A fantastic read in the NY Times, from Dennis Lehane. Here’s an excerpt, but you really should read the whole thing.
When I speak of my love for this city, it will be understood that the love does not come filtered through a soft-focus lens. I’m fully aware of the sins that litter the Hub’s rearview.
But I do love this city…. Bostonians don’t love easy things, they love hard things — blizzards, the bleachers in Fenway Park, a good brawl over a contested parking space. Two different friends texted me the identical message yesterday: They messed with the wrong city. This wasn’t a macho sentiment. It wasn’t “Bring it on” or a similarly insipid bit of posturing. The point wasn’t how we were going to mass in the coffee shops of the South End to figure out how to retaliate. Law enforcement will take care of that, thank you. No, what a Bostonian means when he or she says “They messed with the wrong city” is “You don’t think this changes anything, do you?”
Trust me, we won’t be giving up any civil liberties to keep ourselves safe because of this. We won’t cancel next year’s marathon. We won’t drive to New Hampshire and stockpile weapons. When the authorities find the weak and terminally maladjusted culprit or culprits, we’ll roll our eyes at whatever backward ideology they embrace and move on with our lives….
The community will eulogize the dead and provide care and solace for the injured. And, no, we’ll never forget. But what we’ll cling tightest to is what the city was built on — resilience, respect and an adoration for civility and intellect.
And Stephen Colbert, voicing some similar sentiments:
Oh for God’s sake, f&cking Viacom couldn’t refrain from making a copyright claim against YouTube. Fine, here’s the Comedy Central version.
jconway says
A full throated defense of our Commonwealth and all that it stands for, he even weaves in a dig at the Governors Council and praises Mike Dukakis.
Pablo says
Best thing I have seen since the bombs went off. Can we make sure this kind and modest man gets a Pulitzer Prize, or some other suitable award?
stomv says
kirth says
Because Viacom.
bob-gardner says
to make us feel better. I hope his predictions for what will and won’t happen after the bombing turn out to be true.
But “messing with the wrong city”? If that’s not meaningless, insipid posturing I don’t know what is. What would messing with the right city look like?
My guess is that people are pretty much the same everywhere. There is no right city to mess with, so there can’t be any wrong city to mess with.