Duke: Cool with Jerry, Not with Howie
Alex Beam’s column today is another phoned-in meta job of little interest to anyone, but there’s a nice bit at the end about a new biography of longtime Boston talkmeister Jerry Williams that’s worth noting. The book’s called Burning Up the Air, and it’s blurbed by none other than longtime Williams target Mike Dukakis. “Pretty darned gracious … to blurb this book,” Beam writes, “after all the [blank] that Williams threw his way. There is money in hate, but there is power in love. That is a lesson only half-learned by the O’Reillys and Carrs of the world.”
As anyone who has the pleasure of interviewing the Duke today will attest, the man is a class act, candid, charismatic and smart. But seeing his name next to Carr’s reminded me of an interview I did with him some months back in preparation for the profile I wrote on his old friend Billy Bulger. He was talking about the press’s fixation on the Bulger brothers, and that flowed into a couple shots at another old antagonist, Howie Carr, whose book, it should be noted, he did not blurb.
MD: So, [the Bulger brothers is] a tantalizing story once, but why is it a tantalizing story 15 times later? And they’re always these goddamn leaks out of the U.S. Attorney’s office—they ought to be ashamed of themselves—and out of the FBI, which itself is a criminal offense, you know, leaking that stuff. But, it happens all the time–about this and that and he’s going to be called before a grand jury–and then it dies down. Six years later, there’s another sighting, and we’ve got to read about it again. It must be very tough on him. You know, and I said to [reporters], ‘Just tell me what do you want him to say?’ Things happen; it’s a big family. The whole thing was just so absolutely irrational, and I think really unfair.
JK: But it just won’t die.
MD: Then, you’ve got idiots like Carr who—
JK: Did you read his book?
MD: Who, Carr’s? No, I wouldn’t waste my time. Are you kidding? The guy’s a psychopath—he’s terrible. You know what—who was the guy? He was a liberal columnist for the New York Post—Murray Kempton. He used to say—present company excluded—he used to say, ‘Look, I’ve got a daughter who is a reporter for public radio in Colorado. Journalists do not have thin skin; they have no skin. And Carr is a classic. He dishes it out with all this baloney, but god forbid you ever say anything about them.
Those guys, I just don’t pay any attention to. When people would run into my office when I was governor and say, “Did you see what Carr said?” I said, “No, I never read him.” I said, “Look, the guy’s got a total 60,000 readers; that leaves us with 5,940,000 other people in the state who we can go to work on who don’t even know he exists. So, let’s not waste our time with this guy.” But if you’ve got a responsible journalist who is critical of you, pay attention. He’s probably right.
January 9th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
More mush from the wimp.
Second thought: “Jerry who?” It’s easy to be nice to a bear with no claws. Maybe I don’t listen to enough talk radio but if Jerry was big it was before I moved here (94).
I crossed paths with Howie occasionally years ago when I was a peon at the Herald. There are three things I’ll say for Howie:
1. He was a continental gentleman around the office. The first time we crossed paths he introduced himself to me just like he was any other Joe. No airs at all.
2. He worked his way up the ladder as a genuine reporter. Michelle Malkin might be a talented writer, but she would be a research assistant at the Heritage Foundation if she was a chubby guy named Smith.
3. His knowledge of local history was downright other-worldly. Bring up a gangland meeting that took place twenty years ago and Howie could tell you where it happened, who sat at which seat at the table, and what they ordered for dessert.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
If I were Howie, I’d want Dukakis calling me a psychopath on the front cover. In huge type.
January 9th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Jerry was HUGE. No one had a finger on the town’s zeitgeist like he did. Eric Boghosian, who grew up around here, used him in writing “Talk Radio”, which I believe won a Tony. Howie knows crime like no one else around here but Jerry was sui generis, at the intersection of politics, the last days of local show biz and the first days of the sexual revolution. Howie was audited by the DOR back in the day but Jerry fought the Milton Assessors until he gave up his Brush Hill Rd. mansion on principle and moved to Marshfield Hills. Dukakis is a nice man but naive. He was surrounded by people who were as crooked as he was honest. That tank was a blessing in disguise.