So there was Sen. John Kerry (D-Am I Secretary of State Yet?) at Gillette Stadium rubbing elbows in the owner’s box with Robert Kraft and, presumably, girlfriend Ricki Noel Landed – sorry, Lander – and rubbing etc. on the field with Bill Belichick.
Clearly this called for some scrutiny by the local dailies and, true to form, they dug right in.
The Boston Globe’s Glen Johnson went this way (web only) . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
As the hardreading staff at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town noted a couple of weeks ago, there are subterranean rumblings about Scott Brown (R-I Just Cleaned My Garage) running not for the U.S. Senate seat John Kerry (D-What Garage? I Just Moved the Hydrant) is vacating, but for Massachusetts Governor.
Latest rumbling? This piece from Politico:
Why Scott Brown might run for governor, not Senate
It’s not often an ex-senator gets a shot at his old job just months after losing. So Scott Brown is widely expected to jump at the chance, running in a special election for John Kerry’s seat that presumably will become vacant within weeks.
But there are compelling reasons for Brown to pass on what would be his third Senate campaign in four years — and he’s thinking long and hard about them.
Topping the list: In 2014, he could run instead for Massachusetts governor, a job that Republicans have had much more success winning and keeping, as Mitt Romney can attest.
“The tug of history is toward a gubernatorial run,” the piece says. “Bay State Republicans simply fare much better running for state offices than federal offices.” Beyond that:
“You don’t have all that national gunk on you” running for governor, said Richard Tisei, the former minority leader of the state Senate who lost a congressional race in November. “People tend to look at you more as an individual. The national brand is hard to overcome in the state.”
Even if Brown did win the upcoming special election, the Politic piece concludes, a loss in the “higher-turnout [2014 general election] could end his political career.”
Wouldn’t want that now, would we?
Politico’s air-castle speculation comes hard on the heels of this Glen Johnson item in Sunday’s Boston Globe:
For all the talk of Brown running for governor of Massachusetts in 2014, instead of the US Senate this year (and again in 2014, when Kerry’s term expires), there is a practical hurdle to that: a $500 limit on individual contributions to state political candidates.
A hallmark of Brown’s two Senate campaigns has been prolific fund-raising, starting with his January 2010 special election campaign. He finished with a $7.2 million balance that gave him a running start for his 2012 reelection campaign.
In his race with Warren, Brown raised another $30 million. Warren took in $42 million herself, making their campaign the most expensive Senate race in Massachusetts history.
Both candidates benefited from the $2,500 limit on federal donations. Simply put, they could collect more money from fewer people, a 5-to-1 ratio over what candidates in state elections can collect.
Were he to mount a gubernatorial campaign, Brown would be prohibited from transferring any money left in his federal campaign account.
And then there’s this Kimberly Atkins column from Monday’s Boston Herald:
Scott keeps us all guessing
First, there’s the silent waiting game he’s playing before announcing whether he’ll throw his hat in the ring for the upcoming special Senate election, leaving his party in limbo as the Dem ocrats mobilize, raise funds and prepare for battle. Brown’s silence is causing some Republicans to wonder whether he’ll skip the race in favor of a gubernatorial bid next year, a move that would leave the party scrambling to find another candidate.
Atkins has the opposite conclusion from Politico: “The Senate race, according to both Republicans and Democrats I’ve talked to, is his best shot at a victory.”
To recap:
Scott Brown. Senate race? Gubernatorial race?
Welcome to the Scott Brown Experience.
By the way, good name for a rock band.
(Tip o’ the pixel: Dave Barry.)
So this popped up today in the UK & World News app on the hardworking staff’s cellphone:
Puppy thrown at German biker gang
A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.
Excellent!
In its detail-rich brevity, the item reminded us of turn-of-the-century French journalist/anarchist Félix Fénéon, who in 1906 wrote the faits divers column – “known in hackdom as chiens écrasés (‘run-over dogs’)” according to Julian Barnes – for Le Matin.
He had at his disposal the wire services, local and provincial newspapers, and communications from readers. He composed up to twenty of these three-line fillers in the course of his evening shift. They were printed – unsigned, of course – and read for a quick smile or breath-intake or head-shake, and then forgotten. They would not have been identifiable from the general mass of faits divers had not Fénéon’s mistress, Camille Plateel, dutifully cut out his contributions – all 1220 of them – and stuck them in an album (his wife apparently did the same).
Many of them are now collected in Novels in Three Lines, which – appropriately – has its own Twitter feed.
Representative samples:
In a way you could say Fénéon was one of the first micro-bloggers.
Oh, yes – and that canine assault story? Even though it appeared in the “Current articles” section of UK & World News, turns out it’s actually from 2010.
Pas de problème! Fénéon would have loved it anyway.
TechPresident presents the gun barrel of targeted exposure:
The Guns and Gun Data Debate, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love the End of Privacy
That mantra has been repeated often around here. Public equals online. Make government documents into computer files that programmers can easily parse and synthesize. Take information about government, or held by government, and turn it over so that the people of the Internet can use it to explain the world to the rest of us. In November 2010, when the Sunlight Foundation* decided to make a go at inserting that credo into the midterm elections, this was an uncontroversial request to make: Public should equal online. If it’s already “public record,” put it on the Internet. What’s the difference?
As soon as 2013 began, the Lower Hudson Journal-News offered a reminder. While “public equals online” is uncomplicated where “public record” is concerned, the inverse is also true. Online equals public.
The issue here is public figure versus private citizen. And journalist versus Internet scraper . . .
Read the rest at Sneak Adtack.
The hardreading staff yields to no man in its respect for the journalism at the Boston Globe. But this Sunday’s edition struck us as a bit odd.
Page One, via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages:
The Medicare windfall piece? Excellent.
Then there’s the Camp Menino feature, which reads like a really long press release from City Hall.
Not to mention this OCD graphic of Tom Menino’s rehab floor plan at the city-financed Parkman House . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
From Politico’s Playbook:
N.Y. TIMES GOES CRUISING: A full-page ad in Friday’s Times offers a “European Cruise” from Oct. 12-24 (England to Paris to Bordeaux to Spain to Portugal) with Elisabeth Bumiller talking defense, Timothy Egan talking opinion and David Sanger talking foreign policy: “Join a community of Times readers, journalists and speakers in an educational travel program of learning, discussion, exploration and deep relation. … Cruise rates vary from $1,699 for an Interior Stateroom to $8,499 for a Royal Suite, per person. … For those attending our program, there is a $1,675 fee.” Upcoming Times Journeys cruises will be going to the Eastern Caribbean and Patagonia.
See the ad here.
And all this time the hardworking staff thought those cheesy tours were the exclusive province of opinion magazines like The Weekly Standard and The Nation (they even use the same website and cruise line!).
Obviously, we were wrong.
An outfit called Medifast is currently running this commercial on cable networks:
How’d they do that?
Business Insider had the answer:
Filming began in January of last year with a group of Medifast customers who were willing to commit to the diet. They were told to imagine themselves after they had lost weight, and then told to ask themselves about it, what it was like to be thin. On the set, the actual conversation took place with a nutritionist.
Then, nine months later, the folks who had lost the most weight were asked back. “You have to shoot essentially the same commercial twice, and you have to have the camera in the exact same location at the beginning and at the end,” Sorenson says. Even the position of the furniture was logged.
With newly thin Tina sitting in the other chair, she then responded to the questions she had asked herself back in January. “It wasn’t very scripted at all,” Sorenson says. In the first session, Tina had experienced “a pretty emotional day on the set,” Sorenson says, which naturally became TV gold once she returned in fall looking like a million dollars.
The spot reminded the hardworking staff of this YouTube video, which is also creepy:
Then again, it’s been viewed over nine million times.
So what do we know?
The Boston Public Library’s terrific Building Boston “citywide celebration of Boston’s public spaces” (which includes the fascinating Palaces for the People exhibit, reviewed here by the hardlooking staff), notched another success with yesterday’s Druker lecture – Celebrating Art and Design – by Elizabeth Diller.
Elizabeth Diller is a founding principal of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, an interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. DS+R’s projects include the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Lincoln Center expansion and renovation, the High Line in New York, the Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro, the Blur Building in Switzerland, the Broad Museum in Los Angeles, and the recently awarded Columbia University Business School.
In a packed Abbey Room, Diller delivered a captivating address that illustrated (after overcoming some tedious technical difficulties) the eye-popping work of her design firm in both museum exhibits and architectural developments.
It’s all about space-making, from The Blur Building at Swiss Expo 2002 (“inside nothing to see and nothing to do”) to the New York High Line today (“introducing New Yorkers to the radical idea of doing nothing – you can only walk or sit”).
Diller also highlighted the firm’s work for the Broad Museum, the Hirshhorn (“the museum architects love to hate”), and their first architectural commission – Boston’s ICA – which presented the problem of “speaking in the voice of the museum instead of misbehaving in its space.”
(See Diller Scofidio’s Whitney retrospective for misbehaving details.)
The firm’s current Quixotic projects include the beleaguered Museum of Image and Sound in Rio de Janeiro and the Culture Shed along New York’s High Line.
(Diller assured the audience that the firm has a “Head of Money-Losing Operations” to keep them focused on projects that justify themselves, in addition to high-paying developments.)
All of which come down to “democratic space, publicness, and reconnecting cultural institutions to cities.”
That’s all good, yes?
According to our dogged local tabloid, Dennis (Call Me Javert) Lehane is giving up the Brookline canine patrol for his runaway pooch Tessa.
From today’s Boston Herald (web edition):
Lehane says he’ll take down missing dog fliers
Crime scribe Dennis Lehane says he’ll take down the fliers volunteers have posted around Brookline in the quest to find his missing dog after the town said they violated town bylaws.
“I can see the town of Brookline’s point. And there’s no reason we should expect preferential or selective treatment because of my last name,” Lehane said today in the statement.
The town yesterday told Lehane that the hundreds of fliers put up all over town had to be taken down by Monday.
But wait! There’s more! . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
No Hall of Fame inductees for you!
And – wait for it – very different takes in the local dailies.
Dan Shaughnessy’s Thursday Boston Globe column:
A Hall of Fame ballot without a whiff of PED usage
The poison ballot remained on my desk, unopened until Dec. 31.
I knew what was in there. Hardball anthrax. Nothing could be gained from tearing it open. Only bad things could come of it . . .
Read the rest at It’s Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town.
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