Oy. I have to thank Shirley Leung (who should know better), Michael Jonas (who should know better) and Brian McGrory (don’t know what he knows) for elevating the level of debate on the Olympics. Slow clap, everyone.
First, Leung wrote a stupid and insulting column, the kind that sometimes columnists-on-deadline think is amusing: Chockful of ad hominem, stereotyping and extravagant characterization. It was titled “Dear USOC: We really do want to host the games” — the super-clever part being that all evidence and good sense says exactly the opposite. And yet:
We love to hate.
We love to complain.
… It takes time for Bostonians to come around on anything. The Big Dig spanned four decades from proposal to completion. Rebuilding the Boston Garden took nearly three decades. All the while we moaned and groaned.
etc. Did you catch that the Big Dig is actually a positive reason to take on this Leviathan? Leung concedes the actual substance of the debate in favor of a few hundred words of nanna-nanna-boo-boo. It was … a sub-standard column. Dumb and forgettable, but even a good writer will cough up a hairball now and again.
Ach, Commonwealth’s Michael Jonas had to respond in kind:
Just … no. Stop. Bad idea. Screeeech to a halt.
I can’t say for sure that Jonas wouldn’t have used the “cheerleader” tag on a male columnist. But yes, it’s different when the columnist is a woman. That criticism really did not need gendering — intentional or not. Was it sexist? Kinda sounded that way.
… Doubtless eager to change the subject from Leung’s original (crappy) oeuvre, Globe Managing Editor Brian McGrory lashes out vs. Jonas and Commonwealth:
Dear Greg and Bruce,
I’m stunned that you saw fit to publish Michael Jonas’s juvenile opinion piece about Globe columnist Shirley Leung on Friday. It’s certainly not the vapidity of the post that’s so concerning, though let’s take a look at that as well.
On that front, Mr. Jonas seems shocked that Shirley would deviate from the deeply grooved mindset of virtually all local opinion writers that the Olympic bid is an awful idea that will lead to billions of dollars in unplanned public spending. Mr. Jonas, from the safety of the press pack, implies that Shirley is in some bizarre way a shill because she chooses to have an open mind.
“Stunned”! “Vapidity”! “Vapidity”!! [weeping, pounding table]
Oh Ghod, the old “open mind” defense, where denying the facts in front of your face and handwaving your way past all objections = “independence”! Where “making people upset” = “must be doing something right”! Whatever gets you through the night, Brian.
McGrory goes on to point to Leung’s professional background and character:
“a Princeton graduate, Wall Street Journal alumnus, former Globe business editor, one of the most influential and widely read columnists in Boston, and currently a finalist for the prestigious Gerald Loeb award … “
Barf? Barf.
Who cares about that if her argument is sheer bunkum? File under ad hominem fallacy. (Ted Cruz went to Princeton.)
FAIL. Reset. Try again, everyone.
hesterprynne says
This is not the first column — or even the second column — that Leung has devoted to blaming us reluctant hosts, making the page one treatment on this occasion even less deserved:
April 1: Boston 2024’s Problem? It’s not John Fish, it’s us.
January 9: Instead of saying No, let’s try being open to Olympics possibility.
Charley on the MTA says
One simply has to show us a realistic scenario where we host the Olympics and we’re not out a few $billion just for the privilege of hosting — and upending every other civic priority in the meantime. In other words, I guess you’d have to prove that *our* Olympics will be like no other Olympics in recent memory.
OK, maybe it’s not that simple.
Ryan actually put it very elegantly and decently a few weeks ago. Leung should live up to his good example and dispense with the name-calling and ad hominem. I mean, “We’re [they’re] against the Olympics because we’re [they’re] a bunch of douchebags” doesn’t really explain much, does it?
One has to ask: With columns like that one, is Shirley Leung actually helping the cause?
Christopher says
Many have protested something to the effect of if only the plan did this or that (proposed not directly spending public money – check, used existing venues – check, won’t invoke eminent domain – check, was more ecofriendly – check, etc) we’d be happy to host. Some I believe when they say that, but for others I call BS.
Christopher says
…I’m starting to wonder what it will take that hasn’t already been addressed.
jconway says
What it will take is a transparent bid process and a commitment to using zero taxpayer dollars. We have had neither yet, and this is well documented by objective sources. No modern games hasn’t lost it’s host city money, no modern games hasn’t left behind a white elephant, and sorry Christopher, simply saying Boston is exceptional doesn’t make it true. That’s the same kind of cheerfully blind optimism that has blindsided us on other policies time and time again.
When I see a bid worthy to back, I will be the first in line. As the only person to have worked on an actual bid, I think I have the qualifications to say this bid is amateurish and fantastical, something unworthy of a reality based community’s support.
Christopher says
…you were the person I was most thinking about when referring to the ones I would believe.
jconway says
I just don’t understand how a booster can look at Boston 2024 and not see a cluster-fuck of a plan, I get wanting to bring an Olympics here, but at this point it’s obvious they are hardly up to the task. It’s one thing to want the Olympics in Boston in 2024, it’s quite another thing to want Boston 2024 to run the Olympics.
Christopher says
I think I understand the distinction in your last sentence. I’m on board with the former, but anywhere from don’t care to see the value of change regarding the latter.
petr says
… before you even knew the details of the bid you made the claim that neither the USOC nor the IOC would ever in a million years choose Boston.
Then you made the claim that Washington DC had a stronger bid.
Then you said that, even if DC couldn’t do it, LA would be there, shiny and irressitible to the USOC…
Then, when the USOC failed to consult you and chose Boston over DC or LA, you claimed the total absence of details.
Now that you have details, and have apparently bothered to peruse them, (though that’s not been all that comprehensively demonstrated) you claim it’s a “cluster-fuck” And if Boston2024 is a cluster fuck that, just, must extend to the USOC and, thereafter, to the IOC… and the mayor.
Your arguments have been, quite pointedly, all over the map…. changing with the changing circumstances. But that same swirling melange of circumstances, happenstance, insight and variables to which you respond with differing argument has, surprise, pointedly failed, in any way, to impact your initial, quite adamant and fully throated “NO“… suggesting that your refusal fuels your argument rather than the other way round. Predating as it does the aformentioned circs and vars and unchanged throughout, your NO has spun and wound an impenetrable cocoon of self-adapting justifications around your outlook.
It’s OK to be against the Olympics in Boston. It’s not OK to re-work your justifications every time those justifications prove inadequate to the task. It suggests something deeper and more sinister in opposition than that which you’ve proffered heretofore.
So you’ll have to forgive me if I defer to the USOC and the mayor, not you, on who is or is not “up to the task’. I’m not going to come looking to you, either, for advice on how to be reality based…
Christopher says
…the above describes my perception of some of what I referred to as the less-believable opponents, but I think jconway has been more consistent.
HR's Kevin says
Furthermore Boston 2024 refuses to tell us details that they already know.
Either their plan was made up out of whole cloth, or they actually have financial models, and actual data to back up their budget and revenue projections. Until they publish this, I don’t see why anyone should trust them.
HR's Kevin says
So far we only have the same scenario we have been presented from the beginning. Boston 2024 has not proposed they will only use existing venues, they have not absolutely promised not to use eminent domain, they have not actually promised not to spend public money (just not for the “operation” of the games, whatever that means). They most definitely have not promised not to ask Boston to sign the host city agreement, which goes directly against the claim not to spend public money.
HR's Kevin says
Check out this story (not broken by the Shirley Leung or anyone else at the Globe). It appears that Boston 2024 does in fact plan to spend public money on venues.
These guys cannot be trusted. As long as they can keep details secret, there is really no reason for anyone to believe that we actually know what the plan is, how much it is expected to cost, or who is expected to pay.
TheBestDefense says
of your referenced story, has long been the best business reporter in Boston. He came out of the Boston Herald business section in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Herald regularly ate the Globe’s lunch. And made them pay for it.
TheBestDefense says
Steve Bailey at the Globe, who was the best business columnist in the city. He also wrote straight news which made him a double threat. He had his own sources, called people who he though might be a source (yes, I got a bunch of those calls) and let his story subjects speak on their own behalf.
Bailey is a genuinely decent guy who always let his story subjects speak on their own behalf. Leung is a sad replacement for Bailey,
necturus says
The Olympics are a commercial enterprise. Their purpose is clearly to make money for a small group of stakeholders. The idea of allowing this enterprise to take our land and our money, disrupt our lives, and ride off into the sunset leaving us to clean up the mess, infuriates me.
Moreover, let’s not kid ourselves that this would only affect the city of Boston. The city contains only a fifth of the population of greater Boston. Marty Walsh doesn’t represent the other eighty percent of us; who gave him the right to campaign for something that all of us will be asked to pay for?
I’m for Kazakhstan 2024, Ulan Bator 2024, or Madagascar 2024; anywhere but here.
Christopher says
…just like there’s nothing inherently wrong with Scott Brown being a Republican. I just don’t think those who truly just don’t want the Games should pretend there are circumstances under which they could accept them any more than Scott Brown should claim as he often did to be bipartisan. In both cases I disagree on the merits, but people are entitled to their opinions.
TheBestDefense says
on behalf of others, Christopher. You have ZERO idea what others think. I was intrigued, almost excited by the prospects of an Olympics here. I laid out on BMG my minimums before B2024 released its plans. Mine were easy and inadequate, and B2024 still failed to meet them. It is now clear they have been lying to us, and a minority of Bay Staters are willing to believe them.
Again, don’t pretend you know what others think.
HR's Kevin says
While I might accept the Olympics under some imaginary set of conditions, those conditions will never come about so there isn’t much point in talking about them. I don’t trust Boston 2024 to tell us the truth or even to acknowledge it to themselves so any promises they make are worthless to me.
jconway says
It let down every supporter committed to the games for their own sake, because they wanted Boston to host and thought it would be a great accomplishment of civic pride. It let you down with a terrible plan, it let you down by lying about costs and refusing to be transparent and upfront about them, it let you down by inventing long term benefits that will never materialize or claiming the Olympics are the only catalyst towards attaining them. Had Boston 2024 started with the premise that the Olympics were a worthy end, and were transparent about the means to achieving that end, it would not be in the sad shape it is today.
If Boston could feasibly host a games worthy of it without paying too high a price, I was on board, I have been clear from day 1 that Boston 2024 as currently conceived and designed was never intended to get those games, and that the IOC as currently conceived is incapable of delivering such a game to a worthy host. Hopefully the FIFA arrests can start signaling that the era of unfettered corruption in international sports is over.
Mark L. Bail says
but when that mind is so open that anything stupid can walk in and take up residence, an open mind becomes a vice. An open mind is no defense of Shirley Leung’s column, which has two problems: one of content, the other of style.
Honestly, I don’t know whether Leung is a cheerleader for Boston 2024 or not. I don’t typically read her. But her column is both factually incorrect and stylistically insipid. First, she generalizes about Bostonians based on a state-wide poll; second, her breathlessly vapid characterization of said Bostonians resembles the style of Strawberry Shortcake, a doll and toy. If you’re unfamiliar with the latter,
If that doesn’t describe Leung’s persona in her column, I don’t know what does.
Is that sexist? If McGrory had written the column in question, I would have said the same thing. McGrory Is it deeply sexist to point out the fact that that of a cheerleader? Charlie Pierce—a greater intellect and stylist than McGrory can ever hope to be—routinely calls Jen Rubin, “Likud cheer-team captain”:
Is this sexism? No, it’s a metaphor, which is what Bruce Mohl weakly tries to use with the sobriquet “Pom Pom Leung.”
Half of Leung’s problem is due McGrory’s shortcomings as an editor. Like any supervisor, he has an obligation to protect his writers, and that obligation begins with preventing the writer from writing something stupid in the first place. The stupidity of his defense is also deeply embarrassing. No one questions Leung’s credentials. No one is complaining about her gender. But McGrory is on the attack and he’s perceived an advantage: “We have more women working for us than you do! So there!”
jconway says
First off, Ivy grads got us into Vietnam and Iraq, a certain Harvard and Northwestern grad completely fucked up the funding for the Big Dig.
Secondly, I was an editor at the Chicago Maroon and we would not have published that drivel (even if we did give David Brooks his start-sorry about that). I highly doubt the Daily Princetonian or Wall Street Journal would have published it either (even Peggy Noonan writes better pieces than that). Our editorial policy was simple: does it illuminate an issue in a new way and engage with it using a mixture of facts and analysis?
I think it fails either test. As you point out Mark, this isn’t the first time she has engaged Olympic opponents so it is neither novel nor new. And it few facts and it’s analysis skirted over all the major arguments of the opposition. It definitely would not have been published by our college paper, and definitely would not have been persuasive as a college level debate case. The proposition ‘Boston should host the Olympics’ is entirely unproven, since she barely addresses any substantive arguments her opposition makes. It’s a damn shame, someone ought to make a persuasive case for the Olympics. All resorting to credentials shows, is that it’s apparently too difficult a task for the Princeton grad and Wall Street journal alum-or anyone at the ‘serious paper’ in Boston.
Bob Neer says
It seems unfair to lump an entire university under a single columnist. More to the point, doesn’t the editor have better things to do with his time? Looks like the criticism touched a nerve.
Charley on the MTA says
If you made someone angry YOU MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT!!
lolz
TheBestDefense says
As Mr. Dooley said, the media “comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable…” It seems McGrory has the equation backwards.
petr says
While Leung’s conclusions are specious — but about what one expects from a columnist– her premise is something to be examined: Simply put, her premise is that antipathy to an Olympics bid, either in regards to tenor or to distemper, is not adequately explained by ordinary political motivations and everyday civic engagement. I think it is this premise, and not just the stupidity of the conclusions she draws, that has raised hackles. Neither the reaction to the Olympic bid, nor the ferocity in response to her column is explained by recourse to intellect: the raw nerve, when touched, often sends out a shock more ferocious than the pressure applied might indicate…
It is, as Charley –perhaps unwittingly– gets all rem acu tetigisti about it, a ‘beef’: an honest-to-gosh, flaring-the-nostrils, seeing-red and getting -your-raging -id-on confrontation that is perhaps outsized in relation to the underlying cause or argument…. That is to be said both for the kerfuffle stemming from this column and about the general response to the Olympics. It’s a beef. And calling someone on their beef only invites more… Once you start a beef you can’t back down.
I don’t know that it’s particularly wrong to feel so strongly. If so many people feel so strongly maybe there’s something to it…? But I don’t particularly think that either Leung or her detractors, and anti-olympians in general, are being honest with us or about themselves regarding either the strength of, or the source of, their feelings. How’s about you examine why and how strongly you feel, first…?
And when you beef don’t bring weak tea to it: Leung goes way off on supposed particular character traits and the result is vapid; in response to the Olympics bid BMG has similarly gone way off on “the 1%”, which indicates a sin greater than vapidity… When you get a face to face meeting with Hizzoner the Mayor about it, whereupon you return to inveigling against behind the scenes ‘elites’… you risk credibility.
The problem, you see, with a beef is that the first thing to go is perspective.
HR's Kevin says
Why did he put a smarmy opinion piece above the fold on the front page of the paper? Has the Globe *ever* done that before? And did the changing of the guard at Boston 2024 really deserve to get the lead on that day, after the story had been reported multiple times in the days leading up to the official announcement? Was there really nothing more important to lead with that day? Really?
While I found the Leung article condescending and generally insulting to opponents of the Olympic bid, I really wouldn’t mind it all that much if it had appeared in Leung’s regular business column. But sticking it prominently on the front page is sending a very strong message.
The Globe has almost entirely prostituted itself to Boston 2024 at this point. While it does still report negative stories, it always softens them and puts them in the back pages, while positive stories go in the front of sections. Polling differences that are not statistically significant are used to falsely suggest that their may have been positive movement in favor of the Olympics, and that line is repeated in story after story by different writers.
So far the Globe has focused on mostly meta-reporting about the Boston 2024 leadership rather than on asking tough questions about the actual plan or lack thereof.
I would love to hear what reporters inside the Globe think about this situation, because I can’t believe everyone is happy about it.
Trickle up says
or, erm, advance the civic dialogue.
Pushing the “we’re just naturally cranky and besides it was a rough winter” narrative certainly serves the 2024 committee, but it also positions the Globe as the must-read venue where the conversation is happening.
As it happens the Globe got some terrific writing from publishing Leung’s wet kiss, in the letters section, rebuking her, for free.
So it’s the print version of clickbate. Not really journalism but not merely being in the tank either.