Jay Severin, unreliable source

Here's the kind of false propaganda Jay Severin pumps into the heads of his listeners, whom he likes to call "the best and the brightest." Within the past 15 minutes, he went into a riff about how the mainstream media, out of "professional courtesy," would not cover the fact that CNN had allowed Democratic ringers to take part in the YouTube debate. He specifically mentioned the New York Times as refusing to cover the story.

In fact, both the New York Times and the Washington Post ran prominent stories today, both of which were featured on Jim Romenesko's heavily trafficked media-news site, along with Media Nation. Now, the Times and the Post are only the two most important newspapers in the country. But just for good measure, check out the results of this Google News search.

Severin either lied about today's Times (and the rest of the media), or bloviated about what he imagined the Times had done without bothering to check. I'm not sure which is worse.

How CNN blew it

If CNN executives took citizen media seriously, then they wouldn't be facing charges that they're in the tank for the Democrats. Well, OK, they probably would, but the charges wouldn't seem as credible.

Following Wednesday night's CNN/YouTube debate, it was revealed that retired general Keith Kerr, a gay man who asked the candidates a pointed question about why they oppose letting openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military, was a prominent supporter of Hillary Clinton's. And that turned out to be only the most notable of what conservative blogger Michelle Malkin is calling Democratic "plants."

Well, of course, it was incredibly stupid of CNN to do such a poor job of vetting the 5,000 or so videos that were submitted by YouTube users. And it certainly didn't help that Kerr was allowed to hector the candidates from the audience. His question was perfectly legitimate, but his Clinton affiliation should have disqualified him. (And it's too bad that Anderson Cooper is getting tainted by this. I thought he did an exceptionally good job of keeping the proceedings moving along while remaining substantive.)

But why is CNN deciding which videos to use in the first place? As my former Boston Phoenix colleague David Bernstein wrote after the first Democratic YouTube debate in July, CNN "pretty much created a TV show out of the free raw video materials, not entirely unlike an episode of America's Funniest Home Videos."

So let me repeat and expand on a suggestion I made back then: If CNN wants to harness the power of citizen media, then it should go all the way. Here's what I'd do:

• Have people upload videos in six or eight subject categories — the war in Iraq, terrorism, taxes, immigration, the environment, whatever.
• Subject those videos to light vetting to make sure none is tilted for or against a particular candidate, or is grotesquely offensive.
• Let the YouTube community vote on the best video in each category. Those are the questions that will be asked.

Such a system wouldn't be perfect. One problem, of course, is that the candidates would get to see the questions ahead of time. But so what? We should be looking for thoughtful answers rather than making these debates a test as to who can spit out the best instantaneous soundbites.

There's also the possibility that the process would be hijacked in some way. But I think that's a risk worth taking. Besides, how would that be any worse than letting people associated with Hillary Clinton's and John Edwards' campaigns ask questions, as CNN did?

"Score this one for the people," says the Boston Globe in an editorial today. Well, no. This was CNN's show from start to finish. Let the people decide — then we can celebrate.

Mooning Obama

I don't need to say anything about the Washington Post's shockingly bad story today about persistent but false rumors that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and about how that may affect his presidential candidacy. Paul McLeary has already hit every low point at CJR.org.

But just to pile on a little — the Post fails to point out that one of the purveyors of religious hatred against Obama, the online magazine Insight, is owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

The Governor's Council strikes again

How pathetic is this? The Boston Herald reports today that two members of the Governor's Council are unhappy they were not told about Kathe Tuttman's role in letting a child rapist go before they approved her nomination as a judge. In fact, they have no one but themselves to blame for their ignorance.

Tuttman, of course, is the judge at the center of the controversy over convicted killer Daniel Tavares, who was released and is now the suspect in the murder of a young couple in Washington state. Mitt Romney, who appointed her to the bench when he was governor, is now demanding her resignation — despite a plethora of evidence that Tavares was released because of a systemic breakdown involving several public officials, as Shelley Murphy reports in the Boston Globe.

According to today's Herald story (link now fixed), by Dave Wedge and Jessica Van Sack, Councilor Marilyn Petitto Devaney says she is "shocked and outraged" that the council was never told about the earlier incident, while Councilor Mary-Ellen Manning has joined her in asking Gov. Deval Patrick to take steps to remove Tuttman from the bench.

Yet, as Wedge wrote yesterday, the Daily Item of Lynn reported on the child rapist's release in 2005, six months before Tuttman, then an Essex County prosecutor, had even been nominated as a judge. Referring to the fact that the rapist, Daniel Parra, had been released because Tuttman's office had missed a deadline to recommit him civilly, Tuttman told the Item: "In terms of our own internal protocol, we have, since this occurred, developed a system to keep a case from falling through the cracks again." (In today's Item, Thor Jourgensen reports that Essex County District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett is defending Tuttman's track record.)

And get this: Manning lives in Peabody, which is part of the Item's circulation area. Shouldn't Governor's Council members read the papers in their district?

The Herald story also quotes Mitt Romney's lieutenant governor, Kerry Healey, as saying the administration didn't know nothin'. "I wish that sort of information had been more available during the public hearing process," Healey said. "It seems this process, despite its thoroughness, and I can attest to its thoroughness, failed." Hmmm ... I would assume that the customary definition of "thoroughness" would include checking the clips.

So why exactly do we have a Governor's Council? It is nothing but a useless holdover from Colonial times — a third branch of the Legislature, when, in fact, two are quite enough. Let the Senate hold hearings and vote on judicial appointments. The senators might not be any better at it than the councilors. But they're better known and more accountable than members of the Governor's Council are.

Maybe the hearings would even get some attention — which would make it more likely that stories such as the one involving Tuttman, hidden in plain sight, would come to light before any vote was taken.

More Kindle-ing

In my latest for the Guardian, I continue to explore Amazon.com's Kindle e-book — and consider why the idea of paid content draws such derision from the digital priesthood.

Recycling quotes isn't plagiarism

Today's Worcester Telegram & Gazette runs an "amplification" that reads:

Remarks by Darrel Slater in a Nov. 23 editorial on the release of accused killer Daniel Thomas Tavares Jr. from custody in Massachusetts were reported in the Boston Herald Nov. 21. The editorial neglected to credit the Herald as the source of the quotation.

Fair enough. The Herald deserved credit. But I'm beginning to think we're all getting carried away when it comes to the use and misuse of background material.

This latest incident began to unfold yesterday, when Boston magazine's John Gonzalez reported on the matter. The T&G had begun an editorial by quoting Slater, the father of a young woman allegedly murdered by Tavares in Washington state. "It’s because of stupidity in Massachusetts that my daughter is dead...," Slater reportedly said. "How does a guy who killed his mother, gets charged with more crimes, get out of jail? How can he leave the state?"

As it turns out, the T&G had taken that quote from a Herald story written by Michele McPhee and Jessica Van Sack.

To be sure, the T&G should have credited the Herald. But the headline on Gonzalez's item — "Worcester Telegram Plagiarized Herald" — vastly overstates what happened. This was not plagiarism. Opinion pieces regularly recycle quotes from other news sources without credit.

No one could reasonably have believed that the T&G editorialist had interviewed Slater. The problem here was simply that the Slater quote was a pretty significant exclusive for the Herald, and it was cheap of the T&G not to acknowledge it. The paper's editors realized that and have made amends.

But do quotes always need to be credited? Of course not. Let me offer an absolutely typical example from yesterday's James Carroll column on Middle East peace prospects, which appeared in the Boston Globe. Toward the end, Carroll writes:

Which brings us to the final reason for hope. The status quo is now universally recognized as catastrophic for everybody. "Unless a political horizon can be found," Olmert said last week, "the results will be deadly." Deadly to a two-state solution, Palestinian hope, and Israeli democracy. Deadly to the world. By comparison, all obstacles to peace are minor.

No one would think Carroll had interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert said it, it got reported around the world and Carroll used it as background material in expressing his opinion. It was an entirely unremarkable bit of journalistic craft.

Recently, you may recall, WBZ-TV (Channel 4) political analyst Jon Keller was called out by the Herald's Jessica Heslam because he recycled some quotes without credit in his fine new book on Massachusetts politics, "The Bluest State." What Keller did was standard practice for an opinion journalist, especially in a non-academic book aimed at a mass audience. Nonetheless, he was put through the wringer for a few days.

There is a huge difference between plagiarism ("It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward") and being slipshod with background material. I'm afraid we're beginning to lose sight of that.

Pretty soon you're talking real money

I know, I know — $1 million is a lot of money, especially when it's gone into the pocket of a special prosecutor who's brought only one relatively minor criminal charge.

But when I saw the lead headline in today's Boston Globe, "Cost of probe on Big Dig nearly $1m," I thought of the time that Lorne Michaels offered a $3,000 reward if the Beatles would reunite. Or Austin Powers' holding the planet ransom for, yes, $1 million.

The Big Dig, after all, has cost approximately 16,000 times those legal fees.

The headline in the Globe's online edition is a more evocative "Big Dig tunnel collapse prosecutor's tab is $30,000 a week." So maybe someone at 135 Morrissey Boulevard agrees with me.

Romney claims victim status

Now why didn't Michael Dukakis think of this? If only the Duke's campaign had whispered that Willie Horton "had once threatened to assassinate him," as Mitt Romney's people want us to believe was the case with Daniel Tavares Jr., he might have been elected president.

More: Not to be overly flip. Here's something that's on Tavares' Massachusetts Department of Correction release form: "In February 2006, he threatened to kill the governor and attorney general of MA, Bristol County Sheriff, and other law enforcement officials when released." So, no, the Romney folks aren't making this up.

I know this is dumb

But I wouldn't trade Jon Lester, Clay Buchholz or Jacoby Ellsbury as part of a package to get Johan Santana. Michael Silverman reports in the Boston Herald that the Red Sox are reluctant to trade two of them. Sorry, but I wouldn't even let one of them get away. Not even for Santana. I know, I know. Fire away, mike_b1.

Happy Thanksgiving, Danversport

The Salem News and the Danvers Herald have put together multimedia packages to mark the anniversary of the Danversport explosion.

Some highlights from the News include audio of the 911 calls, before-and-after photos of the homes destroyed in the blast, slide shows and lots of stories. The front page from last year, with the headline 'WE'RE ALL ALIVE,' has gone interactive — click anywhere and you'll get the story. There's also an interactive map (above). When you roll your mouse over a property, a box pops up telling you how badly it was damaged in the explosion and what the repair status is.

The Herald package also features numerous stories, as well as a couple of videos and a narrated slide show. The slide show, in particular, is strikingly sharp and well-produced.

All in all, a fitting commemoration.

The Amazon Kindle and paid content

The Amazon Kindle is being marketed as the latest e-book, but I would imagine it will have a tough go of it on that basis. As Steven Levy observes in Newsweek, what could be a more perfect content-delivery system than the book? Instead, what I find intriguing is that it can be used as a portable, always-on virtual newspaper with — get this — paid subscriptions. If the Kindle succeeds, we may finally have a solution to the devastating revenue problem that newspaper and magazine publishers have created for themselves in giving away their content for free.

The Kindle strikes me as the purest realization to date of a vision I first heard articulated at a conference at Columbia University in the early 1990s. At that time, news executives fully understood that digital was the future. The idea was that content would be distributed on high-resolution digital tablets that would be so cheap they'd be given away. At night, you'd plug your tablet into the cable box on your television so that it could download newspapers, magazines and other content that you'd paid for. In the morning, you'd unplug it and take it with you. A wireless connection would allow for interactive advertising so that you could, say, make a reservation by clicking on a restaurant ad.

What we all missed, of course, was the rise of the Web, which made closed systems like that envisioned at Columbia impossible. Content quickly became free and ubiquitous. And you know the rest of the story. Yet even at a time when the idea of paying for content online is at a low ebb (the New York Times has gone entirely free, and the Wall Street Journal will soon follow suit), there remain considerable doubts that online advertising alone will ever fully support the public-service journalism we need. Just yesterday, the Times ran an intriguing op-ed by Discover columnist Jared Lanier, who argued that advertising will never add up to enough to pay the bills.

Enter the Kindle. Unlike the device we talked about at Columbia some 15 years ago, it's not so cheap that publishers will give them away (indeed, it's $400), and the e-ink resolution, though better than that of a typical computer screen, isn't nearly as nice as a glossy magazine's — a Kindle reportedly gives you 150 dots per inch, whereas even a cheap ink-jet printer will give you 600. But there are some features that are really appealing for news executives and consumers alike. For instance:

• It's small, portable and light, about the size of a thin paperback book. Yes, it easily passes the classic test: you can take it to the bathroom with you.
• You don't have to plug it in to a computer, and, because it's connected to a cellular network, you don't have to find a WiFi hot spot, either.
• You can subscribe to newspapers such as the Times, the Journal and the Washington Post for considerably less than it would cost to get the print editions. The Kindle automatically downloads the entire paper, which means you are untethered from the Web. (Here is the list. The Boston Globe isn't there, at least not yet.)
  

From the little bit that I've seen of the Kindle online, the newspapers look rather ugly. Obviously the Kindle will have to become enough of a success for newspaper designers to come up with something specifically optimized for a paperback-size vertical screen. Color would be nice, too.

The Kindle is hardly the only experiment in paid online content. The Times has something called TimesReader, which costs $15 per month and which, according to Jack Shafer, is much easier on the eyes than the Web site. (No Mac version, so I haven't been able to test it.) But TimesReader requires you to lug your laptop around, which makes the Kindle a much more portable solution.

I do have doubts about the Kindle. It's easy to imagine a Kindle-killer — a similar device that lets you browse the free Web via a WiFi connection and download content so that you can read it even when you're disconnected. (We can already catch a glimmer of such devices with Apple's iPhone and iPod touch, though I don't want to read on a screen that small.) The free-content paradigm is powerful, and may prove too difficult to overcome.

But the Kindle does offer a possible alternative to the free, Web-based regime that has been such a boon to consumers and a bane to publishers. I hope the Kindle is at least enough of a success so that we can arrive at some judgments over the next few years.

Update: Peter Kafka of Silicon Alley Insider thinks I'm full of it, writing, "The existence of the plan has made at least gulled at least [sic! sic! sic!] one blogger, MediaNation's Dan Kennedy, into imagining that the Kindle will help save the newspaper industry."

Kafka notes that the Kindle has a built-in Web browser, which means you could read newspapers for free. But he fails to acknowledge that the paid versions of those papers might make for a much better reading experience, especially since you can download them ahead of time.

Update II: Actually, I'm not sure the Kindle does include a Web browser. I can't find anything here. I would also note that Amazon touts "free built-in access" to Wikipedia, which suggests that there is no generalized browser. Otherwise, why make a big deal about Wikipedia?

Update III: It does, but not a very good one. From Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch:

In addition to being a book reader, the Kindle has some experimental features. One is a limited Web browser customized for the device with some preselected bookmarks including Amazon.com (in case you want to buy a digital camera instead of a book, which you can do just fine from the main Kindle shopping page), Wikipedia, Google, BBC News, Yahoo Finance, Weather Underground, and the Yellow Pages.

You can also enter any URL, including Bloglines (but not Google Reader, which requires Javascript and which the Kindle browser does not support). So here is a Kindle hack: you can check out your RSS feeds for the New York Times or the full feed of blogs like TechCrunch for free using the browser, rather than choose to pay a subscription to get them downloaded to the Kindle. I don't have high hopes for the Kindle's ability to bring back subscription revenues for publishers of any kind.

We'll have to wait and see.

An unlikely-son campaign

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at how a conservative Mormon named Mitt Romney managed to use liberal Massachusetts as his launching pad for a presidential campaign.

Carole Simpson and J-school ethics

Among the rules that every journalist should have drilled into her or his head from a young age is this one: You don't get involved in politics. That is, you don't give money to politicians, you don't work on their campaigns, you don't run for office yourself, and you are very careful about what sorts of organizations and causes you participate in. (Not that everyone follows these rules.)

But what are the rules for journalism professors? Are they the same as those for journalists? Should they be?

A year and a half ago, toward the end of my first year as a full-time instructor and part-time journalist, I did something I had never done before — I told a candidate for the local board of selectmen that we'd like to have a lawn sign. He was a good candidate, and we displayed it proudly. (He won, too.) But about a week later, the editor of the local weekly asked if I would moderate a candidates' debate. I had to say no, and I resolved to scale back my newfound zeal for political activism.

Which brings me to the situation involving Carole Simpson, a former ABC News anchor and reporter who's now teaching journalism at Emerson College. Yesterday the Boston Globe's Peter Schworm reported that Simpson has been taking some heat for publicly endorsing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at a New Hampshire rally to which she had brought her students. Earlier, the endorsement was the subject of an article by Ashley Portero in the Berkeley Beacon, Emerson's student newspaper.

Simpson was apparently aghast at what she had done almost as soon as the words came tumbling out of her mouth. She offered to resign — an offer that was not accepted. But her colleague Jerry Lanson, a former editor at the San Jose Mercury News, told both the Beacon and the Globe that he found Simpson's actions to be inappropriate. "As faculty members if we're teaching journalists, we need to model the behavior we're teaching in the classroom," Lanson was quoted as saying in the Globe.

Interestingly, though, Lanson himself recently stepped up to the same line that Simpson arguably crossed, taking part in an antiwar demonstration on the Boston Common. Afterwards, Lanson wrote a commentary for the Christian Science Monitor in which he took the media to task for giving antiwar rallies across the country scant attention. He said:

[I]t seems remarkable to me that in some of the 11 cities in which protests were held — Boston and New York, for example — major news outlets treated this "National Day of Action" as though it did not exist. As far as I can tell, neither The New York Times nor The Boston Globe had so much as a news brief about the march in the days leading up to it. The day after, The Times, at least in its national edition, totally ignored the thousands who marched in New York and the tens of thousands who marched nationwide. The Globe relegated the news of 10,000 spirited citizens (including me) marching through Boston's rain-dampened streets to a short piece deep inside its metro section. A single sentence noted the event's national context.

Lanson's ethics are not in question, and you will note that it was he who disclosed his participation in the event. But if it's all right for a journalism professor to take part in an antiwar demonstration, why isn't it all right to endorse a candidate for public office? I sent an e-mail to Lanson asking him that. He responded in a characteristically thoughtful manner that could be boiled down to a single phrase: it's a tough call.

"It's an interesting topic because the terrain for journalists and professors is different, but journalism professors sort of traverse both simultaneously," Lanson said, adding that he has "a lot of respect for Carole and appreciated her willingness to discuss this at length with our students."

But Lanson did put his finger on a key difference between what he did and what Simpson did, telling me, "What I should have told The Globe is this: 'If we are in a public setting and if our students are there to cover news, we should model the behavior we expect of them to exhibit as working journalists.' " He added:

My logic is this: Students are just beginning to learn appropriate behavior as REPORTERS. It's doubly difficult in an age of all-views, all-the-time. The way we act, the way we ask questions, the way we model reportorial behavior has a considerable effect on students as they begin to develop their own reporting and interviewing style. If we stand up and endorse a candidate or a policy or anything else, we run the risk of confusing students who are just learning how to act as reporters and of embarrassing those who already know how they're supposed to behave and who want to be treated as professionals in the field.

In other words, Simpson's decision to endorse Clinton, though ethically dubious for a journalism instructor, was not nearly as egregious as her blurting out that endorsement in front of her students at a campaign event they were supposed to be covering. It's hard to disagree.

I also put the question to Steve Burgard, who's the director of the School of Journalism at Northeastern and who previously worked for a number of years as an editorialist for the Los Angeles Times. Here's part of what he told me:

Essentially, I have continued the view that I had as a long-time editor and then member of the LA Times editorial board. I stay away from political endorsements, contributions and campaigns as if I were still a practicing journalist whose independence might be called into question. In fact, while I was at the LA Times and today I remain registered as independent. In my view, journalists or journalism educators who take part in partisan political campaigns at some point leave themselves open to complaints that they are advancing an agenda.

Personally, I would not take part in a demonstration, as Lanson did, and I certainly wouldn't endorse a candidate for public office. Yet I recently found myself caught up in political activism despite myself. I've written frequently here about my opposition to plans to build a casino in Middleborough, the town where I grew up. That led to an invitation from Casinofacts.org, the town's leading anti-casino organization, to speak at a fundraising event.

I said yes. The event took place last Thursday. We all had a great time — good cause, nice people and they even gave me a plaque, which is now sitting in my office in Holmes Hall. Yet, ever since I accepted the invitation, I've had to run a disclosure every time I write about the casino issue. And though I don't regret helping Casinofacts, I do wonder if I might have been better off maintaining some distance.

Perhaps, more than anything, the Carole Simpson issue shows the vast gulf between a journalist's professional responsibilities and the notion of academic freedom. As an academic, Simpson has great latitude to speak out, and she took advantage of that latitude. Journalists, though, need to be circumspect. Some journalists, like Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, even go so far as to refrain from voting lest they compromise their objectivity.

I don't think it's a matter of objectivity so much as it is independence. Simpson's liberal leanings have hardly been a secret over the years. But now she's turned herself into a Clinton partisan, something that would be untenable if she were covering the race — and something that makes it harder for her to do her job of training young journalists.

Right about Reagan

Journalist Lou Cannon, a biographer of Ronald Reagan, sets the record straight in today's New York Times: Despite what David Brooks and James Taranto seem to think, Reagan's appearance in Neshoba, Miss., near Philadelphia, was a huge issue in the 1980 presidential campaign. Cannon writes:

In the wake of Neshoba, Mr. Reagan's critics pounced. President Carter's campaign operatives portrayed Mr. Reagan as a divisive racist. At a money-raising event in Chicago, Mr. Carter told his audience: "You'll determine whether this America will be unified, or, if I lose this election, Americans might be separated black from white, Jew from Christian, North from South, rural from urban."

Cannon's purpose is to absolve the charge that Reagan was a racist, or that his 1980 victory was based on racist appeals to white voters. In doing so, however, Cannon confirms that Brooks and Taranto are wrong to claim such accusations are a recent invention of liberals aimed at tarring Reagan's memory.

Chris Lydon's re-return

Christopher Lydon is back — again.

A couple of days ago I was checking my podcast subscriptions on iTunes when I saw that some new content had popped up in "Open Source," his late, lamented public radio program. I made a mental note to investigate. Then, yesterday, Lydon and his producer, Mary McGrath, sent out an e-mail announcement that began, "The summer is over, and so is our hiatus," and that explained the program has moved to Brown University.

It sounds as though Lydon has given up on radio: "Podcasting is the cheap, democratic, speedy, listener-friendly universal means of sharing and archiving original sound files of every kind." But that's fine with me. I'm not sure I ever listened to more than a few minutes of "Open Source" on the radio, but I frequently downloaded programs that sounded interesting. (They were.)

Looks like some good stuff is available. I'm going to start with Kanan Makiya — also the guest during a rip-roaring hour on Tom Ashbrook's "On Point" recently — and Oliver Sacks.

Photo of Lydon (cc) by Andy Carvin. Some rights reserved.

Why is McPhee sorry?

If the Boston Herald is going to report on Michele McPhee's on-air apology for seeming to draw a relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia, shouldn't the paper also report what she was apologizing for?

On Thursday, the Boston Globe's "Names" column included this item on McPhee:

WTKK apologized yesterday for a comment by Michele McPhee that seemed to equate homosexuality with pedophilia. McPhee, the brassy Boston Herald reporter who hosts a daily, two-hour talk show on 96.9 FM, was talking about the trend in the fashion industry toward skinny models. After saying that the industry is largely dominated by gay men, McPhee said: "And who do homosexual men like? Little boys." Asked about the comment later, McPhee declined to talk to us. But a station official then issued the following statement: "Michele's comments were made in the context of a fashion industry that designs women's clothes for atypical body types. She regrets if her remarks were taken to mean anything else, as no other meaning was intended."

Globe item prompted some further ruminations by John Gonzalez of Boston Magazine.

The Herald finally weighed in today. But though Herald reporter Jessica Heslam quotes McPhee's apology at length, we never quite learn why she's sorry.

Heslam does write, "Station officials have refused to release an audiotape of the comment in question." But surely McPhee could have confirmed the quote reported by the Globe for her fellow Herald staffer. And failing that, the Herald could have have reproduced what McPhee had "reportedly" said. It's not like she was denying it.

Calling all readers

Has anyone found downloadable audio of last night's Democratic debate?

Same as it ever was

After all that, we're going to have Howie Carr back in his old time slot on WRKO (AM 680) and a new/old Imus show in the morning on WTKK (96.9 FM)? Apparently so. WRKO is milking Carr's return for all its worth, running a huge "I'M BAAACCK!" graphic on its Web site this morning.

Prediction: Howie's numbers will be better than they were before he disappeared from the airwaves, at least for a while. He'll have an opportunity to show some energy and attract some new listeners — or maybe bring back a few old ones who'd given up on him in recent years. But Imus, who hasn't had the benefit of all the free publicity Carr received during the past few months, will have to rebuild.

Brian Maloney, who earlier this week was wondering if Carr might move to a talk station in Charlotte, N.C., now says, "Other than a higher salary, Howie doesn't seem to have won a single battle." Other than a higher salary? Good grief. We should all be such losers.

And why can't someone come up with a new idea in this market that actually works?

"Unprincipled pragmatism"

Noted civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, blogging at ThePhoenix.com, says Gov. Deval Patrick is more interested in liberalism than he is in liberty. The bill of particulars:

• Patrick's proposal to outlaw Internet gambling, which would, of course, cut into the revenues from the three casinos he hopes to see built.
• His support for an expanded anti-free-speech buffer zone around abortion clinics.
• His opposition to the decriminalization of marijuana.

"Surely it is possible to be a liberal, supporting a society that does not allow its most vulnerable members to sink into an abyss, while advocating at the same time the maximum individual liberty consistent with what the Supreme Court has called 'an ordered society,' " Silverglate writes. "Thus far it does not appear that Deval Patrick is that kind of liberal. But maybe it's still too early to give up hope on this score."

Casinofacts reminder

Final reminder — I'll be speaking at a fundraiser tomorrow for Casinofacts.org, the leading anti-casino organization in Middleborough. The event will get under way at 7 p.m. at the Fireside Grille. Hope to see you there.

Politics and the BPL (II)

Fired Boston Public Library president Bernard Margolis goes after Mayor Tom Menino in today's lead story in the Boston Globe. And Margolis' comments are in perfect accord with this week's Boston Phoenix editorial, which I flagged last Friday.

According to Margolis, the mayor had actually rebuffed his efforts to strengthen the branch libraries — a shortcoming supposedly responsible for Margolis' ouster — and then turned around and used that as an excuse to get rid of him.

Globe reporter Donovan Slack's story includes this:

Margolis said he knew in May that his contract would not be renewed, when [Menino chief of staff Judith] Kurland visited him at the library. After taking a tour and perusing 17th-century documents from the Bay Colony, she delivered the news.

"She said, 'I want to tell you that your contract will not be renewed when it's up next year,' " Margolis said. "She said, 'If the trustees don't go along with it, they will be removed.' "

Kurland confirmed that she had told Margolis his contract would not be renewed, but she denied that she had talked to him about replacing trustees not willing to go along. "What I said was, 'We do have the votes not to reappoint, if you want us to take a vote on it,' " Kurland said.

The only way Menino can make amends for this stunning exercise in political bullying is to bring in a first-class replacement for Margolis. We'll see.

The varieties of heroism

In my latest for the Guardian, I parse recent incidents in New York and Boston that call into question the meaning of heroism. We should realize that a hero is defined by what someone does, not by who he is.

Welcome back, Bruce

A couple of months ago I wrote an exceedingly unkind commentary for the Guardian about Bruce Springsteen's then-forthcoming album, "Magic." I thought the single released in advance of the album, "Radio Nowhere," sounded generic enough to have been recorded by a Springsteen imitator. Given that his last two albums of original material were the loathsome "The Rising" (2003) and the instantly forgettable "Devils & Dust" (2005), I didn't hold out much hope for "Magic."

Well, now. I've been listening to "Magic" for a month, and I'm both chagrined at my earlier haste and pleasantly surprised. I still don't like "Radio Nowhere," but it's not so bad when it kicks off his best album in many years. I realize I'm late to the party here, but I have to buy my CDs like everyone else. I figured I'd at least have my say before Springsteen hits Boston later this week.

What gives "Magic" its strength is that Springsteen has abandoned the strained attempts at profundity that marred "The Rising" and "Devils." I'm hardly the first to say this (Springsteen himself says it here), but "Magic" is a pop album — the closest he's come to such an achievement since "Tunnel of Love" (1987). "Tunnel," in turn, might be his last completely satisfying album, depending on how you feel about "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (1995). I like "Tom Joad," but I realize that a lot of people don't.

Smack dab in the middle of "Magic" is "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," perhaps the most perfect little pop song Springsteen has ever written. The underlying melancholy in the chorus — "The girls in their summer clothes, pass me by" — befits someone in his late 50s.

It's not all confection by any means. There's a current of antiwar sentiment here, stated most explicitly on "Last to Die." The album is full of highlights, but right now I'm loving "You'll Be Coming Down" and "Your Own Worst Enemy," two relaxed, mid-tempo rockers. Bruce's confidence in his material shines through in his singing, too — he's dropped some the annoying tics that had crept in over the years, such as swallowing the ends of his lines.

A word, though, about Brendan O'Brien's production: terrible. I don't understand what Springsteen sees in this guy. I understand that Springsteen wants to update his sound, and some of O'Brien's little flourishes, like the strings that open "Girls," are nice. But the sound is muddy and distorted throughout. "Magic" is almost OK on my iPod, but it's nearly unlistenable in my car. It's as if I'm listening to a radio station that's not quite tuned in.

Maybe recording last year's fine album of old folk songs, "We Shall Overcome," re-energized Springsteen's writing. Other than "Girls in Their Summer Clothes," I don't know if we'll be humming any of these 10 years from now. But this is a genuine comeback.

Taranto's wrong, too

Maybe after Rupe closes the deal, he'll let Wall Street Journal commentators get LexisNexis accounts. The lack thereof is the only explanation I can think of for James Taranto's endorsement of David Brooks' factually deficient claim that Ronald Reagan's speech in Philadelphia, Miss., was not a big deal during the 1980 campaign.

As I demonstrated last week, it was an enormous issue, with a number of media outlets reporting on what some saw as racial insensitivity on Reagan's part, and with Jimmy Carter's campaign beating the drums on several occasions.

Yet Taranto writes: "Why does Reagan's Philadelphia speech loom so much larger in today's liberal imagination than it did when Reagan was alive and active in politics? Because today's liberals yearn for their elders' moral authority." Nice line. Too bad it depends on believing something that isn't true. Taranto is generally one of the sharper knives in the drawer, but he's wrong about this.

Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood. Some commenters to my previous item think I'm accusing Reagan of having been a racist. I'm not, although he clearly didn't mind playing racial politics on occasion. My interest in this item is based solely on Brooks' factually incorrect notion that the Philadelphia speech was not a big deal until recently. In fact, it was one of the biggest issues of the 1980 campaign. I remember it as someone who lived through it, and my research shows that I'm right and Brooks is wrong.

Hat tip on this to Media Nation reader MTS.

An awkward moment for Obama

My friend and former Phoenix colleague Michael Crowley has beaten me to it.

Yesterday I was listening to the podcast of "Meet the Press," which this week featured Sen. Barack Obama. For the most part, it was standard-issue Tim Russert, as Obama easily batted away questions of the tired old "how can you be for campaign-finance reform when you raise money from special interests" variety.

But, as I was driving past Nathaniel Hawthorne's Custom House, I nearly had to pull over for this exchange:

Russert: [O]ther critics will say that you've not been a leader against the war, and they point to this: In July of '04, Barack Obama, "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don’t know," in terms of how you would have voted on the war. And then this: "There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush's position at this stage." That was July of '04. And this: "I think" there's "some room for disagreement in that initial decision to vote for authorization of the war." It doesn't seem that you are firmly wedded against the war, and that you left some wiggle room that, if you had been in the Senate, you may have voted for it.

Obama: Now, Tim, that first quote was made with an interview with a guy named Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" during the convention when we had a nominee for the presidency and a vice president, both of whom had voted for the war. And so it, it probably was the wrong time for me to be making a strong case against our party's nominees' decisions when it came to Iraq.

Obama — shading the truth then, telling it straight now? Not a very good campaign slogan. Or as Crowley writes, "Obama might argue that there's a difference between speaking as a nominee and speaking about the nominee. Still, even by his own account, this episode hardly seems to live up to the tough standards he set last night" — referring to a rousing speech Obama had given in Iowa the night before.

In July 2004, Obama went beyond cooling down his rhetoric in order to accommodate John Kerry and John Edwards, and his explanation for that now is cynical. Obama's flagging campaign has caught a few sparks in the past week. It will be interesting to see whether he did himself any real damage yesterday.

Update: Media Matters reports that Russert creatively sliced and diced Obama's comments from three years ago. No surprise there. But what concerns me is what Obama said yesterday.

Why casinos won't pay off

Boston Globe Magazine columnist Tom Keane offers a basic math lesson: "Does anyone seriously believe that Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun will sit idly by while a vast chunk of their business disappears? As the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation pointed out recently, like any good competitor, they'll fight back. They'll drop room rates, improve entertainment, and spruce up the buffet tables. Most important, they — and the states they're in — will be compelled to offer gamblers better odds."

My standard disclosure.

Gamble Deval's way — or go to jail

Gov. Deval Patrick, who is trying to foist three gambling casinos on the state, wants to make it a criminal offense — punishable by up to two years in prison and a $25,000 fine — to place a bet over the Internet. Crime, traffic and the associated disruption caused by a casino coming to your town? No problem. Gambling in the privacy of your home? Problem.

"If you were cynical about it, you'd think that they're trying to set up a monopoly for the casinos," David Schwartz, director of the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada, tells the Boston Globe's Matt Viser.

Well, by all means, let's be cynical about it. What could this possibly be about other than making sure the state scoops up every available nickel produced by gambling?

Among other things, Patrick's go-straight-to-jail provision has managed to alienate U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, who had spoken in favor of Patrick's casino plan just recently. Frank tells the Globe, "Why is gambling in a casino OK and gambling on the Internet is not? He's making a big mistake. He's giving opponents an argument against him." Nice work, Governor.

In two other casino-related developments, it appears that the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is moving backwards in its bid to build a casino in Middleborough.

First, Boston Herald reporter Scott Van Voorhis writes that federal regulators may move to take some of the allure out of the high-stakes video bingo parlors that Indian tribes are allowed to open even in the face of state opposition. The idea is that such bingo games would have to look more like bingo and less like slot machines. This could damage the argument advanced by some pro-casino forces that if Patrick's proposal is defeated, the Mashpee will open a sort-of casino anyway.

Van Voorhis' piece is a follow-up to a story first broken on Oct. 29 by George Brennan in the Cape Cod Times.

Second, tribal leaders have reportedly been talking out of both sides of their mouths on the matter of whether they will enter the Patrick sweepstakes or instead pursue their gambling plans under the federal route. Boston magazine's Jason Schwartz explains.

The most recent version of my standard disclosure.

Wrong about Reagan

New York Times columnist David Brooks today claims that Ronald Reagan is being retroactively tainted by a partisan liberal smear of recent vintage. He writes:

It's a distortion that's been around for a while, but has spread like a weed over the past few months. It was concocted for partisan reasons: to flatter the prejudices of one side, to demonize the other and to simplify a complicated reality into a political nursery tale.

What dastardly deed is Brooks referring to? In August 1980, Reagan's campaign managers decided to kick off the post-convention final push by having the Gipper appear in Philadelphia, Miss., a shrine to the civil-rights movement thanks to the murder of three young activists 16 years earlier. Reagan spoke to a white crowd and endorsed "states' rights," code for segregation. This, Brooks fulminates, is — in some sort of latter-day re-invention — being "taken as proof that the Republican majority was built on racism."

But though Brooks wants you to believe that the idea of Reagan's general-election campaign beginning with a racially insensitive act is a new one, he's careful to add the caveat that it's "been around for a while." Well, yes. I followed the 1980 campaign avidly. And I distinctly remember that Reagan was accused at the time, repeatedly and vociferously, of playing to the prejudices of white southern voters.

Here's a sampling of coverage from the 1980 campaign:

• Newsweek, Aug. 18: "Reagan's courtship of the black vote last week started out in a way that made many blacks suspicious. Speaking to a nearly all-white crowd at a county fair in Philadelphia, Miss. — the town where three civil-rights workers were murdered in 1964 — he spoke in favor of states' rights, the code words for segregation in the 1950s."
• U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 25: "In early August, Reagan made a three-day trip to Mississippi, New York and Chicago that attracted mixed reviews. He spoke to a mostly white audience at the Neshoba County (Miss.) Fair and declared support for states' rights. The outing may have helped him in a state that Carter narrowly carried in 1976, but it drew criticism from blacks. Neshoba County is where three civil-rights workers were slain by Ku Klux Klansmen in 1964 with the help of local lawmen."
• The Associated Press, Sept. 16: "It was the pulpit of the late Martin Luther King Jr., and Carter invoked his memory in urging that blacks exercise their hard-won right to cast ballots. 'You've seen in this campaign the stirrings of hate and the rebirth of code words like states' rights in a speech in Mississippi and a campaign reference to the Ku Klux Klan relating to the South,' Carter said. 'That is a message which creates a cloud on the political horizon.' "
• The Washington Post, Sept. 28: "Philadelphia, Miss., was the worst place in the world to mention 'states' rights.' Whatever the term might mean to Ronald Reagan now and whatever it might mean to others, it means something else to Jimmy Carter. It was always a code phrase for racism. It did not mean that the state had some sort of right to tell the government to shove it when it came to occupational safety. It meant, bluntly, that the state could deprive blacks of their civil rights and there wasn't a thing the federal government could do about it."
• The New York Times, Oct. 15: "Andrew Young, campaigning on behalf of President Carter, told an audience in Ohio last week that Ronald Reagan's advocacy of 'state's rights' in a speech last August in Philadelphia, Miss., 'looks like a code word to me that it's going to be all right to kill niggers when he's President.' " (The White House distanced itself from that one.)

I could go on (and on), but you get the idea. The point is that, despite what Brooks would like you to believe, Reagan's pit stop in Mississippi was one of the most controversial moments in the 1980 campaign. Liberals didn't start attacking Reagan over that visit a few months ago — they did it repeatedly 27 years ago.

You don't have to believe Reagan was a racist. You just have to look at the record. The truth is contained in Brooks' caveat; the main thrust of his column is a gross distortion.

More on Boston.com

Two more points about the redesigned Boston Globe site at Boston.com:

• Once you get past an ad and a few teasers (including one for "Government Center," a terrific resource that can be hard to find), a good chunk of the right-hand column is taken up with "Reporter's Questions" — possible future stories for which reporters are seeking information. This feature has been around for years, but I've never seen it displayed so prominently. All smart news organizations are looking for ways to build communities around their journalism, and this is one way to do it.
• The blogs may be getting short shrift on the Boston.com front, but they're being promoted heavily on the Globe page. Just scroll down the left-hand column a bit. So are the podcasts, which have been organized and promoted in such a way that I may give a few a try now.

Politics and the BPL

So what is the real reason that Bernard Margolis is being forced out of his job as president of the Boston Public Library? To read the Boston Globe's coverage, you'd think Margolis had all but ignored the neighborhood branches over the past 10 years. A Globe editorial endorses that view.

But a Boston Phoenix editorial this week places the blame squarely on Mayor Tom Menino, who reportedly has never liked Margolis, and who has decided to indulge his penchant for stacking his administration with loyalists rather than put up with an independent-thinking visionary.

According to the Phoenix, three BPL trustees held Menino off from acting on his worst instincts over the years — former Globe publisher William Taylor, former Massachusetts Senate and UMass president Bill Bulger and state Rep. Angelo Scaccia. But Taylor is no longer a trustee, Bulger and Scaccia have lost clout, and Menino is now free to do what he pleases.

Here's the heart of the editorial:

Now that Margolis's firing is about to be made official, the city is being treated to a campaign of disinformation suggesting that, while Margolis was good for the historic central library in Copley Square, his track record in the branches was lacking. This is rubbish, so out of line with reality that it approaches a big-lie strategy: tell a whopper with enough conviction and frequency and you can get the public to believe it. It will probably work. Also wrested out of context are recycled versions of Margolis's unwillingness to install Internet filters — except for children — on library computers. Free speech may be uncomfortable at times, but it should never be so in a library.

I covered the filter controversy for the Phoenix back in 1997, shortly after Margolis had arrived, and I was impressed with his sophisticated, sensitive approach. He easily could have sided with Menino and engaged in out-and-out censorship, or taken an absolutist free-speech view and refused to install any filters. Instead, he found intelligent middle ground.

Ten years is a long time to run a major cultural institution such as the BPL. If the trustees replace Margolis with someone of equal stature, but perhaps with a different set of priorities, then no harm will have been done except the damage that's already been unfairly visited upon Margolis' reputation.

But the Phoenix editorial makes a convincing case that Margolis is being let go for all the wrong reasons. Those of us who love libraries ought to be concerned.

Photo (cc) by seahills1. Some rights reserved.

Getting there

As I had assumed they would, the folks at Boston.com today unveiled a much more attractive look for the online version of the Globe. Yes, it's only cosmetic. But looks matter.

Casinofacts fundraiser

Someone was asking me a little while ago if the Casinofacts.org fundraiser is still on. Yes indeed. It's scheduled for next Thursday, Nov. 15, at 6:30 7 p.m. at the Fireside Grille in Middleborough. I'm supposed to speak at some point, but don't worry — I plan to keep it lite and short. Hope to see you there.

Fly me to the moon

My latest for the Guardian takes a look at why Dennis Kucinich is being treated like a raving nut for saying he once saw a UFO, while no one bats an eye at Mike Huckabee's rejection of evolution.

Trashing the competition

A few delivery drivers for the Boston Herald have found a surefire way to make their product stand out from the free competition, Metro Boston and BostonNOW: grab stacks of Metros and BostonNOWs and, you know, throw them out. Herald spokeswoman Gwen Gage tells Boston magazine that such tactics would never, ever be condoned at One Herald Square. (Via Romenesko.)

More thoughts on Boston.com

The FAQ that accompanies the redesigned Boston.com says that more change is coming: "Different features and sections of the site are scheduled to debut on different days. While we realize that this might be confusing in the short-term, we've studied our options carefully and believe that the gradual switch we have planned will ultimately result in a better user experience."

With that in mind, here are a few random observations offered in the hope that better things are yet to come.

The look. By switching from a tiny sans serif font to the same one used by corporate cousin NYTimes.com, the site is automatically more attractive and readable. I've heard complaints that the Boston.com front is too crowded. It is, but it's less crowded than before. The front also seems a bit newsier than it did previously, with the wacky, offbeat stuff moved farther down the page. The Boston Globe front would benefit from the same look, and I assume that's coming.

Split personality. One problem I've had with Boston.com for a long time is that the site comes across as very different from the electronic Globe. That stems in part from its legacy. Although the Globe has always been the driving force behind Boston.com, it started out as a partnership with media outlets such as Boston magazine, Banker & Tradesman and New England Cable News. These days, it's pretty much just the Globe, with video from NECN and New England Sports Network. But the split personality remains. Particularly frustrating is the fact that the Globe site conspires at every turn to dump you into Boston.com, whether you want to go there or not.

There are also cool features on Boston.com, like the "Government Center" collection of databases, that are maddeningly difficult to find.

Now, some of this is just a naming convention. Both NYTimes.com and washingtonpost.com let you choose that day's print edition, which isn't much different from Boston.com's letting you choose that day's Globe. But Boston.com has always struck me as flightier and more superficial, more separated from the core journalistic mission, than those other sites. As I said above, maybe that's changing. I hope so.

Sharing. The hot trend of the moment is technology that lets you share stories you like on various social networks. Washingtonpost.com is particularly strong on this, letting you post stories to Digg, del.icio.us, Reddit, Newsvine, Facebook and something called StumbleUpon, which is a new one on me. The Globe's options are relatively paltry, limited to just Digg, Facebook and del.icio.us.

Comments. As Adam Reilly notes, Boston.com still doesn't allow you to post comments to stories. I know that the issue has been one of computer capacity, but come on, folks - buy some servers. (Yes, the site does have message boards, but that's rather old-fashioned.)

More stories like what? I found a new feature this morning, but it needs some work. Example: Go to Shelley Murphy's story on MIT's lawsuit against the architect Frank Gehry, scroll down a bit, and you'll find a box titled "MORE STORIES LIKE THIS." Here's what you'll find:

• Patrick to consider replacing police details with flagmen
• United Tech profit up
• Massachusetts high schools vying to update old science labs
• State to study plans for school construction

Obviously the algorithm needs some work.

Almost forgotten. The link to Boston.com/Globe blogs has been moved to the very bottom of the Boston.com front, which doesn't strike me as a smart move. The outside blogs section needs serious updating. Let me point out just one example: Under "Politics & the media," you will not find Reilly's Don't Quote Me or David Bernstein's Talking Politics, both at ThePhoenix.com; Jessica Heslam's Messenger Blog, at BostonHerald.com; or (ahem) Media Nation.

With the Herald unveiling a redesign in September, we can see two different philosophies at work. The Herald has done something rather daring — it has almost completely broken the tie between its Web site and its print edition. Stories are posted blog-style, in reverse chronological order, throughout the day, with no differentiation made between wire copy and staff-written stories. It's impossible to know whether some of those stories ever made their way into the print edition. And though the Herald is not exactly rolling in cash, publisher Pat Purcell has somehow found enough computer capacity to allow comments.

That said, BostonHerald.com can be easier to admire than to use. You're constantly forced to drill down through submenus of submenus. I also find that I'm often missing stuff that I would have seen if I'd picked up a print edition. The solution I've hit upon — subscribing to RSS feeds for the sections of the paper I'm most interested in — isn't entirely satisfying, as I feel as though I'm missing the flavor of the site.

The philosophy at the Globe, on the other hand, is evidently to take the Globe as a starting point and to build on it. It comes across as being similar to NYTimes.com and washington.com, only not quite as smoothly implemented — at least not yet.

These are interesting times for newspapers. New circulation figures show that print continues its free-fall. At the same time, efforts are under way to find new ways of measuring total newspaper readership, online and in print. As my Northeastern colleague Steve Burgard tells the Globe today, "You've actually got more eyeballs looking at journalism than ever before."

By putting so much of their resources into the Web, executives at the Globe and the Herald show that they understand print's days are numbered.

A smart move

You already know how I feel, but it's good news that Curt Schilling is staying.

Pay for play

Here's one way to make local journalism pay: charge city-council candidates for covering them. Cambridge Chronicle reporter Erin Smith says Neil McCabe, who puts out a newsletter called The Alewife, did exactly that. And the Chronicle has an e-mail to a candidate, purportedly written by McCabe, with all the details.

Has Howie surrendered?

The trade publication All Access reports that the Howie Carr will return to WRKO (AM 680), an admission of defeat following the courts' refusal to let him jump to WTKK (96.9 FM) in violation of a provision in his now-expired contract. Brian Maloney of Save WRKO and Jessica Heslam of the Boston Herald have the details.

Maloney thinks Carr has been "humiliated." I disagree. But it is an admission on his part that he got incredibly bad advice in his attempt to shift to 'TKK's morning drive. As "Amusedbutinformedobserver" correctly points out, if Carr had simply let his contract with 'RKO run out, he could then have done anything he liked. Instead, the shift to 'TKK was announced while he was still under contract, and a provision that allowed 'RKO to match any other offer kicked in, to his detriment.

It looks like Boston radio could soon be back to the same as it ever was. I'd guess 'TKK will return to its previous schedule by picking up the new Imus show for morning drive and moving Michael Graham to a shift where no one will run the risk of actually hearing him.

About the only change in the offing is for the worse — Imus' loathsome former sidekick, Bernard McGuirk, remains at large, and could wind up at WRKO.

A better Boston.com

The Boston Globe's Web site, Boston.com, has unveiled a sparkling new design. Evaluating what's there and what isn't will have to wait, but my first impression is that this is much easier on the eyes.

The Globe's own home page hasn't changed, though I suspect it will. Choose any story, though, and you'll see a huge improvement.

My biggest question — and one I'll try to answer over the next day or so — is whether Dave Beard and company have managed to integrate Boston.com and the online version of the Globe better than they have in the past.

At first glance I'd say "not much." But Beard, in his letter to readers, promises, "The changes won't stop there."

Vennochi to Carr: Phone home

Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi absolutely nails Howie Carr and Tom Finneran today. She writes:

Other than the late Boston city councilor Jimmy Kelly and the ailing former city councilor Dapper O'Neil, I can't remember anything nice Carr has ever said or written about anyone.

His critiques go far beyond differences over ideology. His commentary is often rude and personal and he takes adolescent delight in mocking physical characteristics. His unflinching meanness undercuts an admirable willingness to take on the powerbrokers. But from a marketing perspective, Carr obviously knows what he's doing, as proven by the bidding war for his services.

At the same time, Finneran's long-winded odes to every establishment figure and cause in town cry out for an antidote. Finneran has the pol gene, which makes him congenitally unable to find fault with one of his own. Boston Mayor Tom Menino, Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley, the Boston firefighters or the Boston police — they are all heroes no matter what.

Vennochi predicts that Carr, who's been off the air since September, will eventually see the light and return to WRKO (AM 680), whose management has so far refused to let him out of his contract. She may be right.

I had thought that 'RKO would eventually let Carr move to WTKK (96.9 FM) in return for huge piles of cash. But there may be no pile large enough to compensate for what 'RKO would lose if Carr is allowed to take over the morning shift at 'TKK and compete head to head with the likable but hapless Finneran.

Beyond sweets and flowers

Listen in as Dick Cheney tries, in September 2002, to persuade Dick Armey that going to war against Iraq is a good idea:

We have great information. They're going to welcome us. It'll be like the American Army going through the streets of Paris. They're sitting there ready to form a new government. The people will be so happy with their freedoms that we'll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two.

I happen to think Cheney and President Bush actually believed this stuff. I'm not sure whether that's better or worse than the alternative explanation.

Zapping free speech

A brief Associated Press item (scroll down) in the Boston Globe this morning led me to the Rutland Herald, which reports that the police chief in Brattleboro, Vt., has been fired in part because of questions over the Tasering of two non-violent protesters last summer.

Herald reporter Susan Smallheer writes the following about an internal investigation that was conducted into former police chief John Martin's conduct:

The findings of fact repeatedly mention the Tasering of two protesters, who were then arrested and charged with unlawful trespass for refusing to leave private property on Putney Road. According to the findings of fact, Martin received a one-day suspension for failing to provide leadership to his officers during that incident.

According to the report, Martin was at home during the Tasering and arrests, or was already headed to a meeting in Montpelier with Vermont State Police. The town said Martin gave conflicting information about where he was that morning — at home or on the road.

The two protesters, Jonathan Crowell and Samantha Kilmurray, have since hired an attorney, who has said he plans to sue the town and the police department for excessive force.

This seems utterly unsurprising. Which is why I'm scratching my head over University of Florida student Andrew Meyer's decision to apologize and admit to wrongdoing over an incident in which he was Tasered at a speech by Sen. John Kerry earlier this fall.

You'll find the video here. Meyer was certainly being obnoxious, but that's not a crime. I'm not sure why Meyer, like Crowell and Kilmurray, isn't thinking about filing a lawsuit against the campus police.

Maybe there were previous offenses. The Independent Florida Alligator story doesn't say. But there's something here that just doesn't add up.

Rebel with a Kos

I've got a second piece in the Guardian this week, and it's on the Daily Kos, whose founder, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, gave the keynote speech at a conference last week at Boston University on "New Media and the Marketplace of Ideas." As you'll see, Moulitsas partied like it was 2003. Can't we all just get along?

Keeping Schilling and Lowell

The Boston Globe's Kevin Paul Dupont looks at the merits of keeping Mike Lowell, and adds to the conventional wisdom that Curt Schilling is as good as gone.

Well, it's not my money, and I understand Dupont's point that the Sox timed the departures of Pedro Martínez and Johnny Damon pretty impressively. But still — wouldn't it be worth overpaying Schilling if he'll agree to just a one-year deal, which he says he will? Certainly it would by crazy for the Sox to commit to eight figures for Schilling for 2009, but he says he's not looking for that. Just one more year. Let him do it here.

Lowell might be a tougher call. He just had his career year. If he puts up 2006 numbers next year, that would be great. I'd say four years would be too much, but two years would be perfect. But I'm sure Epstein and Lucchino would say the same thing, and Lowell's probably going to get a better offer. The question is whether a three-year deal makes sense. I guess I'd say yes, with the understanding that we may all regret it about midway into the 2010 season.

Gmail changes quietly

I noticed some changes to the Gmail interface yesterday as I was catching up on my mail. (That's not quite an accurate statement. I'm never caught up on my mail.) It seems slightly more attractive, and "Contacts" has been beefed up considerably. But it also seems to be slightly slower.

I switched to Gmail last spring, and, for the most part, I'm glad I did. My mail is now available on any machine on which I happen to find myself, and searching is lightning-fast — a real boon, given that I can't remember where I've filed anything. (Although Gmail's labels are much more flexible than folders.)

My one complaint: Gmail lets me set up several different identities, so that I can send outgoing mail so that it looks like I'm using either my Northeastern account or my personal account. But my official Gmail address, which I do not use, gets stamped on my mail anyway. That's led a few of my contacts to start using my Gmail address. I guess I'd put that in the "mildly annoying" category.

Nothing specific at the Gmail Blog about what's going on, although I suppose this is related somehow. Thoughts?

Bug alert! Unless I'm doing something wrong — always a possibility — it looks like you can't save changes in someone's contact information.

Good riddance to the cult of suffering

In my latest for the Guardian, I take on so-called Red Sox fans who are nostalgic for those losing days (and years, and decades) that preceded 2004. (Yes, that means you, Brian McGrory.) This actually went up on the Guardian's Web site Monday night, so apologies for not posting earlier.