Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Bigfoot lives, and he does social media!


Finally, a news organization not named The Star, the Enquirer or The Globe takes notice of Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch, whatever you want to call him.

It's about time, CBS News!
In the midst of the potent wind and heavy snow, a yeti was spotted roaming around the streets of Boston Monday night.

As the blizzard of 2015 howled in, Bostonians were told to stay off the roads. But as tall figure dressed in a white, fluffy costume with grey gloves embraced the storm, documenting its trip and calling itself the @BostonYeti2015 on Twitter.

The mythical abdominal snowman started its journey in Somerville at 10:48 pm.
HOWEVER, I strongly object to the use of the word "mythical."

Thursday, May 09, 2013

Time to publicly stick a sock in Ted's mouth

 
Ted Nugent is a taco shy of a combination plate.

This follows his being more than a generation shy of a hit record.

In light of this, I call for the public stuffing of a sock into the mouth of the has-been rock 'n' roll guitarist, sealing it with tar and smashing his computer and any other communications devices he may possess.


Because what's good for the goose is good for the verbally incontinent Motor City Madman, as demonstrated by this article on the Radio.com website:
Right-wing rocker Ted Nugent has taken to his column to call for the public hanging of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the now-charged Boston Marathon bombers.

The column, titled “Time To Stretch Neck Of Jihadist Punk,” was posted on the right wing website WND over the weekend. Stressing the need for quick justice, he (mostly) avoided his frequent talking points (fighting against gun control, criticizing Democrats and President Obama).

Using his usual colorful language, Nugent refers to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his now-killed brother Tamerlan using the term “voodoo” 13 times in his article, and calls for “stretching their necks” three times.

In the piece, he laments that Tsarnaev will likely spent years in custody before being sentenced: “Justice is supposed to be swift. At least that’s how our Founding Fathers thought it should be,” speculating that, 150 years ago “he would have been swinging from an oak tree in Boston Common no longer than 60 days from the date of his arrest. That would be justice.”

Nugent predicts: “He probably won’t go to trial for more than a year due to court-sanctioned delays. Once he’s found guilty, he will be afforded any number of appeals that will take more years, possibly more than a decade. The young voodoo nut has got a long life in front of him, thanks to America’s screwed-up justice system.”

He cites the trial of Nidal Malik Hasan, set to start May 29 (Hasan is accused of killing 13 soldiers and wounding 32 others at Fort Hood in 2009), as an example of crimes against Americans taking a long time to reach the court.

While “The Nuge” didn’t bring up gun control specifically (though he had a bit to say about it last week), he did note that Hasan’s “voodoo-inspired rampage” took place “in yet another gun-free zone.” Nugent added, “I would have supplied the rope, the lumber for the gallows and gladly pulled the hatch on this soulless rabid dog.”
TED NUGENT -- and this is the kindest thing you can say about the man after his repeated whacked-out, incendiary outbursts about, well, everything . . . particularly all things political -- is a thought-challenged hothead. This is reason enough not to take him seriously, much less not give him a column.

It's also plenty reason enough to just shake your head and say "There goes ol' Crazy Ted again. That ol' boy just ain't been right after he slipped into irrelevance after "Cat Scratch Fever." But that's not who we are today. Today, we take our nuts seriously, giving them all the more opportunity to act bat-s*** crazy.

That would make a large chunk of America almost as cat-scratch crazy as ol' Ted.

Of course, when you're cat-scratch crazy, you don't think of things like subverting due-process to get quicker vengeance (and it is vengeance Nugent desires, which is quite a different thing than justice) against a suspect in a terrorist bombing ultimately would pave the way for subverting due-process and other constitutional guarantees to get at you and me should we fall in disfavor with the government.

No, you don't think about such things when you're ol' Crazy Ted . . . or the people who still take him seriously.

By Nugentian standards of justice, ol' Crazy Ted would be playing air guitar in a cage at Guantanamo after saying this at last year's National Rifle Association convention in support of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.



BUT NO. After having a little heart-to-heart with arguably America's nuttiest musical has-been, the Secret Service thought about it and figured "That's just ol' Crazy Ted being ol' Crazy Ted." Thus, ol' Crazy Ted gets to go on saying patently nutty things to a national audience, thanks to the constitution Nugent says he reveres but seeks to subvert in the name of "patriotism."

If Dzhokhar Tsarnayev is found guilty in the terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon, the killing of one Massachusetts policeman and wounding of another, as well as the carjacking of a civilian, he will -- in due time and after due process -- get what's coming to him. That would be thanks to our constitution, our system of criminal justice . . . and to due process.

It will be no thanks at all to hotheaded nutjobs like Ted Nugent, or to Americans who think the man has anything to say that's worth hearing.

Monday, March 14, 2011

Simply '70s: News for the hard of hearing


In October 1973, Broadcasting magazine reported on how Boston's public-television station would begin captioning the nightly network news for the hard of hearing.

This lasted a while, but a couple of years later NBC came up with a better method of making TV news accessible for those with hearing difficulties.


The new technique certainly beat slaving over a hot Vidifont keyboard for hours and hours every night, and it offered the possibility of real-time translation -- as opposed to every newscast being delayed for hours while being captioned.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Getting a kick out of journalism?

Geez, I would have picked Howie Carr as the Boston Herald staffer most likely to attack an old man.

BUT NOOOOOO. Cops in a Boston suburb say it was another Herald reporter who mistook an emphysemic, 74-year-old man for a cage-match opponent.

The Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Mass., has
the tale of the tape:
GROVELAND — A Boston Herald crime reporter is charged with kicking an elderly man with emphysema in the chest at a local laundromat, police said.

O'Ryan Johnson, 33, of 293 E St., South Boston, faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, a shod foot, on a person over the age of 65.

Witnesses told police that Johnson asked for help with a washing machine at Classic Cleaners Laundromat at 4 Elm St. Tuesday afternoon. When Kent White, 74, of Georgetown approached to help, witnesses said words were exchanged and Johnson began swearing at the elderly man.

Johnson then kicked the 5 foot 6 inch, 130-pound victim in the chest, witnesses told police.

"The victim doesn't remember what he said and then Johnson started swearing at him," Deputy police Chief Jeff Gillen said. "The victim backed away and Johnson ran at him, kicking him in the chest."

Gillen said the attack was especially brutal considering White's size and lack of threat to Johnson. Johnson is 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighs 160 pounds, according to court records. Johnson, a former Eagle-Tribune reporter, recently wrote a story for the Boston Herald about his experience as an amateur boxer.
JOHNSON'S EDITORS refused to comment on speculation that the Boston Globe chapter of the Newspaper Guild was trying to hire the crime writer away from the Herald to head up its ongoing negotiations with the New York Times Co.


HAT TIP: Romenesko on Poynter Online.

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Stoning school buses by other means?


Why say something intelligent when you can just demonize people?

Probably because stereotyping and demonizing sells when you're an also-ran Boston newspaper during these "interesting times," in the Chinese-curse meaning of the words. At least I'm sure that's what columnist Howie Carr and his Boston Herald editors must have been thinking when they learned the commonwealth of Massachusetts has been giving used cars to select welfare recipients who need wheels to get work.

YOU WANT TO SEE a prime example of the "Culture of Death" that has nothing directly to do with abortion? Here you go:
Let the taxpayers worry about those billion-dollar deficits. If you’re on welfare, come on down!

Nice enough that the layabouts get a free car - plus the state picks up the tab for insurance, excise tax, title, registration, inspection, and approved repairs. The absolute frosting on the cake is a free AAA membership.

Please, try not to let this newest handout destroy your faith in the truth of the budget crisis. You’re just angry because you can’t afford AAA. But your average welfare leech needs guaranteed road service a
lot more than you do.

Don’t you hate it when you’re fleeing a department store after utilizing the five-finger discount, and the store security and the mall cops are in hot pursuit, and you jump in your Coupe DeVille and it won’t start. Damn!

Of course the gimme girls and gals need Triple-A for their welfare Cadillacs. (And yes, I understand they’re not really Cadillacs. Only the governor gets a Caddy on the arm.) You can’t expect a body to walk to the packy for their nightly supply of forties, can you?

Supposedly, these free welfare cars will enable the non-taxpayer to get a job. If they lose the job, the state comes down hard on them -- we the taxpayers will not reimburse the cost of insurance after the first six months. If the client quits work or is laid off during the first 12 months, all transportation benefits end, but the client will still keep the car.


But, but . . . what about the Triple-A? That’s an entitlement, you know. Has anybody got a phone number for the ACLU?

A lot of snotty people at the Boston Globe are going to be unemployed very shortly. Finally, a ray of hope for the bow-tied bumkissers. Maybe they, too, will be eligible for a welfare Cadillac.
GIVEN THAT YANKEE BOSTON fought school desegregation harder in 1974 than did many Southern cities previously or subsequently -- complete with the stoning of school buses full of black students and attacks on the police guarding them -- you'd think newspaper columnists in Beantown might be humble enough to tread carefully through this country's minefields of race, class and poverty.

You'd think that, but you'd be wrong.

Instead, Carr hops aboard a steamroller and assaults that minefield where race, class and poverty gets jumbled in a gumbo of statistical probabilities, stereotypes, reality and stubborn racism. And where there lie legitimate questions of policy, equity and the best use of scarce taxpayer dollars, the columnist decides to become something of a "layabout" himself.

WHY PUT TOGETHER a thoughtful piece full of thoughtful criticism when you can sign up for the pundit's dole and take a leisurely trip down the road angrily traveled? Why call state officials and ask some hard questions (or propose some sensible alternatives) when you can go all "Southie" on
"the gimme girls and gals" who, no doubt, all are "fleeing a department store after utilizing the five-finger discount."

Why not lump every single recipient of public assistance together as bums and trash in a hateful orgasm of invective?

Well, I'll concede that Howie Carr and his Herald editors know their audience better than I do. Maybe hate and outrage is what sells in their corner of the New and Improved America.

But it sure is sad to think --35 whole years after South Boston and other neighborhoods went all George Wallace on a bunch of black kids -- that continuing to act, and write, like a bunch of lawless white trash can't get you "banned in Boston."