Suffredini

Executive director

MassEquality

Boston

Other letters here and here and here and here.

But wait . . . there’s more!

Tom Keane op-ed:

Rejecting Chick-fil-A is good power play for mayor

Boston Mayor Tom Menino wants to keep fast-food chain Chick-fil-A out of Boston because the company opposes same-sex marriage. Legally, Menino may in the wrong. Yet he is also completely in the right. The dustup has been portrayed as a First Amendment issue. In truth, it’s more about smart politics, mayoral power and — like it or not — Menino’s ability to make the city in his own vision.

Jennifer Graham op-ed:

Skip the boycotts; handle this with love

Apologies to Colonel Sanders, but no one makes a better chicken nugget than S. Truett Cathy, nor does a better job of marketing them.

Chick-fil-A’s billboards are three-dimensional fixtures in the South, with black-and-white cows perched on scaffolding and ladders, putting up signs that say, “Eat mor chikin.” The award-winning advertising campaign, launched in 1995, remains hilarious and fresh, and even has its own website, populated with interactive, spelling-challenged Holsteins. The chain’s “cow parachutists” television ad, which can be seen on YouTube, is classic Chick-fil-A humor.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and the gay and lesbian community could learn a few things from the cows. Most important is this: You catch more flies with honey-mustard sauce than you ever will with vinegar.

Okay: Everybody Chick-fil-Uh Chick-fil-A?

Let’s hope so.

 

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Herald Still Mittsing in Action Edition

July 28, 2012

The hardreading staff was sure that after publishing zero pieces yesterday about Mitt Romney’s English muffin’, the Boston Herald would bounce back today with lots of zingy coverage.

No such luck.

The only mention of Romney in today’s paper was this lede to a piece headlined, “ROMNEY ROCKS PREZ ON GROWTH”:

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, knocked on his heels by Olympic gaffes overseas, was back on the offensive yesterday, blasting President Obama in the wake of a mediocre GDP report.

Unless there are some serious Mittigating circumstances, the feisty local tabloid has really screwed the pooch on this story.

But they’ve broiled the Chick(-fil-A) pretty good, although they did cut back to two-plus pages and five pieces today (vs. four-plus and eight yesterday).

The latest offerings include a taste test (apparently not online, but Popeyes won), a preview of the National Same-Sex Kiss Day slated for next Friday, reader reactions (“Mayor’s a turkey), a Joe Fitzgerald column decrying the intolerance shown to Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy, and a dueling mayors dustup (“Bloomberg fillets Menino over stance”).

Question for the Herald editors: Had your fill of this story yet? We have.

UPDATE: Saturday’s Boston Globe added this to the chix mix:

In online chat, Brown is brought into Chick-fil-A fray

Senator Scott Brown, who has earned kind words from Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino despite their differing political parties, treaded carefully Friday when asked during a Boston.com chat about the mayor’s spat with Chick-fil-A over its opposition to gay marriage.

“I disagree with what the CEO from Chick-fil-A said. I was glad he spoke further and said that his company does not discriminate,” Brown wrote from his South Boston campaign headquarters.

Noting that Massachusetts has strong antidiscrimination laws that could prevent problems should the company decide to set up shop in Boston, Brown added, “If they move forward with the location proposal, I trust the mayor and other officials will ensure that those laws are honored.”

Very diplomatic, no?

Saturday’s Wall Street Journal also checked in:

First Amendment Trumps Critics of Chick-fil-A’s Views

CHICAGO—The First Amendment is coming to the rescue of a chicken-sandwich chain that has drawn the ire of politicians outraged by its president’s public opposition to gay marriage.

One by one, local officials here and in Boston have revised their comments regarding the entrepreneur’s stance against gay marriage, tiptoeing between their disapproval of remarks he made on the subject and his right to say them.

Okay, then. We have democratic equilibrium at last.

Boston Herald editors: Do you read us?

 

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Romney Gone Mittsing at the Herald Edition

July 28, 2012

Friday’s Boston Herald was all hands on duck – sorry, deck – covering the local filleting of Chick-fil-A over statements by its anti-gay-marriage CEO Dan Cathy. Page One alone gives you a sense of the Herald’s flood-the-zone coverage of the big buck-buck-bucks faceoff over the chicken chain’s expansion into Boston.

Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages:

The hardcounting staff tallied four-plus pages and eight separate pieces (enough for a Chick-fil-A bucket?) in Friday’s Herald devoted to the dustup.

Which meant there was no one left to adequately mock Mitt Romney for his five-ring circus in London.

In fact, Friday’s Herald had exactly zero stories about Romney’s Olympic Mittshaps. That task fell to Friday’s Boston Globe, which featured:

1) This front-page report

Romney words on Olympics readiness draw British riposte

British Prime Minister David Cameron and England’s famously tough media tweaked Mitt Romney Thursday after the presumptive Republican presidential nominee suggested that London might not be ready for its Olympic moment.

“It’s hard to know just how well it will turn out,” said Romney, who ran the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City. “There are a few things that were disconcerting: the stories about the private security firm not having enough people, supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”

Those comments prompted a quick rebuke from Cameron. “We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world,” Cameron told reporters after visiting the venues where the 2012 Summer Olympics will begin Friday. “Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere” — an apparent reference to Salt Lake City.

Ouch.

2) This Brian McGrory column

Mitt Romney, lost in translation

To the good, hard-working people of London, please allow me to apologize on behalf of my former governor, Mitt Romney.

When he basically told an interviewer that you Brits were a bunch of layabouts and that your Olympics would almost certainly be a total disaster, he didn’t mean for you to take it personally. Actually, he didn’t really even mean to say it. That’s just what he does, and it takes getting used to.

Will today’s Boston Herald make up for its lack of Romney snark attacks?

We’ll see.

 

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