Barney Frank(enstein)

January 9, 2013

From our Call and Response desk

Yesterday a Boston Globe editorial called on Gov. Deval Patrick to appoint Barney Frank (D-I Love Me) to fill the interim U.S. Senate seat created by John Kerry’s departure for the State Department.

New Congress.JPEG-087bdPatrick should take Frank up on his Senate offer

‘DOES IT matter, in the case of Congressman Frank, what I would have preferred?” quipped Governor Patrick, after Barney Frank announced to the nation — on “Morning Joe,” no less — that he is seeking Patrick’s support for the four-month interim appointment to replace Senator John Kerry. Yes, Frank can be obnoxious, even to his friends. And as a retiring congressman who relishes the idea of never again going before the voters, he’s as unleashed as he ever has been. Washington, watch out.

But as Patrick acknowledged, Frank is an excellent candidate for interim senator. Choosing him would serve two important purposes. First, since he’s emphatically ruled out any future election, his selection would allow the voters to choose a permanent senator without having one of the candidates anointed by the governor. Second, he would be effective immediately as a senator, since he’s about as knowledgeable on federal budget issues as anyone in Congress. That’s crucial because budget cutting will be the prime agenda item for the next four months.

 

Paging Fannie Mae. Paging Ms. Fannie Mae.

Today Joe Fitzgerald responded in his Boston Herald column.

Andy Samberg Barney FrankBarney Frank’s wit dulled by peevish trait

Here’s why Barney Frank is no favorite at this address.

No, it’s got nothing to do with philosophical or lifestyle issues, because total agreement has never been the litmus test for admiring someone here; if it were, this writer would have spent his career surrounded by a very small circle of kindred spirits.

Indeed, Barney, of all polar opposites, should have been easy to admire here because of his mastery of the language and an agile mind that churned out memorable quips . . .

Barney had the stuff of a bon vivant, a hail fellow well met, a joy to be around. Instead he was too often an unpleasant sort, as if an anger festered within him just waiting for an excuse to be unleashed.

Even the Globe, in yesterday’s fawning editorial urging Gov. Deval Patrick to grant Barney’s wish for a four-month interim appointment as John Kerry’s successor, thought it necessary to note, “Yes, Frank can be obnoxious, even to his friends.”

Great. That’s just what’s needed in the nation’s capital right now, an obnoxious presence in an atmosphere where cordiality is desperately needed.

 

In a previous incarnation, the hardreading staff had occasional contact with Frank at the local public television station. Every time, he would walk in the door in full complaint – Why am I not on the set yet? I don’t have time to wait around. Are you going to hurry this up?

Our response tended to be, “Congressman, no one wants to get you out of here faster than us.”

Not sure that extends to the U.S. Senate, though.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Hark! The Herald!

January 9, 2013

In its Tuesday edition the Boston Herald – ever Whitmanesque – celebrates itself and sings itself yet again.

Page Two:

Picture 5

 

That upper right item:

 

Picture 3

 

Being one of the Newseum’s Top Ten Front Pages isn’t exactly winning a Pulitzer, but it’ll do until something better comes along for the feisty local tabloid.

 

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

OMG! Herald Has a New (?) Advice Column

January 7, 2013

Page 3 of today’s Boston Herald features this advice column, which the hardreading staff doesn’t recall seeing in the paper before, although we could be wrong. Regardless, it’s lame even by Herald standards.

OMG_logosTime to give in and wear the watch

Dear OMG,

My girlfriend got me a watch for Christmas while on a trip with her family to the Bahamas. It’s a really nice watch, but it’s not my style at all (I don’t usually even wear a watch) and I know I can’t take it back since it’s from a boutique there. I don’t want to offend her, but I don’t think I’ll ever wear it. What should I do?

— Out of Time

Dear Out Of Time,

Ugh, this is a toughie. Why not compromise — suck it up and wear it on occasions that are special to you both: an anniversary dinner, her birthday, or if you ever go to the Bahamas as a couple. If you really aren’t a watch wearer, tell her that by saying something like, “When I wear a watch, it’s going to be this one.” That way she won’t expect you to have it on all the time, and you’ll be relieved of sporting a not-at-all-you piece to the next Celts game.

 

There’s another question and answer – and a video – but we’ve already sampled too much.

Don’t just take our word for it – here are representative samples of the comments:

Picture 1

 

Speaking of the Boston Globe, its advice column – Ask Amy – isn’t much better. From today’s installment:

Q. I can’t stand it when kids, teenagers, young adults, and older male adults wear baseball caps into homes, restaurants, and other buildings. When I invite family members to my home for dinner, I expect them not to wear a baseball cap at the dining room table.

When I enter a restaurant, I don’t want to see any men at a dining table with a baseball cap on. It upsets me to pay for a nice dinner when I see attire that belongs at a fast food restaurant.

Needless to say, in my house I must keep the family peace, and so I can’t say anything. In restaurants, I obviously can’t speak up. Your opinion please?

A. A quibble, fine sir. Your home is your castle and of course you can — and should — ask men to please remove their hats (certainly if they are younger than you are. This would be tougher if you were trying to correct a contemporary).

Pretend you are a host at a fine restaurant and say, “Gentlemen, please remove your hats in the house.” If they don’t comply, you have my permission to judge them harshly.

 

Yeesh. You have our permission to judge both columns harshly.

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Herald’s Inside Trick: Credit Defaults

January 6, 2013

The hardreading staff has noted before the occasional tendency of the Boston Herald’s Track Gals (without Megan!) to borrow material without disclosing their sources.

Sad to say, they’re back at it again today.

From the Inside Track’s We Hear section:

• That Jim Braude and Margery Eagan, late of News Talk 96.9, will guest host for two hours on 89.7 WGBH Radio on Tuesday beginning at noon. The pair — he hosts a show on NECN and she is a Herald columnist — will host a segment within the midday show of live, local talk, according to their old WTKK boss Phil Redo, who just so happens to be managing director of ’GBH Radio. Tryout? Do stay tuned.

 

From yesterday’s Boston Globe:

Former WTKK hosts get one-day gig at WGBH

Two days after they hosted the final talk show broadcast on WTKK-FM, Jim Braude and Margery Eagan have lined up a one-day gig on WGBH-FM that could double as an audition.

WGBH said Friday that the former WTKK morning show hosts will guest host “Boston Public Radio” Jan. 8, filling in for Callie Crossley, Emily Rooney and Kara Miller.

Braude and Eagan hosted the last episode of “Jim & Margery” Wednesday before the station switched to an all-music format.

The pair has no other assignments booked on WGBH, but the station’s managing director, Phil Redo, suggested in an e-mail that there could be more to come.

“I’m a big fan of theirs,” said Redo, who managed WTKK and four other Greater Media Inc. stations in Boston from 2006 to 2009 . . .

 

Not to get technical about it, but next time the Track Gals should File Under: “We Read.”

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Herald More Frank About Barney

January 5, 2013

From our Compare and Contrast in Clear Idiomatic English desk

Barney Frank (D-I Love Me) gets Page One of the local dailies today, but in very – wait for it – different ways (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages).

Boston Globe:

MA_BG

 

Boston Herald:

MA_BH

 

The feisty local tabloid devotes two full pages to the Barney-burner, complete with Hall of Shame qualifications:

Picture 2

 

Note especially this:

Picture 3

 

Text:

A huge public policy blunder

During the beginning of the financial industry crisis, Frank defended Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from more government oversight, famously declaring the agencies “fundamentally sound.” We know how wrong that turned out to be.

 

Crosstown at the Globe, the coverage is more, well, restrained.

New Congress.JPEG-087bd-3155Barney Frank says he would like to be interim senator

On what should have been the first day of his retirement from Congress, former representative Barney Frank instead burst back onto the political scene, revealing that he had asked Governor Deval Patrick to appoint him to temporarily fill John Kerry’s Senate seat while a special election is held.

Frank said his 32 years in Congress made him especially qualified to help settle spending and entitlement fights that were pushed off several months by the New Year’s Eve fiscal cliff compromise between President Obama and congressional leaders.

“The first months of the new Senate will be among the most important in American history. I may be a little immodest, but I called the governor and said I think I can be a help in reaching a fair solution to some of these issues,” Frank told the Globe Friday.

 

Asked about running in the special election for the seat, Frank said “absolutely not.”

And does the Globe piece mention the Fannie/Freddie kerfuffle?

Absolutely not.

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

WRKO = We Really Knock Others

January 5, 2013

Big breakthrough for the hardreading staff: We’ve finally gotten access to the Boston Herald’s e-Edition, which is only right since we’re one of the 17 home subscribers to the feisty local tabloid.

Anyway, that allows us to bring you this WRKO ad from Friday’s Herald, which combines a whack at the demise of News Talk 96.9 with a promo for Herald columnist Howie Carr:

Picture 1

 

680 WRKO – Boston’s ONLY Talk Station!

Does it get any more depressing than that?

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Our Dogged Local Tabloid (Dennis Lehane Edition)

January 4, 2013

When the Boston Herald gloms onto a good human interest story, it’s like a dog with a bone.

And that goes double for the sad tale of author Dennis Lehane’s dog Tessa, who’s been missing since Christmas Eve.

Today the feisty local tabloid devotes a full page to the dog hunt:

BI1E2265.JPGLehane family ‘can’t give up’

As temps plunge, desperate search for Tessa

Best-selling crime writer Dennis Lehane and his wife, Angie, announced yesterday they are 
offering a cash reward for the safe return of their beloved beagle, 
Tessa, as overnight temperatures have plunged into single digits and days stretch on without word of where she could be.

“We just want her home — want her back with my kids, back with my dogs — we just want her to be happy,” Dennis Lehane said yesterday, addressing whomever may have the pooch.

“So If you can do that, believe me, there won’t be a single question asked … she just needs to come home,” he said.

 

This is the umpteenth piece the Herald has run on the runaway pooch. If the Herald web archives weren’t the unmitigated disaster they are, we’d link you to a bunch of them. But this is what you get when you plug Dennis Lehane into the search box:

Picture 3

 

And then, this:

Picture 4

 

Anyway, the Boston Globe is also covering the story, but on a more modest level. From today’s Names:

chin010313lehanedog_liv04-Dennis Lehane and friends continue search for lost dog

Boston author Dennis Lehane asked his social media followers on Thursday to help him continue his search for his lost dog, Tessa. Lehane invited supporters to meet him at the Stop & Shop in Brookline and at the McDonald’s in Brighton where he and his family and friends put up signs with Tessa’s picture and contact information. Lehane, who reported the rescue dog’s disappearance late last month, has said that he’ll name a character in his next book after anyone who locates the pup. Tessa is a black and tan beagle. Lehane says that if you see her, don’t chase her. There are tips for approaching lost dogs on Lehane’s Finding Tessa Facebook page.

 

That’s the long and short of it.

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Brown: Ex Markeys the Spot in Malden

January 3, 2013

Despite the Boston Herald’s speculation yesterday that Scott Brown (R-Unemployed) might run for governor in 2014, he’s sure acting like a man who wants a return trip to the U.S. Senate.

Today’s Page One Boston Globe story:

Brown swipes at Markey’s residency

Scott Brown, in an attempt to define a potential Senate campaign rival before the race even kicks off, questioned Wednesday whether US Representative Edward J. Markey is a bona fide resident of Massachusetts.

Brown took to talk radio, his favored venue, to question whether Markey, the Malden Democrat whose Senate candidacy top Democrats are rallying around, spends too much time in Washington and not enough time in the Bay State.

The early skirmish was a remind er that the campaign season, seemingly over after the November election, is begin ning again as politicians scramble for the seat likely to be vacated by Senator John F. Kerry, who is expected to be confirmed later this month as secretary of state.

Brown, a Republican who has given strong hints that he is running, is heavily leaning toward another campaign, but has not yet made a decision, according to a person familiar with his deliberations.

Uh-huh.

The piece notes that Markey has faced this issue before:

During the 2010 election, challenger Gerry ­Dembrowski, a Woburn Republican, videotaped interviews with neighbors in Malden asking whether they had ever seen Markey in his home. Most knew his house was there, but said they had not seen him.

The video called “Ed Markey: The Undocumented Congressman,” was posted on YouTube, but it did not stop Markey from winning that year’s race in a 2-1 landslide.

Said video (which is mildly amusing, if a bit heavy-handed):

 

Crosstown at the Herald, columnist Margery Eagan seems to have actually gone to Malden.

TED_8370.jpgQuestion hits home with Markey neighbors

In what may be the first salvo in the race for John Kerry’s Senate seat, U.S. Sen. Scott Brown wondered yesterday whether longtime Congressman Ed Markey, who wants Kerry’s job, even lives in his hometown of Malden anymore.

“I’ve come back and forth (from Washington) every weekend,” Brown said yesterday when he called into my last radio show on WTKK. “I see, you know, most of the delegation, and I have never seen Ed on the airplane. … Does he even live here anymore?”

The results of my cursory inquiry of Markey’s Malden neighbors: We’re not quite sure.

Representative samples:

“I don’t see him, to tell you the truth,” said a man who identified himself as Mr. Iacuzzi and has lived next door to Markey on Townsend Street “for more than 30 years.” Iacuzzi thinks he’s seen Markey before, but “it was long time ago.”

“I’m not sure what he even looks like,” said Josh, the manager at Dockside Restaurant, a Malden favorite for fundraisers. So he Googled Markey to make sure. “No, I can’t say that I’ve seen him in here.”

“I have no idea who he is,” said a worker at the legendary Moe’s Cafe.

A Markey spokeswoman had this reply: “(Brown) is already launching false, personal attacks …”

Ha! That’s not even a slapfight. Unlike with Elizabeth Warren, Brown doesn’t have to worry about gender gaps when he jumps ugly on Markey. And there’s not gonna be no People’s Pledge either.

Get ready for some serious smashmouth politics this time around.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Boston Herald: Scott Brown for Governor?

January 2, 2013

Up until now, conventional wisdom in the Bay State held that Scott Brown (R-Tickle Me Grover) had first GOP dibs on the U.S. Senate seat soon to be vacated by John Kerry (D-So Long, Suckers), while Good (Next) Time Charlie Baker had same on the 2014 Massachusetts gubernatorial race.

Not so fast.

From Joe Battenfeld’s piece in today’s Boston Herald:

Scott BrownDems fear Scott may run for gov

While Democrats frantically try to block Scott Brown from going back to the U.S. Senate, there are also increasing fears he could pose an even bigger threat as the next Massachusetts governor.

Republicans close to the departing U.S. senator said he’s itching to go back to Washington to replace John Kerry, but Democrats are buzzing more about a potential Brown gubernatorial campaign in 2014. It may be tempting for Brown to run in a special election against a vulnerable Rep. Edward J. Markey, but he should reject the easy play and go for the job that really matters — running the state of Massachusetts.

“In the last week, there has been more speculation (about a Brown gubernatorial campaign),” one top Democratic strategist said. “He’d have a much better shot at (governor).”

 

Battenfeld says in a Senate race Democrats “will throw millions of dollars against him and use the same strategy they used last year for U.S. Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren, trying to tie him to national Republicans.” The gubernatorial race would be an easier one to win.

[I]f you were Scott Brown, who would you rather run against, Ed Markey and the entire Democratic Party, or state Treasurer Steve Grossman or Attorney General Martha Coakley?

 

Good question.

One last question: What does Charlie Baker think?

Battenfeld doesn’t say.

UPDATE: Gotta add today’s overcaffeinated Page One (via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages):

MA_BH

 

Love that feisty local tabloid.

10 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

Boston Globe Film Critic Wesley Morris Djangoed by Mediaite

January 1, 2013

In an unusual confluence of influence, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald both gave positive reviews to Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Django Unchained.

From James Verniere’s Herald review:

DJANGO UNCHAINEDQuentin Tarantino ‘Unchained’

Director charges into American slavery tale with guns blazing

You’ve seen “Lincoln.” Now, see the low low-down on slavery in America.

Brought to us by the much imitated, uniquely gifted and never surpassed Quentin Taran tino, the ultra-violent “Django Unchained” gives us a glimpse of a barbaric episode in American history through the twisted lenses of Tarantino and the Euro-spawned, Asian-­influenced 1960s-’70s hybrid the spaghetti Western.

In addition to a terrific and fearless Jamie Foxx in the title role, a freed slave turned gunman named Django (“The d is silent”), the film has great Austrian actor Christoph Waltz (“Inglourious Basterds”) in fine fettle as Dr. King Schultz, a silver-tongued German immigrant and dentist along with his horse Fritz, whom he introduces to strangers. Dr. Schultz traverses the frontier in 1858 in a small coach with a giant tooth on its roof. The truth is Schultz  is a gun-slinging bounty hunter, complete with a spring-loaded derringer up his sleeve. Schultz brings in fugitives from justice dead or alive, preferably dead.

 

Equally enthusiastic was Globe film critic Wesley Morris:

du-ac-005765_lgTarantino blows up the spaghetti western in ‘Django Unchained’

In “Django Unchained,” Jamie Foxx plays Django, a black slave purchased for about a hundred dollars and freed by a German dentist and bounty hunter named Schultz (Christoph Waltz). A straightforward treatment might have involved having the slave run away north. But the movie Quentin Tarantino has written and directed is corkscrewed, inside-out, upside-down, simultaneously clear-eyed and completely out of its mind.

Django is married. He and his wife (Kerry Washington) were savagely lacerated and separately sold. He’s not free until she is. So he works as the bounty hunter’s sidekick, with the bounty hunter agreeing to help him find the wife and rescue her from a Mississippi plantation.

Set in 1853, this isn’t a runaway narrative. It’s a run-toward narrative, rigged for shock. Each scene lays a stick of dynamite and lights a fuse that runs down and down and down until the whole thing blows up like the Fourth of July. I’ve never seen anything like this movie, not in one 165-minute sitting, not from a single director, not made with this much conscientious bravado and unrelenting tastelessness — this much exclamatory kitsch — on a subject as loaded, gruesome, and dishonorable as American slavery.

 

But it was only Morris’s review that got whacked on Mediaite:

django-blackBoston Globe Movie Critic Likens Django Unchained’s Villainous ‘House Negro’ To Black Republicans

In his official review of Quentin Tarantino‘s box office smash Django Unchained, Boston Globefilm critic Wesley Morris likens the movie’s villainous “house Negro” to black Republicans like Justice Clarence Thomas or former RNC Chairman Michael Steele.

The positive review largely took note of the film’s successful twisting of the Spaghetti Western genre to fit a Civil War rebellion story, with special praise for Tarantino’s script and the actors who filled the screen.

But upon praising Samuel L. Jackson for his portrayal of Stephen, the head servant at the villainous Candie family mansion, Morris invoked the names of modern black Republicans whom he believes Jackson channeled in his “black self-loathing” performance . . .

 

Discuss among your self-loathing selves . . .

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Campaign Outsider

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »