Neal's 9/11 Scandal

Whaddup blog readers! Here is yet another out of print article rescued from the vaults, this time a September 16, 2001 piece about Congressman Richard Neal and the media criticism he faced in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Whatever his flaws, no one has ever accused Congressman Richard Neal of a lack of political sophistication. In fact, he has a reputation of being a political junkie who rarely looks at anything without considering the political ramifications. That may have gotten him into some hot water last week when he was caught in what he described as a "casual conversation" with a reporter criticizing President Bush for appearing "bland" in his remarks following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Neal then went on to compare Bush unfavorably to Bill Clinton. Also caught with his foot in his mouth was Neal's colleague and Washington roommate Rep. Martin Meehan, who scoffed at the notion that security concerns delayed the president's return to Washington from Florida following the attacks.

For seeming to suggest that the president acted cowardly, it was Meehan who took the brunt of the criticism (actually the president's actions were dictated by his security staff, whom Bush eventually overrode and then quickly returned to Washington anyway.) But both congressmen found themselves at the center of a firestorm of media criticism for making petty attacks on the president at a time of national emergency, violating a bi-partisan understanding among politicians everywhere to refrain from public criticism of the President in times of crisis. 

Former Mayor Taupier

For Neal however, who seldom appears in the national spotlight, the sudden media condemnation must have come as a shock. Locally, even a stalwart Democrat like former Holyoke Mayor William Taupier exclaimed in the Union-News, "They are both friends of mine, but I am outraged. This is not a time for politics; they're acting like rank amateurs."

Among the most sarcastic criticism came from Boston Herald columnist and radio host Howie Carr, who lambasted Meehan and Neal by calling them "Osama Bin Meehan" and "Richie 'The Sheik' Neal." In a rant in which he also criticized Amherst residents for complaining that their town was displaying too many flags, Carr then turned his acid-tipped pen to the two Massachusetts congressmen. "Finally we come to the two congressional collaborators, Osama bin Meehan and Richie the Sheik. First Richie - Who knew he could even talk? The last time I remember him speaking was when he called his local newspaper to deny that he had impregnated one of his aides."

 

Howie Carr at the Big E in September 2009.

What was Howie Carr talking about? Shortly after Neal was first elected to Congress, an item appeared in the Springfield Newspapers in which Neal denounced rumors that he had impregnated an aide who allegedly then had an abortion. The rumors were never proven, and what amazed most people was that the matter ever appeared in the paper at all. But sophisticated observers recognized the article as just the standard sort of warning the Springfield Newspapers typically give to newly elected politicians; designed to give them a taste of what could happen should they stray too far off the plantation.

For example, when Springfield Mayor Mike Albano was newly sworn in, a front page story accused him of hiring unqualified cronies to work in his administration. That article inspired a woman who worked at the then city-owned Municipal Hospital to come forward and call talk show host Dan Yorke to complain that a member of the politically connected Pellegrino family had been hired for an important post for which he had no known qualifications. 

Yorke ran with the story, expecting the Springfield Newspapers to follow up with this new evidence backing up their front-page story. Instead, the paper remained silent, refusing to cover the story. The woman who called Yorke became so intimidated by people whom she refused to identify that she backed down and declined to co-operate with Yorke any further.

The reason for the paper's silence was clear. They had never intended to seriously investigate cronyism in city government - they only wanted to show Albano their power. If the paper's actions were paraphrased into words they might read, "Look Mikey, before you get too big for your britches, remember that we buy ink by the barrel, and we will be glad to spill a lot of it on your behalf if you make us happy. But refuse to do things our way, and here's a small sample of what we can write. Whether we print something like this in the future or not will depend on your level of co-operation."

The publication of the Neal pregnant aide rumor almost certainly fell into the same category of a simple warning, so Carr may have been going a bit too far to drag that skeleton out of the closet. After all, the rumor need not have been true to still be effective as a club for the Springfield Newspapers to use. In any case Neal appears to have learned his lesson well, since the paper has treated him with kid gloves ever since.

Ironically, it may have been the puffball treatment he's used to getting from the local press that was responsible for Neal committing his blunder with the Boston press. He's so used to having everything spun his way that it never occurred to Neal that reporters in other places consider it their responsibility to report on what politicians actually say and do, and do not censor or revise all comments in a positive way simply because the politician is in bed with the local publisher.

 



But that still doesn't explain why a politically astute guy like Neal let himself get into such a mess in the first place. A clue may be found in the Ogulewicz Chronicles, the memoirs of former City Councilor Mitch Ogulewicz, who has known Neal since the beginning of Neal's political career. In his memoirs, Ogulewicz describes an intense confrontation he once had with then Mayor Neal over the need to repair roofs on the city's schools. Despite evidence that some school roofs may have posed a safety hazard, Neal didn't want to spend money on them because the average taxpayer wouldn't be able to see where the money was spent. 

"No one can see a fucking roof!" Ogulewicz says Neal told him. "The public only cares about what they can see!" The portrait Ogulewicz presents of Neal is of a person for whom everything is political. Therefore while most people saw President Bush as our country's leader doing his best to comfort a shocked and grieving nation, Neal perceived simply a politician giving a performance, and therefore saw nothing inappropriate in suggesting that Bill Clinton would have put on a better show.

But whatever the reason, Neal's apparent lack of sensitivity and understanding of the 9/11 tragedy must surely be considered, as ex-Mayor Taupier was quoted as describing Neal's comments in the Springfield Newspapers:

"Stupid, stupid, stupid." 

Bye Buzz

 

Buzzers Bill Peters and Greg Saulmon

I'm saddened to learn that the Valley cyberzine Local Buzz has at least temporarily ceased online publication. The hiatus is due to the departure of Buzz co-writer Bill Peters, who has been laid off by the Buzz's parent company Masslive.com, which is the web portal for the Springfield Newspapers. Co-writer Greg Saulmon will continue to work with Masslive as a director of online content, but has opted not to continue Local Buzz without Peters. A third buzzling, Josh Thayer, left the cyberzine about a year ago.

Local Buzz started as both an online and print publication. However, just when the print version appeared on the brink of a market breakthrough, financial hardships forced the Springfield Newspapers to abruptly discontinue the print edition and Local Buzz went exclusively online. The Local Buzz became known as one of the best written and beautifully photographed websites in the Valley, as well as for its indepth reporting and sharp wit. 

Hampenings

Here's a display in Northampton's Pulaski Park. 

I should say something about the inappropriateness of religious displays in public places, but the Christians get away with it so often that I feel mean complaining about the Jews.

The Academy of Music is having a Paul Newman film festival next month.

 



My neighbor put an Earth flag in their garage window.

Another neighbor is getting into composting.

Guns and Roses.



A giant snowbird sits on her eggs in front of the science store on King Street.

If the science store should ever go out of business, it could sell its window sign to an LSD dealer. 

 



Today's Music Video

In Northampton a few nights ago singing about a local highway. 

Wikipedia - Unlike most states it passes through, US 202 is posted as a north-south highway in Massachusetts, as most of its length through the state runs mostly in those directions.

US 202 and Route 10 enter the Bay State at the "Congamond Notch", a southward jog in the state line that includes Congamond Lake. North of Westfield, US 202 turns eastward toward Holyoke and Belchertown. It then heads north along the west side of the Quabbin Reservoir through New Salem toward Athol. This section of US 202 has been dubbed the Daniel Shays Highway, named for a Revolutionary War veteran who led an insurrection against the state government of Massachusetts. US 202 meets Route 2 at Orange, and runs along the two-lane freeway to Phillipston. There, it diverges to the north again as a two-lane road.

In Massachusetts, US 202 passes through the municipalities of Southwick, Westfield, Holyoke, South Hadley, Granby, Belchertown, Pelham, Shutesbury, New Salem, Orange, Athol, Phillipston, Templeton, and Winchendon.

The Next Thing

Beyond the Meat World

Last week I got the following email from Valley Free Radio star Mary Serreze:

 

hey there mr. tommy devine

mike kirby and i are hosting an informal bloggers' summit this monday, april 28, 7pm, at the packard's library. probably mostly relevant for those who cover local news and politics......but i thought i'd let you know in case you wanted to make an appearance. (cuz you do cover news and politics, tho not exclusively...and you are somewhat famous)

we wanted to 1. provide a chance for people to meet each other, laugh, have a beer, trade war stories and 2. explore possibilities for collaborating/specializing/promotion/research etc--

maybe there are ways in which northampton bloggers can collaborate, and maybe not (independent cusses that we are....) but no harm done by putting a bunch of interesting people in a room together. so far i have confirmation from kirby, shanahan, roessler, saulmon, cohen, lafleur. so if you feel like stopping by please do.

mary serreze
http://communityradiohour.blogspot.com
www.northamptonmedia.com

Usually I respond to such invitations with that old Groucho Marx line about not wanting to belong to any group that would have me as a member. However, I found myself responding in the affirmative primarily out of curiosity. I didn't recognize all the names mentioned of the bloggers attending, but I knew that they were primarily Northampton or North Valley writers. In any case I thought it couldn't hurt to meet some of the Northampton bloggers. At the very least I might be able to get a photo of the North Valley bloggers to match the historic South Valley blogger photo captured by Victor Davila earlier this year in Springfield.

The meeting was held in what is called "Packard's Library" located within the famous Northampton bar Packard's. I've been going to Packard's for decades, playing pool, getting drunk and picking up sex partners, but I was totally unaware of any part of the building that could be called a library. Yet there is such a room hidden away off in the back. Here's a picture. 

Of course it isn't really a library, it is a drinking room with some shelves with books on them that look like someone got then at a tag sale. But it does make for a dignified setting and a calming decor.

Unfortunately I couldn't get there for the start of the proceedings as we have meetings at the drug half-way house where I live until after seven. Because I arrived about an hour late, I never did get properly introduced to everyone nor put every face with a name. But here are a couple pictures I took of some of the participants. Match them with their blogs if you can!

The first thing I realized when I finally got there was that those assembled were smarter than me, at least about Northampton politics. They were discussing the questions asked by those truly in the know: Is Mayor Clare Higgins too pro-business? Will the new landfill cause ecological damage? Who are the leading contenders for mayor? I really couldn't participate in these discussions without appearing uninformed. When it got to be my turn to speak I had to pretty much beg off by saying I'm primarily an Amherst and Springfield dude and that my Northampton coverage consists mostly of pictures I take as I poke around town. I didn't use the word "shallow" to describe my coverage but maybe I should have.

Actually, there was a time in the 1990's, around when Tony Long ran for mayor of Hamp, that I could have held my own in a discussion of Northampton politics. Later I wondered, "When did my blog begin drifting away from politics?" Of course there is and always will be political posts on my blog. But why has a bunch of other stuff emerged as equal to politics in the subject matter I write about?

I think it began when I read an interesting factoid somewhere claiming that more than a third of American children under fifteen have a blog. Doubtless that percentage is constantly increasing. Thinking about that fact made me wish that I could have had a blog at 15 and to wonder what it would be like to have such a chronicle of one's life across several decades. More interestingly, what would it be like to have an audience over your whole lifetime who followed you via your blog? What would be the nature of that relationship?

The children who are starting blogs today will eventually find out the answer to those questions. Living your life on a cyberstage certainly raises a lot of existential questions. For example, what is the meaning of privacy in such an existence where nearly everything you do is pretty much public? Will the children of today who have blogs have the same notions of privacy that we take for granted? Orwell imagined a world where everything was observed by the government. What he didn't foresee, however, is a culture where the observers are the general public and a relationship develops between the observers and those being observed. Surely Orwell could not have foreseen that the person being observed would be presenting themselves for observation voluntarily.

Everyone has people they know in person, people who they can see in their field of vision, who they can touch, smell and hear. But as the blogosphere blossoms, our world is becoming filled with people who we don't ever see or touch or smell. Yet, through the blogosphere we feel we get to know them, what they are like, what they do and what they think. We get to see their friends and their families, what they wear, the places they live and the things they think about.

Yet those doing the observing are mostly unknown to those being observed. They are just statistics telling them how many hits they got that day. But behind each hit is a flesh and blood person. A fan of sorts who thinks they know who it is they observe.

In any given week thousands of people read my website and find out all kinds of things about me. That knowledge about me accumulates over time and deepens in intimacy. Less than a hundred people see me in the flesh per week, and many of them know less about me than the readers of my blog. So when you say "Tom Devine" who do you mean?

The Tom Devine dozens see in the flesh, or the Tom Devine known by thousands who have never met me? It's a strange new world indeed.

And it intrigues me. Increasingly I keep expanding the realms of my life that I am willing to make public. I'm trying to break down as many walls as I can between the flesh me, in the "meat world" as the cybergeeks say, and merge that with the version of me in the blogosphere where I exist only as zeroes and ones.

This is a new frontier, the first inklings of what our lives are going to be like and what our children's lives are going to be like. Each of us will have two personas, a private one where we interact with one another physically in real time and space, and another persona that is computer generated by thousands of individual choices we make online throughout our lifetime about what to reveal, how to reveal it and through what medium (words or images or both) and that will be taking place before an audience, the majority of which will be strangers to us.

I see my blog as a prototype of this new form. This is the frontier of cyberlife. 

I ache to move beyond my own time. I ache to leave the Meat World behind.

After the meeting I went out for coffee at the Haymarket with Local Buzzlings Bill Peters and Greg Saulmon.

They are hip to New Media to a degree I don't see in anyone else in local media. They are currently working way too hard for too little money for people who don't recognize the significance of what they are doing. But that will change.

The other day I noticed this neat skeleton of a geodesic dome being used as an exercise structure at the Bridge Street School in Northampton. 

Today was Founder's Day at the University of Massachusetts.

 



Happy 145th Birthday UMass!

There's a new trend in v-blogging called "flash vids" that attempt to capture something of significance in a very short time frame. It addiction to being short, it has to show something worth seeing. Here are some short but cool videos from last winter that I missed somehow. In the first one Northampton resident Sean Kinlan set up a camera in his backyard last winter and made the following fascinating video condensing five hours of a snowstorm into eight seconds. Dig how the trees droop.

 

This is a moody 22 second glimpse of Amherst College. 

 

When life sends you lemons and you can't make lemonade - squirt lemon juice into the eyes of your enemies. 

 

Pioneer Valley Limbaugh

Rush in the Valley.

 



When going through the material on Fred King yesterday, I came across an old WHYN promotional flyer that listed on it "Rush Limbaugh's Undeniable Truths of Life." It is open to debate how undeniably true his pronouncements are, but there is no question that Rush Limabaugh was one of the great pioneers of talk radio nationally and who also had an impact on talk radio in the Pioneer Valley.

Limbaugh was the first to grasp how to really exploit the repeal of the so-called Fairness Doctrine. This was an FCC regulation that required any radio station that aired a political opinion of any kind to offer equal time to anyone with an opposing view. In theory it was a well meaning regulation, designed to prevent radio station owners from using their stations to promote political candidates through biased coverage.

In reality, it turned radio into a vast wasteland of political blandness. In radio time is money, so any free time that a station had to give out to balance political views meant less time available for regular programming and airing ads. Therefore almost all stations had a strict rule that radio hosts must not express a single political opinion on any subject. Many had the policy that if an announcer accidentally did express an opinion which caused the station to have to give away free air time to opponents, then that announcer would be fired. Therefore the Fairness Doctrine was despised by everyone who worked in radio and anyone who treasured free speech and democracy.

In 1980, a former radio personality named Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency of the United States, and delighted every radio worker in America by forcing the FCC to repeal the hated Fairness Doctrine. At last radio announcers enjoyed the freedom that all Americans do of speaking their minds freely in public.

Conservative Rush Limbaugh was convinced that there was a large audience of political conservatives that didn't hear their political opinions on the airwaves much. He decided he would become their spokesperson, and build a radio network that would exploit the new freedom that the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine had created. He therefore went around the country signing up stations to carry his show. One of them was Dan Yorke, who was then the owner of WSPR and a local radio pioneer in his own right. Like Rush, Yorke felt that there was an audience locally that was not getting the political news they needed and wanted, and so if Yorke was offering it on the local level, then Rush offering it on national issues would be a perfect match. 

Dan Yorke, through his own program and by introducing the Valley to Rush, revolutionized local talk radio. Even despite the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, before Yorke it was extremely rare for local politicians to face any critical commentary on the radio. What coverage they received was either fawning or spinelessly neutral in that the politician was allowed to say whatever they wanted on the air without any meaningful challenge from the host. Political coverage also reflected the very strong bias towards the Democrat Party in the Valley, so it was rare to hear conservative or Republican views. When Yorke took over WSPR and began attacking local Democrats while simultaneously bringing in the Rush Limbaugh Show it was like a blast of fresh air blowing away the cobwebs of years of political and ideological stagnation in the local media.

In the late 80's Rush was still new enough so that whenever a new station signed up for his EIB Network, then Rush himself would appear to promote the show locally. So one day Rush and Yorke were down at Baystate West (now called Tower Square) with Rush greeting and signing autographs for the local shoppers. Afterwards, Yorke took Rush to the bar in the Springfield Marriot for some adult beverages. 

Rush's career was almost derailed when it was ultimately discovered that he was secretly a bigtime drug addict. Yet he managed to survive that scandal, and remains an important force in American politics right up to this day.





Buzzboy Greg Saulmon (above) gives good soundbite on all things New Media in a radio interview you can listen to by clicking here. Hotboy Paolo Mastrangelo has a great series on the clumsy attempts the Hampshire Gazette is making online that you can read by clicking here.

I recently had my own minor run-in with Gazette online ineptness when I tried to send an email to the letters section of their sister publication The Amherst Bulletin. Nowhere on their Letters page did it tell you where to send an email! Nor did it tell you anything about their policies for accepting emails, or for that matter, just plain old letters! I wrote a pissy prelude to the email I eventually sent to the highest person on their masthead, accusing them of not actually wanting feedback from their readers.

I don't really believe that, I just wrote it because I was annoyed. But the truth is unfortunately worse than that, because I'll bet the real reason that there was no information was because no one on the staff had ever been to their online letters page to notice that the information was missing. I suspect most of the Gazette staff is in their ivory tower, clinging to their credentials and thinking of themselves purely as "print journalists" and don't really know nor care what their publications are like online. Okay if that's how they feel, but the online financial websites are writing almost daily the obituaries of publications with that attitude.

The worst mistake the Gazette is making is not grasping the essential truth that the business model for newspapers on and off the internet is IDENTICAL. The goal of both newspapers and websites is to attract a large audience and then sell that audience to advertisers. The larger the audience, the more you can charge for your ads. When you put any restrictions on the size of that audience, such as charging a subscription like the Gazette does for its online content, then you are artificially limiting your audience size and thereby lowering the price of what you can sell your ads for. That's not just a bad cyberspace policy, that's a suicidal one. 

Today for lunch I went to Earthfoods at the UMass Student Union. Every day it puts its menu for the day up on a board outside the entrance. It lists yesterday's menu as well, since it is usually still available as leftovers. (click photo to enlarge)

Earthfoods has a militantly organic/healthfood menu, with much of the food purchased just down the road from the farmfields of Hadley.

They say that students love junk food (and they do) but they can also be enticed to enjoy healthier fare, as you can see. 

Even if you're not crazy about healthfood (I'm not) you have to like Earthfood's positive message. 

Check it out next time when you're looking for an extra healthy lunch.

Buzzing Valley Conservatives

There's an article in the new issue of Local Buzz about political conservatives in our Valley that mentions me. Despite that error in judgement, Local Buzz is a cutting edge publication in ways that one might not expect from a spin-off of the Springfield Newspapers. The primary key to its edginess is chief editor Greg Saulmon, an avid fisherman with a natural nose for news, and a quirky sense of humor. 

 

Local Buzz is really the only local print publication that feels like it's completely comfortable in the digital age. For example, the Valley Advocate, whose target audience partially overlaps Local Buzz, has been trying to move online in a big way, but the publication still doesn't really feel at home online. However Local Buzz, instead of being a print publication with an online presence, has the feel of a website that just happens to also be available in print. As such, Local Buzz is evolving into the most successful effort thus far to bring the Springfield Newspapers into the digital age.

The article on local conservatives in its current issue is a good one, featuring the elegant Smith Republicans and righty activists like Larry Kelley and Mike Franco. I would have liked to have seen more about the UMass Republican Club, which from my perspective is the most vibrant of the local conservative groups, but overall it is a great piece about an often overlooked aspect of our Valley. As for what it says about me, in total I receive all of a one sentence mention in the article:

And there's Springfield native Tommy Devine, more of a working man's intellectual, who runs an often-libertarian blog that pokes fun at war protesters, Springfield politics, and all the colorful expressions of the left you can find in the Valley -- and gets around 20,000 hits a month.

Actually, I'm little surprised to receive any mention at all. The truth is I'm not always included in discussions of Valley conservatives, my blog being considered by some to be too stoney and too gay to be regarded as right-wing, in spite of the fact that I am probably the Valley's foremost defender of free market economics. But I admit when it comes to the social issues I flunk the conservative test in a lot of ways.

But why are we often so obsessed with putting labels on people and putting them into categories? I think it's because we're intellectually lazy, and we believe that if we have little boxes to put people in, with a set of characteristics for each box, then we don't have to actually go through the difficult, and sometimes scary process of actually getting to know people as individuals. If we think we know the characteristics of those we put in the Jew Box, or the Gay Box, or the Black Box, or the Conservative Box or whatever, then all we have to know about anyone is what box they belong in and we think we know their major characteristics.

Except when we don't.

Let's do away with these boxes and labels that confound and confuse us more then simplify or explain. Open your mind and your heart and expand your realm of possibilities. It's not that hard, just remember this the next time you're tempted to slip into categorizing ways:

Labels are for cans!