After I wrote last week about “Slurring the Irish” my friend Irish Pat called me. He’s hardly ever called me at home so I was surprised to hear his voice. He said I should follow through with the idea and bring it into the governor’s race.
I said I wasn’t about to tell people to vote for Coakley because she was Irish. Pat said, “I’m not telling you to do that. What I’m just saying is that you should be telling people that isn’t a reason to vote against her.” Who is doing that I asked. He said the Boston Globe. I had written about Irish amnesia as perhaps being the reason the Globe endorsed Baker but not that it was because Coakley was Irish.
He asked me what about Frank Hatch. I said who? He said the Republican who ran for governor against Ed King. I had forgotten that. He said you know who the Globe endorsed back then, it was Hatch, a nobody. He said whenever an Irish person runs for governor the Globe rushes in to the corner office of the State House and puts a big sign on the governor’s door “No Irish or Dogs Welcome.”
I said I didn’t know about that but would check it out. I seemed to recall that back when O’Brien ran against Romney the Globe leaned toward her and did half-heartedly support her but never came out saying they endorsed her. I wasn’t sure. Anyway, Pat was on a roll so I let him talk on.
He asked how can a paper that has a reputation for supporting the liberal and sometimes progressive point of view turns on the candidate who more closely represents its ideology? “Don’t you think it’s a mighty bit odd that it supports one whose basic beliefs and instincts run contrary to everything that paper preaches. Coakley fits into its ideology like a hand in a glove and Baker fits it like the one O.J. Simpson tried on at his trial so explain that.”
That was true but it didn’t carry the day with me. But I have to admit I smelled out a sudden animus in that paper toward Coakley over the past two weeks with its sneak attacks on her which seemed a little out of course. The paper was taking what I believed to be unfair shots at Coakley. That motivated me to jump in to endorse her to tip-off people to its tricks. I thought they mirrored some of the attacks we’ve seen in the past. It recalled to mind the way it went after other Irish politicians or office holders such as Bulger, O’Brien, Flaherty, Finnegan and Quinn to name just a few.
I said to Pat it was hard for me to believe that the ancient animus between the Irish and the WASPs still was motivating a newspaper. Pat pushed back asking me why as late as last Sunday the paper was reaching out to find people who would comment negatively on Coakley’s actions in pursuing political corruption while in office. He said, “Isn’t that what they did to undermine Bob Quinn. Remember the cartoon of him leaving the State House with his pockets stuffed with money?” Who could ever forget that libel upon a good man?
We went back and forth. I didn’t want to believe that was the reason for the paper going against Coakley in this day and age. I was more comfortable with the revenge factor justifying its onslaught against her. Pat asked me if I remembered him telling me about how the people in the press room over on Morrissey Boulevard a few years back told him that the theme song at the Globe was: “If your Irish stay out of the parlor.” I said that made no sense because the press room was filled with Irish guys. He said the parlor was the editorial area of the paper: it was all right for the Irish to work with in the dungeon with their hands.
Pat ended by saying: “To me it’s as clear me as the Lakes of Killarney and as obvious as the stone walls of Connemara. The reason the Globe went against her was she was Irish.” He was not to be dissuaded otherwise. We rung off.
Matt : Fair enough. The carnage left behind her was significant though. She had an opportunity to redress a radically unjust wrong. It was not politically profitable for her to do so. I still wince inwardly every every time Violet and Cheryl’s tortured and anguished faces swim up into my Mind’s eye !!!
* strike the second ” out of hand ” … and carry on 🙂 … I ger one shot with this edit box and the screen on my phone is jumping up and down like a jack in the box, when I am writing .There it goes again ……
* MARTHA COAKLEY OWNS FELLS ACRE. PERIOD .
Matt:
You don’t always get it because you really are a different breed of cat than Martha. You actually have a straight grained character as well as moral scruples. You make a distinction without a difference on Coakley and her paw prints being all over the Fells Acre case. The facts pertain : Judge Barton ordered a re-trial in ’95 . He was appalled and disgusted by the prosecutorial chicanery on the case. He ordered the now cancer stricken Violet, and her daughter Cheryl released immediately. He also predicted, correctly, that prosecutors would do all in their power to hold onto Gerald ” Tooky” Amirault, their prized bloody scalp if you will. Coakley entered the shameful lists in ’99 . In the interim Superior Court Judge Isaac Borenstein had held hearings determining that all of the children’s testimony was tainted and that ” every trick in the book ” was used by prosecutors in the case to get the result, regardless of Justice, that they wanted.
So in this atmosphere, Martha Coakley, intent on maintaining at any price the prosecution’s position, stepped in. The public knew that they had been had by this stage and outrage about the treatment of the now cancer ridden and dying Violet, was a hurricane force wind. Flying in its face Coakley evolved a catchy, but thoroughly flawed theory of the case to continue Gerald’s imprisonment. As Judge Barton had foreseen. Rather than dismissing claims against Violet and Cheryl out of hand, claims so bizarre that they make one’s senses reel with the enormity of the invention, out of hand, Martha just doubled down. She propounded her ” primary male offender ” theory to distance Mother and daughter from son and brother, Gerald, in the case and she ground on. With no common sense and intent only on keeping the party line, Fairness and Justice be damned, she gave the women a tarnished and equivocal redemption . ” Black Bart’s” ( Judge Barton’s) dire prophecy demonstrated the prescience and acumen that were his hallmarks, as indeed Coakley relentlessly militated for Gerald’s continued, and manifestly unjust incarceration . She even tried to get his highly capable attorney, James Sultan, to take himself off the case and thus forestall future litigation. To his credit he pulled a Matt Connolly on her, and refused her request. Violet, her life shattered, and pining for her beloved and innocent Son, Gerald, died soon after. MARTHA COAKLEY OWNS FELLS ACR . PERIOD .
John:
Good points and summary of the case. But she didn’t bring the case in the first place so its hard to put it all on her.
Ms.Freeh::
Down here close to the bricks in Boston we saints and sinners alike are always amused when the Oracle at Flying Pond Variety becomes more than usually Delphic in her … utterances. Just how does the species select your ” organizational models? ” It seems Adolph and the Gang subscribed to a process … Eugenics … that is the only one that seemed to fit your deterministic model. Be careful who you hang out with or you may be hanged with them as we say at Nuremberg. We Saints have no pockets. Traveling without ideological baggage is the best way to elevate one’s own Consciousness. If anyone assumes otherwise, we have borrowed a rustic expression from our favorite seer : We tell them to go take a ” Flying Pond ” for. themselves !!! 🙂
As always you are only as high
as the politicians you elect.
They can only take you to where
their consciousness is.
When a pickpocket stands in
the middle of a group of saints
all he sees is their pockets.
a species that is conscious of
its evolution selects organizational
models that shapes the direction
of its evolution.
the same can be said on a personal
level. the people we hang out with
can only take us to the height
of their consciousness.
in other news see
http://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=27619
* Strike whichever ” that ” you choose, and punctuate accordingly. A fickle and jumpy edit box happily provides an interactive opportunity for the scrubbed cheeks grammarians among us ….. Yayyyyyy 🙂
William: Okay … It was the ” still no reason to vote for Coakley” line in your first paragraph that spinning as it did out of your endorsing my remarks distinctly anti – Coakley that threw in the funny pitch. Yes, I AGREE 🙂 … Question resolved. I enjoy your spirited remarks as ever !!!
* whether we should go Coakley for Coakley’s sake …. etc.
William : Just got my idol Bill Buckley’s AIRBORNE and ATLANTIC HIGH on board, the latter a re-read and the former a much anticipated read, from Amazon. So I am pleased to see him on your Honor Roll. Your succinct assessment puzzles though as to whether or not we should go Coakley’s sake, or Matt’s case for tribal loyalties, or because the Globe is a ship of fools in the merchant service of scuttering reputations and pursuing its own greedy charter at any cost and in genuine wickedness. Your last point seems to argue for a vote for Baker rather than our dubious heroine, Martha .
I’ll vote for the party who’s platform is pro-life. The last democrats in Massachusetts who were pro-life are Steve Lynch, Paul White, Bill Bulger and Joe Moakley. I don’t know many more. Republican stalwarts include the great men of principle like Henry Hyde, Rand Paul, and Ron Paul (physicians who said “Life begins at conception”), and every presidential nominee of the Republican national party has been prolife (even Romney switched to pro-life). Massachusetts democratic pols largely identify with the killer elites among the dems. Matt thinks only republicans cause wars, and forgets Vietnam brought to you by Kennedy and Johnson and ended by the Republican Nixon. It’s easy to put on blinders and pretend to moral equivalency and pretend to ride a moral high ground while grounded to a party that favors abortion and euthanasia. All you have to do is say you are against Capital Punishment (a handful of convicted heinous killers executed annually), and say that balances off the million plus innocent lives lost to elective medical abortions each year. Either you believe what’s growing inside a mother’s womb is an individual human being, and you don’t care about killing pre-born human beings, or you put blinders on and pretend the wholesale slaughter is not happening in America. Keep voting for the party of death and when we all get together we’ll sing happy days are here again. Let’s toast the abortionists and mercy killers and all the democrats who through their silence acquiesce in the butchery.
Matt, Msfreeh and Mr. McDonald: All solidly true enough on history, particularly the Globe’s abysmal past, but still no reason to vote for Coakley. The Globe has its sordid history of bigotry, slander, race-baiting, singling out innocents, defaming entire communities of Boston (South Boston, Charlestown, East Boston) during the Forced Busing Scandal, cheering on the federal DOJ and its paid killer witnesses during the gangster trials, trying to gut the free speech rights of the Veterans, trying to alter and shut down the St. Pat’s Day Parade, trying to indict the Mass Legislature and entire Probation Department for hiring recovering alcoholics and drug addicts and young people who may indeed be the best qualified and most promising to serve as probation officers. In a “merit based” system you often hire the person right out of college or law school or right off of a five year leave to raised children or whose turning his or her life around: it shows promise and true grit. The FEDs and Wyshak have said that is a crime and Judge Young sadly is trying to figure out how severely to punish people who hire the promising young.
2.Like the DOJ, the Globe invents crimes and impugns characters, then hands off its scummy ball to the FEDs to prosecute the innocent. The long list of Irish politicians they’ve singled out for slander is a factual part of the historical record. The Globe is a specialist in character assassin. It also specializes in false reporting: witness its 30 year coverage of Roe v. Wade where it often lied outright claiming Roe “allowed abortions early in pregnancy” or only “during the first few months” when in fact Roe allowed abortion on demand throughout all nine months of pregnancy. That’s why Congress had to pass a partial birth abortion Act, because thousands of healthy fetuses (pre-born human beings) were being butchered annually in the last three months of pregnancy. The Congressional Record shows one New Jersey clinic was performing 5,000 late term abortions per year. The Globe supported late term abortions of healthy human beings. The Globe, like the Democratic Party, supports abortion and Roe v. Wade. A pox on all their houses!
3. Coakley, too, is an ardent supporter of radical feminism and the pro-abortion crowd; she is an anti-Catholic Catholic, like our dear leader the plasticized head of the US Senate.
4. Coakley, like the FEDs, has singled out people like O’Brien and others John King McDonald has eloquently listed. Like most politicians today she is power drunk, and would sell her soul for more votes and more power.
5. The pity is that Coakley thinks she’s doing “good” and touts her record. When considering Coakley or Baker or the vast horde (the herd) of politicians today, don’t put on rose-colored glasses but view them as C. P. Taylor viewed his characters in the play “Good”, complicit it evil, complicit in the abuse of power, or consider them as Mark Anthony viewed Caesar’s assassins ironically, “So are they all, all honorable men.” Make me laugh! We primp and pump up political charlatans, moral relativistic frauds, in shining arm and hold them out as hearty good fellows or political heroes, as people to emulate and admire. I don’t. Bring back the Harry Trumans, Ronald Reagans, Bill Buckleys , Paul Whites and Pat Buchanans of this world. Ax the princes and princesses without principles.
6. Baker is no better, but at least his party has a pro-life platform, as opposed to the party of death, the Dems, who favor abortion on demand, euthanasia, and whose policies (anti-life, the big government plantation mentality, soft on drugs) have and will continue to gut the American family.
William:
1. Voting against Coakley is to empower the Globe and Howie Carr.
2. As I said, the Globe’s agenda is one that should have had her endorse Coakley – yet it didn’t. You don’t think there is something wrong there.
3. Baker is the same as Coakley on those issues; why not go with one who is on the level.
4. If anyone fits your prescription it is BAker, by the way the rap on Coakley for Fells Acre is wrong – she didn’t prosecute the Fells Acre case like John suggested.
5. You may want them brought back but they are not on the ballot so your choice is limited.
6. When was the last Republican in MA a pro life person. And you seem to forget that pro-life should also be anti-war and the Republican party is the one bringing us into more and more wars.
Matt, refresh your memory on the ethics courses you took at BC. There is such a thing as a just war. There’s such a thing as killing in self defense and defense of others. There’s no justification for a healthy woman to kill a healthy human being growing insider her womb. You can be pro-life and for the just and appropriate use of military force. You can be pro-life and against the killing of innocents; your democratic party endorses the killing of innocents, wholesale, on demand.
No small influence on the Globe’s endorsement was due to Brian Mcgrory’s sister Colleen who was was second in command to Baker for many years at pilgrim. Editor McGrory should have disclosed that connection when he endorsed Baker. The Globe plays the very same game they accuse the Irish politicians of. Shameful lot.
Eyre:
Agreed. If Colleen was Baker’s second in command then the Globe should have noted that. But as you know, the Globe would only attack someone else for not doing that while it gives itself a pass.
* That is Martha COAKLEY not MARTHA CONNOLLY 🙂 talk about Freudian Slips !!! … Sorry Matt, you are wedded to her in many ways, but do not deserve being placed next to her in formal vows. Though ” Martha Connolly ” has a respectable solidity to it.
The Globe cheerleaded all of Martha Coakley’ s headlining ” Questionable-Gations : From Fells Acre Day Care that is taught in Law Schools nation wide as a template of what constitutes a hysterical witch hunt as well as a diagnostic manual for investigators and prosecutors as to the proper handling of sex abuse cases. The insurance company paid off twenty million in that case. This is a disincentive to recant for the alleged victims and to this day Tooky Amirault, who is roundly recognized as having been incarcerated wrongly for 20 years is now free under very onerous conditions. I remember the incredulity I shared with many at the time that his mother, Violet, who had all the sweetness and bearing of Whistler’s Mother should be guilty of such lurid allegations. Google Violet’s picture. If the ambition run amok with no heart or conscience that is Martha Connolly and broke this poor woman’s life does not make you feel a certain nausea, then vote for her. She also ruined daughter Cheryl Amirault’s life. She blasted these women’s lives aparts while staring like a mad Muppet from beneath her bangs , her eyes on one thing only, her Career Ambitions. It is time she is held to account for a kind of monstrous greed for self advancement that always ignores the powerful malefactors and cherry picks those she knows cannot fight back as resourcefully. Targets such as Brian Wallace, Tim Cahill, and Probation Commissioner John ” Jack ” O’Brien. I hope Charlie Baker smokes her out of office on Tuesday. I hope that her cheerleading squad on all the above named ” Questionable-gations” put down their William Of Orange pumpkin colored pom poms long enough for people to see that this entreaty to ” Vote Irish ” for Martha is ” Ludicrous. ” Vote for decency in character regardless of ethnicity. Decency of character is the political stuff that Welds rather than divides !!!
John:
You can’t pin anything relating to Violet or Cheryl on Martha – that all happened a long time before she took office. Martha didn’t try the Fells Acre case, that was under Scott Harshbarger. Martha picked up the case after the Supreme Judicial Court had upheld the verdicts; her job was to argue for the Commonwealth. The harm had been done by the time she arrived.
NINA…..Ugh!
In other news Flying Pond Variety
just made Doyle’s in Jamaica Plain
it’s Sister City, or something to that effect.
Radio,television and the print media
have done to our minds
what industry has done to the land
We now think like New York City looks.
Mason Williams
Remembering how the Boston Globe, Boston Post,
Boston Herald gave lung cancer to 5 generations of Bostonians from their cigarette ads
Remembering how these same above named
Boston newspapers gave cirrhosis of the liver
and alcoholism to 5 generations of Bostonians.
from their Alcohol ads.
Rembering how these above named Boston newspapers took Planet Earth beyond
the point of no return from global warming
from their automobile ads.
How is the weather on the Cape today Matt?
Central Maine Power says 69,000 people
without power in Maine tonight.
Radio,television and the print
media teach us to buy not to be.
To buy and not to be,
that is the question.
Mason Williams
In other news
http://www.heatisonline.org
MS:
Haven’t been on the Cape for a few days so I can’t give you other than a hearsay answer that it had a little snow but that’s nothing compared to you downeaster’s. Doyle’s would make a good sister city to Flying Pond. It is said that Menino had a nice association with Doyle’s. Yes, whey did advertise cigarettes, alcohol and still push automobiles. That’s the American way although it might be different in the state east of the Granite State.