Cracker Talks Jive

By media farm

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WHAT TO MAKE of Howie Carr's Sunday column? In the midst of an otherwise tired and unremarkable two-minute meditation on Governor Deval Patrick's million-dollar book deal, Carr dropped this book title suggestion: "Slaughterhouse Jive."

Now, Howie is a cold, self-aggrandizing genital wart of a human being. That's not news. But what is worth noting is that Howie seems to be perfectly comfortable playing the kind of overtly racial hand that wouldn't fly anywhere else.

The "jive" comment carries a brand of seething malevolence that's far nastier than the usual lazy spite Howie writes with. It also seems to delight in striking a racially loaded stance that would be unacceptable from any other publication in town, or any other personality. Imagine Andy Hiller getting on TV and dropping "jive" into a discussion about the governor. His head would be on the guillotine before he went off air. But race-baiting is somehow acceptable from Howie, because it's unexpected. (This is the same guy who, back in November, inexplicably labeled Ralph Martin an "establishment black.") And the Herald seems to tolerate it because the old cracker is too important to its bottom line.

DID YOU SEE this Globe story from Saturday? This Somerville guy, Jeff Deck, is cruising the country in a beat-up Nissan and attacking bad grammar.

"I figured, Steinbeck had his dog and Kerouac had his drugs. I'd have my typos," said the 28-year-old Deck of what he calls his Typo Hunt Across America tour ...

"We're not going after people in a self-righteous manner, like fashion police. Or trying to make them look stupid," Deck said. "Instead, we're addressing specific errors like confusing 'its' for 'it's' or 'you're" for 'your.' Finding and correcting these, even every once in a while, is incredibly satisfying."  

How ridiculous is that? What's the use in publicly shaming a person for their own semi-illiteracy in the English language? It's so self-serving, and we'll have none of it.

Instead, let's check in on this mayoral non-race we're all fixated on lately. Herald columnist and frequent English language user Peter Gelzinis, your thoughts, please.

"About 15 or 20 minutes after then-Gov. Bill Weld persuaded Ralph Martin to turn Republican and made him DA of Suffolk County, people started to wonder how long before Boston had it's first African-American mayor."

SIC, SIC, SIC! Jesus, Peter. And doubly Jesus H, Peter's copyeditors. Could you at least finish your lead sentence before the language-mangling begins? That's the part that people actually read.

ONE OF MEDIA FARM'S DRINKING BUDDIES suggested something remarkable lately—that Adrian Walker's writing is no different now, post-DUI and alcohol education sentence, than it was when the columnist was careening around Boston's roadways in a company car (allegedly!). Drunk or not (reportedly!), the guy can't seem to argue his way out of a paper bag. (DUI raps are another matter; perhaps Walker's lawyer should take over his Tuesday-Friday column duties.)

Case in point: Last week's postmortem on Ralph Martin's flirtation with Tom Menino's seat. It featured the usual wild three-lane sweeps of logic, arguments that straddle the median line for miles and stumbling, uneasy-on-its-feet prose that we've all come to know and not love. Media Farm celebrated Walker's DUI arrest, if only because it seemed to give the columnist an out (habitually boozing, maybe glued to his barstool for weeks on end) for being shamefully deplorable at his own job. Guess that theory's out of play.

To his credit, Walker did manage to land this shot at Michael Flaherty: "True, he has a formidable fund-raising operation—for a councilor." Goddamn! That's a hell of a one-liner—for a hateful hack.

HERE'S AN INTERESTING, though not necessarily uplifting, confluence of punditry. Compare Steve Bailey's farewell column with the nut of Eric Alterman's recent New Yorker essay on newspapers' future. And try to stay inside the window.

Bailey: "Flawed though they are, newspapers are our town common, the place where we meet, learn about one another, and debate what is right and what is not. They amuse us, and they anger us. And to the extent that people opt out of that common conversation, we are the lesser for it."

Alterman: "The transformation of newspapers from enterprises devoted to objective reporting to a cluster of communities, each engaged in its own kind of 'news'—and each with its own set of 'truths' upon which to base debate and discussion—will mean the loss of a single national narrative and agreed-upon set of 'facts' by which to conduct our politics."