( - promoted by Bob)
David told me last night that we had been attacked on the subject of "race baiting" by Marjorie Eagen the other day in the Herald. I was so excited I stopped watching the Patriots thrash the Vikings and headed to my desk. I hoped for an imaginative Karl Rovian smear: an artful combination of disassociated quotations that showed something entirely opposite -- perfectly Republican, if you will -- from reality.
This is all I found: "You know, Democratic activists insisting any mention of Deval Patrick and crime is racist “code.” Left-of-center women’s groups whispering about the black man stalking the white woman in the notorious Kerry Healey parking garage ad. There was no man, black or white. But there it is, the widely read liberal Web site Blue Mass Group decrying race baiting over Healey’s orange-jumpsuited inmates.
That was it. No subtle, clever slur. No bald "We know they have weapons of mass destruction"-style fabrication. No citations or further discussion at all.
It is not that Eagen doesn't know how to write in detail about subjects that interest her. Here is the 2,000-word story of her recent face lift, "Just a Little Off the Jowls, Please."
It is not that she cannot do research. In 1999, according to CatholicLeague.org, she studied the Bible carefully enough to conclude that Jesus was "both a glutton and a major wine enthusiast."
She does know about racial stereotypes. "No more trips to the hairdresser or the eyebrow waxer or the dermatologist for the Botox and Restylane, never mind the Vietnamese pedicurist to revive our dry, cracked heels," she wrote in "Jowls."
And she can be a good judge of character. "I may be vain, shallow, and superficial," she observed in the Boston Magazine piece.
One is forced to conclude, therefore, that the lack of any citation to our supposed complaints of race-baiting (which stemmed, apparently, from Healey's decision to send guys in orange jumpsuits to stake out the suburban home of Patrick's Campaign Manager John Walsh, where they shouted epithets at his 12-year old son as he was getting ready to go to school) is because, much like many of Massachusetts Republican standard-bearer Healey's attacks (not to mention those of her darling Dick Cheney), there is no truth to the statement -- just vituperation, insecurity, and the apparent belief that politics is best conducted from the bitter bottom as opposed to the substantive, constructive, hopeful top. |
