How about that breakfast yesterday? Each year Jack Hart earns more of my respect. He reminds of an Irish Ray Romano type uncomfortably hosting the grade school auction because his wife made him.
Also, his house must be chaos on breakfast morning with all those daughters running around. Total freakin’ drama i bet. If Jack is a true Irishman his blood pressure should be reaching batting average numbers by the time he leaves the house.
Unless of course he stays somewhere else on breakfast eve. ‘Let the wife deal with it. I gotta ton of shit on my mind.”
The best line of the day was Menino’s “I remember when this breakfast was funny”. (more on him later)
But because this is BMG I must start by preaching my perspective on Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren’s performance.
Scott Brown is a total dick. Period. For the sake of argument let’s say Elizabeth Warren is, as he pointed out yesterday, an elitist. That doesn’t lessen Scott’s captain-of-the-football-team-MTV-immature-cool-kids-table-womaen-want-him-men-want-tobe-him attitude.
Just as I was warming up to him and getting down on Lizzie I was immediately reminded why I thought him to be such a putz.
This guy is so thin skinned that surgeons used an onion peeler to remove his appendix.
This guy is so touchy he could qualify as a level one sex offender.
This guy is so in love with himself that his cologne is made from his recycled farts.
This guy is so dumb that he thinks Howie Carr will never stab him in the back.
This guy is so stupid that in honor of Evacuation Day he gave himself a Fleet enema.
Oh, and btw, his family is better than ours’. Just ask him. Hey Scott, there is fatherly pride and there are obnoxious families. Don’t be the latter. We get it. Ayla sings.
Scott’s joke about Lizzie finding her way out of Cambridge sounded like a fresh college kid teasing the lady living next door to the frat house when she complains about empty beer bottles in her yard.
Wow Scott, thanks to you the other frat brothers are laughing so hard at her expense. Or are they laughing at you Scott?
His joke about Sal was unnecessary.
Anyway, point being November is a long long time from now. Perhaps underneath the tough-life-growing-up-after-school-special he’s been selling is an elitist to the umpth degree. Perfect time to talk to people who saw him everyday at Tufts and Wakefield High. Do we really want to send an obtuse and overaged BMOC back to the U.S. Senate?
There are different kinds of elitist. I put Scott Brown in the Roger Clemens camp of elitists. Clueless as to what a loser he is no matter how many awards and fans he acquires.
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The Breakfast. My word.
In 1994 a Boston firefighter named Stephen Minehan died fighting a fire on a pier near City Square in Charlestown. A Marriott there now. Minehan was based out of the station on Boylston Street iacross from the Hynes. He left a young family behind.
As we all know firefighters, like police officers, are as good as good can be when looking out for long term needs of the families of fallen colleagues. But we also know there is always some extra help needed along the way.
So in came the legendary Charlie Sarkis of restaurant and Wonderland Dog Track fame and attempted to set-up a special something for the family with the help of some of the other large scale operations in the area. Sarkis and his Boston Restaurant Group owned just about every other restaurant in the Back Bay at the time.
The savvy Sarkis, a son of a notorious bookmaker (nothing wrong with that) sees people as individuals. This time he got schooled by the mucky-mucks. . In a resounding “No” Charlie was told that they don’t give to individuals or families in need. Only causes and charities. Eventually, after all the bullshit, some of the money will trickle down to individuals that may needs it.
I like to keep this story in mind. It explains so much.
Yesterday’s breakfast started with a Catholic invocation which included a reminder of our blessings and the suffering of the less fortunate: the sick, the lonely, the old, etc. who have personal needs. Not policy needs. (this is a rant for another time, but mostly what I ever heard from Catholic teachings was help the downtrodden. Not money. Not values. Not abortion. Just help the poor bastards who need it. Then came the money and and other shit as more of an ‘oh, by the way no fucking’.)
So when we see this soldier begging not to be sent back for his fourth tour of duty for many valid reasons and is told “tough shit” we understand why it happened. The needs and concerns of individuals do not exist in government. (many other places too) Each one of us is disposable and it’s genuinely accepted.
“Hey Ernie, are you tripping? Ya really off on a tangent here.”
Contraire mon frere. My point is that yesterday’s breakfast showcased the biggest bunch of self-absorbed and out of touch losers, with exceptions, I have seen in awhile.
Mayor Menino has completely lost his marbles. Was he channelling Andy Kaufman yesterday doing everything he could to get the audience to hate him. What a fucking jerk. Really. And I like the guy.
His routine was 90% crap letting us know how indestructible he is.
Hey Tom, on behalf of the many people that do like you and/or you don’t have a grudge with, “FUCK YOU!! Time to leave”.
Even if you were putting us on.
And then of course Deleo and Terry Murray need to remind everyone who has the real power. “Let’s redo redistricting” quipped DeLeo while Terry Murray joked in a video that she “calls all the shots”.
Self-indulgent and out of touch crap. Our mayor, our senate president, and out speaker looked out on the audience yesterday and gazed into the TV cameras and didn’t see individuals. Just actors in their personal movies.
Enough of this bullshit. Really.
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Hey anyone notice the phony baloney award Brian McGrory got for being an outstanding metro columnists or something? Are you kidding me? Brian McGrory? Why not Yvonne Abraham? She is by far a better metro columnist than McGrory. So is Adrian Walker, another under-rated columnist. Abraham’s column yesterday on the 86 year old cab driver was the standard A-1 stuff she’e been spitting out.
McGrory on the other hand is becoming another Dan Rea. Adding absolutely nothing to the discussion.
BTW Brian, Weymouth v. Hingham is so lame. But is does explain much. Zero street smarts. Really. You grew up in a town, yes a town, whose only reasons to exist are a closed military base and a place to drive through on the way to the Cape.
Brian, did you know how lame and bow-tied like you sounded when you ripped the western Mass town of Ludlow for being a bunch of hillbillies? Man you are dumb. Other than having lunch and dinners with big honchos and then writing about it, what makes you so in-the-know?
And other than you and the occasional hockey player that fucks up his chances what has Weymouth produced?
Brian has always done what the Globe wants. I have no problem with that. Gotta make a living. But lets not make him out to be something he’s not and remember what he is: Morrissey Boulevard’s house mick.
I read your stuff, Ern.
H.L. Peary, I think, pointed out how Scott Brown couldn’t laugh at Warren’s jokes. I thought some of her stuff was a little harsh, but he’s a real cheapskate when the laugh’s are at his expense. To actually know this guy is to not like him.
I thought the rank and file breakfasters were really not wanting to like Warren. I know some of the pols knew Scott from Beacon Hill, but I expect more partisanship. We are Democrats, right.
Here’s my new theory: the breakfast is supposed to be about humility. The powerful, brought low and reminded of their roots by gentle and sometimes not-so-gentle humor. Menino or anyone else joking about how powerful they are just doesn’t work.
I wonder if Banned in Boston is the new breakfast, so to speak.
3 hours of jokes that aren’t funny, I’m on board with your theory. In fact, most of the speakers should be ashamed.
n/t
McGrory’s point about Weymouth is precisely that it isn’t pretentious. Hingham empirically is. I found it kinda odd Ernie wants to hang some elitism label on McGrory, a Jackson Square guy. Full disclosure: I am, too; a parishioner of Kay’s Kathedral.
I once met a guy from Main Street in Hingham who claimed he did not know how to get to Jackson Square…about a mile away. Sure, we had an inferiority complex in that we couldn’t see why they were superior. But they surely thought so. Whatever…
Oh, McGrory is related on his father’s side to Mary McGrory, the columnist for WaPo (as I recall), so I suppose that’s elitist.
Oh, and Frank Lloyd Wright is, because he lived there for awhile, something Weymouth “produced”, along with Abigail Smith Adams. Just for the record.
McGrory’s piece on Ludlow was elitist crap. He went into town, interviewed a few people not in the know, and made them look stupid. It was the douchiest piece I think I’ve ever read in the Globe.
I might even have gone further to say that each one of us is disposable unless we are politcally connected to the folks invited to the breakfast. In that case, our needs are taken seriously.
Ernie said: “So when we see this soldier begging not to be sent back to his fourth tour for many valid reasons and is told “tough shit” we understand why it happened. The needs and concerns of individuals does not exist in government. Each one of us is disposable and it’s genuinely accepted.”
We take our soldiers, many just national Guardsmen, and send them to a hell hole where the population does not want or welcome us there…not for one tour, not for two, or three…four tours of duty in hell…they lose their homes and jobs, their families are stressed to the limit…they see their comrades blown to pieces to supposedly save people who don’t want our saving for oil companies and corrupt despots who don’t deserve the blood of our children….then we see the headlines when a soldier cracks and causes mayhem…when they put this man on trial, I hope the politicians who sent him there are forced to stand with him in the dock…the shame is on them.
My best friend from childhood who I still talk to even though we aren’t as close as we used to be is shipping off to Kandahar with the Guard in September, I hope to God we got the hell out of there before then. He is gung ho, a Brown supporter to boot, and eager to get in the thick of things and volunteered. But still, I want him to stay home so bad. Time to get out of there.
It was a lot funnier when Billy was cracking wise.
George Bush Jr was the ultimate Frat house dick and he weaseled his way into office all the same.
Now, Former State Senator Brown is a jackwad par excellence but he has done nothing to break his compact with the voters by way of scandal, just because us progressives loathe him doesn’t make him an easy mark this fall.
I’m expecting a close and very very very hard fought campaign that is gonna turn on a plethora of tangible and intangible factors, but whatever else happens Brown will not lose this election for us, we have to take it from him by main strength.
Because either we are quit of him this year or else we will never be free of him til his bloated ego sends him up to New Hampshire and their Presidential Primary.
Elias