Shirley Leung provides a great example today, with her piece headlined, “Dear USOC: We really do want to host the Games.”
So, how about it, BMG? Anyone subconsciously harboring deep Olympic desires?
Please share widely!
How Not to Write a Column: the Olympic Edition
I’m opposed the games, but I’d be wincing if I supported them.
Where to start? The soporific tone of a very loving kindergarten teacher? That a newspaper columnist claims to speak for Bostonians? That Bostonians are uniformly complainers that complain about their complaining? That the Olympics would likely affect ALL of Massachusetts, not just Boston. See The Globe’s own poll:
what the poll numbers do once TV starts broadcasting the Rio Olympics. We’ll get a megadose of the atmosphere of an Olympic Games without any of the cost overruns and problems Rio has had trying to prepare for the games, such as a harbor so polluted that athletes are questioning whether they want to compete in it. Also, the farther from Boston one gets, the less awareness one has of the details and consequences a Boston bid would have on everyone in the state, and the more they base their opinion on the warm fuzzies of an Olympic Games.
It isn’t every day that I agree with Jon Keller, but he did a decent takedown on this article today.
Here is a good link. Something happened when I pasted and I can’t edit above…
at Boston Magazine does a great job too.
This sort of meaningless drivel is why I canceled ALL my Globe subscriptions (after something on the order of 40 years).
The Globe should pay ME for the time I wasted on this absurdity.
I’d say I wasted about a $0.50 worth of my time reading the link in the thread-starter … not that far from the newstand price of the entire paper in 1974.
Okay, I admit, there might be some events that would be fun to go to. I have some friends who would do their best to live in the bleachers around Gymnastics for the whole run.
(It’s still hugely a bad deal all around.)
has she been paying any attention? The lack of a solid plan and taxpayer funding are giant reasons to oppose the games, and a big reason prior games went over budget and left no lasting legacies to the host city. And she calls those sensible reservations squawking and complaining? How will any of this drivel convince anyone in the 64% camp that opposes the games currently to switch sides?
Once again, folks using reasoned arguments and reality based dissent against a terrible public policy are being critiqued as ‘whiners’, ‘complainers’ and ‘un believers’ in the virtues of the Boston area. It is because I love Boston I want to move back there, it is because I love Boston I post here to keep up to date, and it is because I love Boston that I do not want it to host these games. Just as I loved my country by opposing George Bush’s stupid wars.
means having an opinion, not a valid opinion.
is not the opinion as much as the dismissive tone of the article. Don’t lecture me and talk at me. Dan Shaugnessy, in his writing for the Globe Sports section, for example, loses me because of the snide tone he uses, even when this opinion, when stripped to its basest essential, is not far off.
you’ve got to be snide. That way people know you’re wicked, wicked smart.
Snideness is the tone of the sexual intellectual, I mean fking know-it-all.
This is the Boston Globe. I think the Boston Globe should aspire to have better columnists than people who go out of their way to insult their readers.
I’m okay with having columnists who run counter to conventional wisdom, but they damn well better be writing convincing arguments, something Shirley rarely does — and this ad hominem piece was a just new low for her.
The really frustrating thing is that a business columnist who used their position to make strong arguments and wasn’t just a mouthpiece of the .1% could be one of the most important posts at the Boston Globe — a real force for positive change in the city.
Imagine one who really went after the BRA during the Menino era or who went after the sweet-heart tax credit deals or real estate deals that gave public land to private enterprises for a fraction of their worth? Or one who went after Boston’s biggest employers who poorly compensated workers. A lot of good could have been done by having someone who was willing to shine some light in the city.
I did not see any instances of personal criticism against anyone.
Not only is this patronizing, it attempts to speak for everyone. In the freaking headline.
Anyone who writes that and understands human emotions would understand how it would piss people off. I can only surmise that it was an intentional attack or that Shirley has some sort of condition that prevents her from grasping standard reactions.
Four sentences at the top of her post. Four insults.
Then she insults Coloradans for good measure, before comparing Bostonians to toddlers throwing a tantrum, essentially calling people dumb for being upset about billions misspent on the Big Dig, and suggesting we’re stingy for not writing the IOC a blank check so they can get down and par-tay in our city for three weeks at the cost of some unknown number of billions to taxpayers.
And, oh, yeah, we’re just complainers because we had a bad winter and like to squawk, not because we have any real concerns at all.
Chris… just read the reactions to her post here and in the comments to her column. I’m far from the only person offended. You may not have seen it, but most others have.
It’s still not an ad hominem argument. Ad hominem means “against the man (person)” and involves invoking irrelevant character traits and naming an individual to cast doubts on his or her credibility without actually addressing the argument. If anything the implied “Leung is just a shill for the 1%” is a lot closer to an ad hominem argument. Like I said elsewhere I think she went for light; if you are that offended by her rhetorical style a thicker skin might be in order.
The piece made no effort to defend B2024 on its merits. The entire focus of the piece was instead on the alleged personality traits of those who live in Boston and who oppose the proposal.
That’s ad hominem.
The complaint here is generalization, not ad hominem, at least according to the official definition from logic class. Just this morning I came across an actual example of ad hominem. On FB there was a graphic with a picture of Jane Fonda along with a quote from her regarding why we need in her view to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Many of the comments on that thread called her traitor for her words and actions surrounding the Vietnam War, without anything about why they disagree regarding ERA. To say Bostonians like to complain is neither an irrelevant character trait or a direct attack on anyone.
My complaint is most certainly NOT “generalization”. The column insults Bostonians, and says nothing whatsoever about the merits of the proposal.
whether it’s against one individual or an entire city of individuals doesn’t alter the fact that it was an ad hominem attack.
I don’t think you get the fact that “personal” nature of an ad hominem attack doesn’t mean it’s an attack on one person, it means it’s an attack on that person.
Personal doesn’t mean ‘a person,’ it means something of, relating to or directed to a person.
An attack can be ‘personal’ in nature if it’s of, directed to or relating to a group of people, as well.
So, with all due respect, I think you’re misremembering your logic 101 professor. It’s certainly an ad hominem attack; it’s not an argument based on merits, it’s an argument based on attacking a group of people using stereotypes and insults.
What we want to call it is really beside the point. People are getting way too upset over it either way.
A more gracious response might have been “Point taken, I stand corrected”.
I’ve had to write such words from time to time here. They were much harder the first few times.
I find that other arguments I might make, such as “people are getting way to upset over it either way”, are more accepted by our community after I acknowledge my own mistakes.
In this case, it was the only criticism you offered to the original comment by ryepower12. It seems a bit ungracious to then say it’s beside the point.
Beth Healy, Megan Woolhouse, Katie Johnston and a couple others whose names are escaping me at the moment.
I’d rather read a column by any of them than by the current designated business columnist.
For sure.
I scan the business section in the Globe daily and usually find at least one story I read. There’s some great reporting that goes on.
Shirley just isn’t contributing to any of it – well, no more often than a stopped clock being write twice a day.
not write.
…but for crying out loud one thing you cannot in good faith accuse the organizers of is a lack of a solid plan!
-They didn’t communicate with land owners of land they planned to take.
-They assumed people would be okay with tearing up huge swaths of beloved public parks without gauging public interest first.
-So many of their proposed sites were so detested that they’re releasing a ‘2.0’ list soon, which may have shift venues as far away as NYC and Chicago.
Look, Christopher, not a single person other than you (and Shirley) is suggesting they had a solid plan. Not the Mayor or the USOC or Boston 2024 itself seems to think their plan was up to snuff, which is why it’s being so drastically changed in rapid time — and they’ve gone out of their way to say none of it was really official anyway.
The first step toward Boston 2024 and its supporters to right the ship is to admit the ship was sunk. It needs to be dug up from the bottom of the sea and sent to dry dock to save it.
Personally, I think it’s the Titanic, sunk so far deep beneath the Atlantic that there’s no saving it now, but I’m getting some good chuckles watching Boston’s richest, most powerful cabal run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off trying to figure out how to resurrect this. For schadenfreuda’s sake, I sincerely wish them the best of luck — my popcorn is continually at the ready for each new debacle that befalls B24.
It also seems that opponents have the organizers in a catch-22. If not everything is final the complaint is they don’t yet have a solid plan, but when they do seem like they know what they’re doing the complaint is we weren’t consulted before it was finalized. BTW, work in progress and solid plan aren’t mutually exclusive.
They still won’t tell us anything more than vague summaries of their plan. How can anyone call that a “solid plan”?
Beyond that I refer my honourable friend to replies and comments I have made previously on this matter.
And yet nowhere in those “several pages” is there a detailed financial accounting. Yes, I know the planning is early, but they must have based their budget and financial projects on something. But they won’t tell us enough details to tell whether they have made any bad assumptions either in fact or in their modeling.
Since they already have backed off on a number of truly stupid ideas after public outcry, I don’t think they really get the benefit of the doubt on the stuff they refuse to tell us.
I don’t think that the Globe could possibly make it more clear how biased it is in covering the Olympics. When do you EVER see any sort of opinion piece featured so prominently on the upper half of the front page of the paper? Coupled with the lead reporting of the non-story about the Boston 2024 management change, it is very very clear that Tom Henry has ordered the editors to try to push the Olympics. Is there really nothing else to report that is more important than this story? Really?
This insults the intelligence of their readers, and I would not be surprised to see this tactic backfire.
Yes, Shirley, Bostonians may love to complain. We also HATE when politicians and smarmy opinion writers tell us what we are supposed to think.
Even for those who think the Olympics could hypothetically be a good thing, there’s a huge opportunity cost to the 2 years of time we’ll have spent on this issue if we fail to get it, and 10 years of time if we actually do get it.
Government isn’t very good at tackling more than one big thing at a time.
I did not see the patronizing that others do, and I chuckled several times while reading. I’d say she has Boston pretty well figured out, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Once the “unofficial princess” of Strawberryland, Shirley is often seen wearing a pink hat with strawberries printed on it. In college, she lived in a shortcake. Today, she lives in East Boston in rehabbed strawberry and writes sweet columns for the Boston Globe.
What is a supposedly “light-hearted” sarcastic opinion piece doing at the top of the front page? I have been getting the Globe delivered for over a decade and I have NEVER seen anything like this ever.
If this article had been in her usual slot in the Business section or even in the editorial section, it would not be so surprising, but can you explain why the editors of the Globe thought this was newsworthy enough to put on the front page? Can you explain what is so unprecedented about her commentary that merits the front page?
You’ll have to ask the Globe about their editorial decisions.
The editorial policy of the Globe is patently obvious to me, I don’t feel the need to explore the question further. The content of the boston.com site is even worse.
In my view, the contempt of John Henry for his audience is clear enough. All of the publications in his portfolio reflect that contempt. I’ll avoid broadening that judgement to his other, um, “assets”.
I just don’t understand why I was asked to defend a decision I had no part in making.
Another easy one — you DID defend the decision in the comment that hrs-kevin is responding too. I read hrs-kevin’s response as a perfectly reasonable request that you support the defense you already offered.
When you write that “she has Boston pretty well figured out”, in the context of your frequent commentary here expressing your preference for not-Boston, it doesn’t surprise me that those of us who live in Boston might take a bit of umbrage at the characterization of us you seem to embrace.
I’ve grown up within the media market and lived here my entire life. I made maybe a too cute comment about my observations, which like the column in question was taken at least by you WAY too seriously. I’m not sure why you think I have a preference for not Boston. It’s denser than I want to live in, and more expensive, but otherwise it’s a great city that has a lot going for it and my attitude toward it is largely positive. She’s entitled to her opinion and the Globe is entitled to run it, but people really need to lighten up over some column!