Heaven forfend,but there was one small part of his act that might be useful.
Each time something came before the City Council, he would stand up and ask the same question. I forget the question, because it was basically bullshit .It was Dapper after all.
But what if every time a bill was sailing through Congress, someone stood up and asked “Who wrote this bill?”
If you saw 60 Minutes, you know what I’m talking about.
It might be less embarrassing than telling the voters that you’ve been fooled –again.
Please share widely!
JimC says
That’s a pretty good question. It should be asked more often.
Christopher says
OK, I guess I’m supposed to know who Dapper is?
JimC says
Yes, whippersnapper, you are. đŸ™‚
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dapper_O%27Neil
Christopher says
After reading some of his positions I have to wonder what the heck he was doing in the Democratic Party! It was also mentioned in the article that Louisa Day Hicks managed to get herself elected to Congress, which I didn’t realize either – ouch!
SomervilleTom says
A great many Massachusetts Democrats wondered the same.
The cited piece is essentially hides the essence of his appeal — he was an unabashed old-time racist. He pandered to racist whites as much as any Jim Crow politician from the deep south ever did.
TheBestDefense says
Yes he appealed to the outright racists but that was not enough. For those of us who lived in Boston, he won because he got the same dispossessed white downwardly mobile and nativist votes that Trump got. His voters were not all racist (a shit-ton were) but a lot were people who only saw a downward future for themselves.
johntmay says
Yup. But the Clinton Clan of the party will not admit that. It would require them to align more with that group and distance themselves from the Wall Street .1%’ers…….and as they will tell you, the money has to come from somewhere!
jconway says
I mean, this is Massachusetts. We’ve had a lot of George Wallace types in our ranks right through the 1990s, and arguably a couple today.
jconway says
Yep. As a Democrat. Joe Moakley eventually beat her as an independent a term or two later, and then immediately re-registered as a Democrat upon his election. She was also pro-choice and an ERA co-sponsor while he was pro-life, which may have scrambled some of the coalitions supporting either candidate.
But the fact that O’Neil and Hicks were able to advance as far as they did shows you how conservative the local party was on busing. The Ed King wing was quite strong, as was the Billy Bulger wing. This is absolutely the wing that first elected Robert DeLeo. He’s evolved on most social issues, but the anti-tax conservatism that got him elected is still there.
SomervilleTom says
Let’s please not sugarcoat this. The phrase you use — “how conservative the local party was on busing” is more accurately “how racist the local party was”.
It wasn’t just busing, and there was nothing “conservative” about it. It was pure racism, with a whole lot of lipstick smeared on it.
TheBestDefense says
It is a little sickening to read the “expert” opinions of people who did not live through this but saw it from fifty miles or fifty years away. Nobody has yet mentioned the role of IRA support that played in this fight. I met a lot of hard core IRA supporters who were with Dapper and Hicks and Bulger who did not care about skin color.
SomervilleTom says
Well, TBD, I was living IN Boston (at 270 Babcock Street) during the time we’re discussing, so I’m neither 50 miles nor 50 years away. I don’t doubt that “a lot of hard core IRA supporters” were with Dapper and Hicks and Bulger. I completely disagree that they “did not care about skin color”.
Southie was a very dangerous place for blacks in those years.
Yours is not the only perspective on that time.
TheBestDefense says
Clearly, I wrote “a lot of hard core IRA supporters who were with Dapper and Hicks and Bulger who did not care about skin color.” I certainly did not write that ALL were in that category. Try reading comprehension before you post. Of course Southie was a dangerous place for blacks but so was City Hall Plaza, viz. Ted Landsmark.
Of course Dapper was a flagrant racist, but not everybody who voted for him was. The world is not purely black and white as there are gradations in politics. I am proud to have been personally attacked by him.
BTW, I have known Bulger for five decades. During the Ed King gubernatorial days, he was among the worst of the worst and progressives who actually engaged in legislative affairs relied on the often reviled Speaker Tom McGee to save our social programs. If you have any doubts about how bad Bulger was, ask the family of the late Alan Sisitsky, Bachrach or Keating.
TheBestDefense says
Let’s be clear that Billy Bulger did rely on hard core racists to take and hold power in his Southie base. See http://projects.wgbhnews.org/whitey-bulger-busing/
SomervilleTom says
@ reading comprehension: So long as we’re talking about “reading comprehension”, I remind you that I didn’t write that “all” supporters of Dapper O’Neil were racist.
I said, instead, that Mr. O’Neil pandered to racist whites:
Similarly, I wrote that “the party” was racist (as opposed to “conservative”. Again, that doesn’t mean every member of the party was racist.
I made no claim that “everyone who voted for Dapper O’Neill” was a flagrant racist. I claimed, instead, that he himself was a flagrant racist who made his racism a central tenet of his public persona.
I stand by that claim
I’m not here to argue about Mr. Bulger, and I’m certainly not here to defend him. Perhaps even you can agree that someone who served as President of the Senate for 18 years and then President of University of MA for 7 years after that is different from Dapper O’Neill. Mr. O’Neill was never anything more than than a racist Boston city counselor. I’ve never argued that he wasn’t racist. I merely observed that he belongs in a different league from Mr. O’Neill.
The bottom line here is that, as you say, “the world is not purely black and white”, and I never said any different. Perhaps before you attack me for my “reading comprehension”, you might check your own assumptions about me and reread my words.
SomervilleTom says
Just another comment regarding “hardcore IRA supporters who … did not care about skin color”.
I’m reminded of the old joke about the argument between two Irish atheists, where says to the other “but are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist”.
Does it really matter whether the bigotry is based on skin color, religion, gender preference, or national origin?
Arguing that the hard core IRA supporters who were with Dapper O’Neil and Louise Day Hicks (you do William Bulger a disservice by grouping him with those two) did not care about skin color is like arguing that supporters of George Wallace during the Jim Crow era cared about states rights rather than skin color.
There were many “lunch-bucket Democrats” who focused on on economic issues and avoided outright pandering to racism and bigotry during that time.
Dapper O’Neil was not one of them.
jconway says
A different O’Neil comes to mind as an example of your positive lunch bucket Dem. We need a lot more of those folks today.
Also give me some credit, not many other people under 30 know who Dapper was!
bob-gardner says
Maybe I tried too hard to be funny. I want our Reps and Senators to ask this question routinely,if not always.
SomervilleTom says
I agree, and upvoted your diary.