Check out the end of this Herald article which tells how Mayor Menino and his friends joked about the e-mail scandal at a Councilor Tobin event last night. Note: the mayor was skipping an East Boston event to attend this toast.
The mayor turned down the East Boston event and instead attended a ritzy gala on Newbury Street, where he was given an achievement award. Later that night he went to a 40th birthday party fund-raiser for Councilor John Tobin at a West Roxbury Elks Club.
Though the party was a roast for him, Tobin said the “shrapnel” was spread around – and the controversy swirling around Menino’s policy chief, Michael Kineavy, for routinely deleting his city e-mails, in apparent violation of public records laws, became fodder for comedy.
Tobin said Matt O’Malley, political director for MassEquality, teased state Rep. Michael F. Rush (D-West Roxbury), saying, “His legislative accomplishments are thinner than Mike Kineavy’s in-box.”
The mayor himself even poked fun over the e-mail scandal that has dogged him during this week’s build-up to Tuesday’s preliminary election.
Apologizing for arriving late, Tobin said Menino quipped, “I have been out looking for my e-mails. Has anybody seen them? I don’t know what they look like.”
This is absolutely deplorable. Thoughts?
Knowing Menino, he would probably go looking for emails at the Post Office!
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p>This is typical of his administration. Menino is drunk with power and thinks that this is all a big joke. It’s not – destroying public records is against the law, plain and simple. The fact that he is acting as if it’s a joke just shows that we need to change the system in Boston. We wouldn’t put up with this in Washington or on Beacon Hill. Why do we put up with it at City Hall?
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p>FULL DISCLOSURE: I am supporting Sam Yoon for Mayor.
right?
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p>Apart from the fact that you’re giving hizzoner the business for what was likely a scheduling conflict (happens all the time in politics), you’re taking umbrage at time-honored, current events-linked roast jokes. You see this at the Patty’s Day breakfast, and the like. There’s been plenty of “where’s Whitey” stuff over the years…and while people laugh, it doesn’t mean it isn’t serious. It’s like whistling past a graveyard.
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p>And my take on hizzoner’s quip is that he was actually turning the joke on himself, by claiming he didn’t know what the missing emails looked like, given his less-than-proficient acquaintance with technology.
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p>You have plenty of fodder without screeching about this lame kind of stuff. Really. Framing a scheduling conflict (the Tobin party was probably on his calendar for months – did you see when the other one was scheduled?) as a “class thing” and the roast material as “deplorable” really reduces the meaning of the word and your argument.
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p>Disclosure: None. I don’t live in the city, but I’ve been in politics for decades.
Giving his opponents this kind of opportunity 5 days before an election shows just how rusty Menino and his machine really are.
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p>I don’t see it as Menino turning it on himself in some sort of self effacing attempt at humor. I see hubris
It’s not like he is looking for WMD under the podium, having started a devastating and lethal war in Iraq on fraudulent evidence and specious reasoning.
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p>But I dislike the patronage style of politics and so that’s two strikes, one against Menino and one against Flaherty but joking is all Menino can do, at this point.
Dude-
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p>Please develop a sense of humor. There are much more important things happening in the world that deserve incredulity.
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p>Disclosure: I am a proud Menino supporter and the Matt mentioned in the article. Fear not, I have no plans of quitting my day job.
It’s only small-town corruption, not like the big leagues. It’s only Boston, after all. I know this will astonish you, but some of us chose Massachusetts as home (in my case, thirty five years ago) in part because we feel that Massachusetts and Boston exemplifies the ideals, values, and vision that makes us proud to be Americans. I am repulsed by the contempt this kind of “joking” demonstrates for the city, the state, and all the things I value.
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p>I guess we’re supposed to laugh about a conspiracy to obstruct justice, we’re supposed to laugh at one apparent recipient of Ms. Wilkerson’s bribes, and we’re supposed to laugh even more about the “objective” technology firm hired to perform the attempted investigation.
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p>Humor? I guess you have a different sense of humor from me.
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p>I find this episode nauseatingly disgusting.
Matt,
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p>I have read your blog from time to time and although I have never met you, I was an early supporter of Sheriff Andrea Cabral. You managed her campaign. A campaign that a lot of people in Boston including many pundits say helped usher in a “New” Boston.
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p>I will not question your support of the mayor, but I will question you and the mayor joking about something that is either a cover up of corruption at its worst or a case of very poor record retention, management and a clear lack of the proper use of technology at the very least. This mayor doesn’t use email or allow staff at city hall use voice mail. Enough said. He is not my mayor. He is out of touch.
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p>Out of one side of the mayors mouth he says that it is “HIS CITY” and all of this development happened during my “REIGN”. The other says the BRA is not under his control and how can he take responsibility for anything they do. I live in a neighborhood that has been over developed by the BRA even though we have stood in opposition to many of projects the BRA gives the green light. It is abhorrent.
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p>Your post has the tone that our mayor has struck when any criticism has been leveled his way over the past 16 years. It is no wonder you are supporting him.
Notwithstanding a yeoman effort by the press to gin up interest in an election, it is interesting to observe that after 16 years in office the deletion of e-mails by a senior staffer is the worst “sin” of the administration. In truth, were it not for the election this would be an obit page story at best.
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p>While there are a few areas or issues for legitimate criticism, it is highly unlikely that this matter will impact the primary in any manner. It is a testament to his years as the City’s chief executive that the best that the opposition came up with is an underling hitting the wrong keys on a keyboard.
I will give Menino the benefit of the doubt that there may have been a scheduling conflict, but isn’t part of leadership knowing when to make a change? Tobin is a nice enough guy from what I hear, and I am sure that he and everyone else in the room appreciated Menino being there. That said, Menino should have been at the forum in East Boston.
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p>When a legitimate group of citizens get together (and I hear that it was a number of groups that organized this forum) to ask serious questions of those seeking the highest office in the city, those candidates should do EVERYTHING in their power to answer those questions, they owe the voters that much respect. The fact that Menino would blow off people who had taken the time to come together and inquire WHY they should vote for him rather than other equally qualified candidates speaks volumes. The fact that he ignored them to attend a fundraiser for a candidate WITH NO OPPONENT may not be deplorable to some, but it seems insulting to me.
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p>Menino may have been in West Roxbury to roast Tobin, but it seems like the joke was on the citizens of East Boston who thought he actually cared about what is on their minds.
I believe the event he was at during the debate was a ritzy affair on Newbury St, a fundraiser for a charitable cause.
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p>He later appeared at a birthday party/fundraiser for John Tobin where the joking and banter occurred.
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p>Scheduling is about priorities. Listening and talking to residents of the city, and defending his 16 year record were not the priority that night. Very typical of a mayor who serves the upper ranks of the city with zeal, but the rest with a strategy of “They have met me, isn’t that enough?” Not even close Mr. Mayor.