BY MICHELE McPHEE
The legislators who wanted some of us to be able to play “Let It Ride” at a luxury casino slated to replace the ramshackle Suffolk Downs racetrack down the street from the litter-strewn park in Eastie where I reside, the lawmakers who were brave enough to battle Beacon Hill last week, were puzzled when their leader – our governor – Deval Patrick was in the wind on voting day.
But once again the governor of the Bay State is already viewing his gubernatorial reign as a part-time job.
Where was Patrick? He was being wined and dined by publishing houses in Manhattan for two work days last week. (I guess Patrick put in for a “volunteer day,” or two. Remember that rip-off for the taxpayers that allow state employees to take one day off a month to volunteer?) He left the Big Apple last Friday with a Big Book Deal - $1.35 million to write his autobiography.
I said it in my show last week. I have written two books (shameless self promotion right here: my second book, “Heartless, The True Story of Neil Entwistle and the Brutal Murder of His Wife and Child” will be available from St. Martin’s Press on June 3 or you can pre-order it at www.amazon.com) and it is not an easy endeavor. Granted, I didn’t have a seven-figure advance to motivate me, but I did, like Deval, have a deadline. And believe me, it’s not easy working a full-time job and meeting a publisher’s due date.
At least Mitt Romney waited until his final year in office until he pulled his vanishing trick and took off for 215 days. Now we have a governor who is going to write his memoir on the taxpayer’s time, meaning he will disappear as dynamically as Romney did. It certainly gives new meaning to Patrick’s campaign promise: “Magic Can Happen Here.”
So on the Friday night Michele McPhee show and on the Saturday morning slot we came up with some book titles that we would like to pass on to Patrick.
After much debate, here are the winners and the honorable mentions:
First Place: “Caddies and Curtains: How To Decorate On The Taxpayer’s Dime.”
Second Place: “Together We Can – Just Words?”
Third Place: “Deval-uation of Massachusetts: A state in a state of decline.”
Honorable Mention: “Audacity of Hype.”
Monday, March 31, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
He Was A Good Jake - In Memory of Bob Kilduff
“He Was A Good Jake” – by Michele McPhee
It is inevitable; a Godly law of sorts, that weather will be chaotic when we mark the Last Alarm of a firefighter with his funeral service. The rains are often torrential. Or maybe the sun is blinding through unnaturally blue skies. Sometimes winds are so fierce, the hats of the mourners are blown right off their heads.
This morning, it was pellets of ice that hurtled into the mourners outside the South End’s sprawling Cathedral Catholic church who gathered to remember 39-year Boston Fire Lieutenant Bob “B.K.” Kilduff.
The dinging of the ice rocks on car hoods accompanied the skirling of bagpipes as politicians, firefighters and loved ones crowded into the church. All of them walked past Kilduff’s fire helmet, battered and rusty from his nearly four decades of service to this city, held aloft by a lone firefighter in at the top of the church steps. The helmet’s numbers, 2-3, were blackened by acrid smoke and banged up from the rescues of children and elderly from flames; dented from the collapses and explosions and unforeseen dangers that can strike a firefighter at any time while working on the line.
It was Bob Kilduff’s helmet that made me angry this morning. Angry that Barack Obama thinks he could be my President despite having befriended a hateful bigot who, just days after the World Trade Center towers fell, stood at a pulpit screaming “the chickens have come home to roost” and blaming foreign policies of this country for the cowardly slaughter of 3,000 Americans in New York City, in a field in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon on 9-11 2001. At the very moment that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was screaming, guys like Bob Kilduff were digging - crawling through the rubble for the missing. And then they carried out the bashed helmets of the 343 New York City firefighters who rushed into the towers to pull off the largest rescue in this country’s history but would never emerge from the rubble of the towers.
As the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was ranting about Americans and whites and Jews; the children, wives, parents of those 343 slain firefighters were in churches or mosques or synagogues with nothing but a torn bunker gear coat, or a badge, or a patch to remember their lost. They honored this country, never disparaged it. Today, empty helmets are being carried by the families of emergency responders that continue to be felled by the poisonous toxins sucked in that terrible morning; breathed into their lungs at the exact moment Jeremiah Wright was using his lungs to scream hateful propaganda that suggested we brought 9-11 on ourselves.
One month before Kilduff died he was at a union event representing Boston jakes as the Vice President of Local 718, the union that represents firefighters. There he told the assembly, “We stood together in good times and in difficulties.” And Kilduff was right.
That is exactly why I am so raised up about Barack Obama and his minister. The divisive rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright should have been condemned by Obama long before he was shamed into delivering “The Race Speech” in Philadelphia this week (a large portion of which was I thought read more about ‘’why the working-class whites are angry’’ rather than as a much-needed explanation on why the Senator not only attended the church, but financially supported it with a check in 2006 for $22,500.)
No man of honor would tear down his own, his compatriots, like Wright did four days after 9-11. The attacks were an opportunity for all ministers, pastors, rabbis, clerics to truly exemplify what has now become a campaign slogan made famous by our governor: “Together We Can.”
Now that slogan is "just words," to plagarize, borrow, whatever, another Patrick/Obama campaign speech.
Wright would have been better served by turning to the work of FDNY Fire Chaplin Mychal Judge – the first man to die on 9-11, and a recovering drunk who helped scores of alcoholics from every background and ethnicity achieve sobriety. That’s my definition of a spiritual advisor – which is what Rev. Jeremiah Wright was to the Barack Obama campaign
Barack Obama’s speech on race in America will become a historical one, but it wasn’t enough to explain how he came to embrace a man whose views on bigotry were so damning. And it didn’t explain why he lied to the American people by telling us that he never heard Wright's hate mongering, the second lie in as many months from the Obama camp. The first was about the call to Canada about NAFTA which Obama only came clean about after confronted with a memo.
Boston Fire Lt. Bob Kilduff liked to tell “his boy” – his son Bobby, also a Boston firefighter – that “no matter what the situation, there is a way of leaving it better than you found it.” That’s how Kilduff lived his life, going as far as to scribble legislation on scrap paper during the last days of his life. His good friend and Local 718 President Ed Kelly said it best: “B.K. died a warrior’s death.”
But in my view Barack Obama’s race speech did not leave me feeling any better about the fact that he brought a guy like Wright into the inner circles of our government. It’s a question of integrity. “Show me your friends I’ll show you who you are,” is an adage that many of our mothers swore by.
Well, today Bob Kilduff’s friends crowded into a Boston church while Barack Obama’s friend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright continued to insult the memories of all the emergency responders who laid down their lives in service to this country. And Barack Obama continued to insult our intelligence with the lazy lie: I didn't know.
It is inevitable; a Godly law of sorts, that weather will be chaotic when we mark the Last Alarm of a firefighter with his funeral service. The rains are often torrential. Or maybe the sun is blinding through unnaturally blue skies. Sometimes winds are so fierce, the hats of the mourners are blown right off their heads.
This morning, it was pellets of ice that hurtled into the mourners outside the South End’s sprawling Cathedral Catholic church who gathered to remember 39-year Boston Fire Lieutenant Bob “B.K.” Kilduff.
The dinging of the ice rocks on car hoods accompanied the skirling of bagpipes as politicians, firefighters and loved ones crowded into the church. All of them walked past Kilduff’s fire helmet, battered and rusty from his nearly four decades of service to this city, held aloft by a lone firefighter in at the top of the church steps. The helmet’s numbers, 2-3, were blackened by acrid smoke and banged up from the rescues of children and elderly from flames; dented from the collapses and explosions and unforeseen dangers that can strike a firefighter at any time while working on the line.
It was Bob Kilduff’s helmet that made me angry this morning. Angry that Barack Obama thinks he could be my President despite having befriended a hateful bigot who, just days after the World Trade Center towers fell, stood at a pulpit screaming “the chickens have come home to roost” and blaming foreign policies of this country for the cowardly slaughter of 3,000 Americans in New York City, in a field in Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon on 9-11 2001. At the very moment that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was screaming, guys like Bob Kilduff were digging - crawling through the rubble for the missing. And then they carried out the bashed helmets of the 343 New York City firefighters who rushed into the towers to pull off the largest rescue in this country’s history but would never emerge from the rubble of the towers.
As the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was ranting about Americans and whites and Jews; the children, wives, parents of those 343 slain firefighters were in churches or mosques or synagogues with nothing but a torn bunker gear coat, or a badge, or a patch to remember their lost. They honored this country, never disparaged it. Today, empty helmets are being carried by the families of emergency responders that continue to be felled by the poisonous toxins sucked in that terrible morning; breathed into their lungs at the exact moment Jeremiah Wright was using his lungs to scream hateful propaganda that suggested we brought 9-11 on ourselves.
One month before Kilduff died he was at a union event representing Boston jakes as the Vice President of Local 718, the union that represents firefighters. There he told the assembly, “We stood together in good times and in difficulties.” And Kilduff was right.
That is exactly why I am so raised up about Barack Obama and his minister. The divisive rhetoric of Jeremiah Wright should have been condemned by Obama long before he was shamed into delivering “The Race Speech” in Philadelphia this week (a large portion of which was I thought read more about ‘’why the working-class whites are angry’’ rather than as a much-needed explanation on why the Senator not only attended the church, but financially supported it with a check in 2006 for $22,500.)
No man of honor would tear down his own, his compatriots, like Wright did four days after 9-11. The attacks were an opportunity for all ministers, pastors, rabbis, clerics to truly exemplify what has now become a campaign slogan made famous by our governor: “Together We Can.”
Now that slogan is "just words," to plagarize, borrow, whatever, another Patrick/Obama campaign speech.
Wright would have been better served by turning to the work of FDNY Fire Chaplin Mychal Judge – the first man to die on 9-11, and a recovering drunk who helped scores of alcoholics from every background and ethnicity achieve sobriety. That’s my definition of a spiritual advisor – which is what Rev. Jeremiah Wright was to the Barack Obama campaign
Barack Obama’s speech on race in America will become a historical one, but it wasn’t enough to explain how he came to embrace a man whose views on bigotry were so damning. And it didn’t explain why he lied to the American people by telling us that he never heard Wright's hate mongering, the second lie in as many months from the Obama camp. The first was about the call to Canada about NAFTA which Obama only came clean about after confronted with a memo.
Boston Fire Lt. Bob Kilduff liked to tell “his boy” – his son Bobby, also a Boston firefighter – that “no matter what the situation, there is a way of leaving it better than you found it.” That’s how Kilduff lived his life, going as far as to scribble legislation on scrap paper during the last days of his life. His good friend and Local 718 President Ed Kelly said it best: “B.K. died a warrior’s death.”
But in my view Barack Obama’s race speech did not leave me feeling any better about the fact that he brought a guy like Wright into the inner circles of our government. It’s a question of integrity. “Show me your friends I’ll show you who you are,” is an adage that many of our mothers swore by.
Well, today Bob Kilduff’s friends crowded into a Boston church while Barack Obama’s friend the Rev. Jeremiah Wright continued to insult the memories of all the emergency responders who laid down their lives in service to this country. And Barack Obama continued to insult our intelligence with the lazy lie: I didn't know.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
"The Clutch"
Why do women engage in "the Clutch?" Silda Spitzer made me physically ill when I saw her make that long, slow, horrifying walk into the hot glare of TV lights, her eyes cast downward as throngs of hostile peppered her husband - who will now forever be known as Client No. 9 - with questions about the tens of thousands he is accused of spending on a high-end hooker. The humiliation was etched into her face with an embarrassed smirk. Still the Harvard-educated attorney was there, clutching Elliot Spitzer's arm. She is not the only political wife who engaged in "the Clutch" in recent memory. There was Hillary Clinton's famous hand-holding when Bill Clinton wagged his finger at the American public saying "I did not have sex with that woman!" Larry "Senator Wide Stance" Craig dragged his poor wife into the cacophony of TV trucks and camera flashes when he was caught toe-tapping gay sex signals in a public restroom at a Minneapolis airport. David Vitter's wife was in the "Clutch" after his name was found in the black book of an infamous DC Madam. Gary Hart's wife stood-by-her-man after he was caught in compromising positions with a young hottie. Gary Condit's wife was in the clutch even after her husband's admitted lover Chandra Levy went missing and is presumed dead. The best clutch came from Dina McGreevy, who clutched the hand of her New Jersey governor husband when he declared: "I am a gay American."
If any boyfriend I had was unmasked as a prostitute paying-sicko, was caught having an affair with a college student, or was busted for toe-tapping a signal wanting a quick Monica Lewinsky in the stall of a men's room, the only clutch I would engage in would happen lower than his hand...and it would probably make him weep with much more than regret.
You can't put a price on dignity.
If any boyfriend I had was unmasked as a prostitute paying-sicko, was caught having an affair with a college student, or was busted for toe-tapping a signal wanting a quick Monica Lewinsky in the stall of a men's room, the only clutch I would engage in would happen lower than his hand...and it would probably make him weep with much more than regret.
You can't put a price on dignity.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
ARE YOU A SLOTH? CYNIC? COMPLACENT? MICHELLE OBAMA THINKS SO
Here is a link to the story I am talking about tonight, Thursday March 6
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/10/080310fa_fact_collins/?yrail
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/10/080310fa_fact_collins/?yrail
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
worst email of the week
Here is one of the reasons I am glad Hillary won last night. This is an example of the emails I get every time I criticize Barak Obama's policies - or lack thereof. This stellar piece of writing comes from Clay:
Is this a white thang, or a woman thang that i'm just not getting a gripon. Michelle you are a conservative as I, but have repeatedly tonitestated that you are leaning toward Hillary as a candidate.WHAT???? and whats the reason(s) why again and don't give me theexperience bullcrap. I've live with and around women all my life my I'venever had to deal with menstrual cramps. Give me another one, i dareyou. Only 2 of her over 300 sponsored senate bill have ever made it intolaw. Lets not even get into the scandals and repeatedly lying or beingunable to recall under oath. Forget about giving me a reason to vote forher I can name your FIFTY reason not to and it will begin with Billfunnelling Akansas investors to the Rose law firm where Hillary workedin order to get state contracts and $1000 was turned into $100,000 andkeeps on going to her present FEC violations in litigation in courtright now. But through all this garbage, lying, slander, cheating, andstealing, she is still better than the black guy. I don't know if shehave a grip on how that comes out. Holy moly.Now Hillary is in victim mode with WTKK and the rest of the 'media'.How can she be a victim, they NEVER, NOT ONCE dare to bring up the past.I've stated more about 'misdeeds' in this15 line email than the mediahas in her 4 years on running for president. SHE'S GOTTEN A FREE PASS.But then haven't all white women,and maybe they're not used to not beingthe only one who does.
Is this a white thang, or a woman thang that i'm just not getting a gripon. Michelle you are a conservative as I, but have repeatedly tonitestated that you are leaning toward Hillary as a candidate.WHAT???? and whats the reason(s) why again and don't give me theexperience bullcrap. I've live with and around women all my life my I'venever had to deal with menstrual cramps. Give me another one, i dareyou. Only 2 of her over 300 sponsored senate bill have ever made it intolaw. Lets not even get into the scandals and repeatedly lying or beingunable to recall under oath. Forget about giving me a reason to vote forher I can name your FIFTY reason not to and it will begin with Billfunnelling Akansas investors to the Rose law firm where Hillary workedin order to get state contracts and $1000 was turned into $100,000 andkeeps on going to her present FEC violations in litigation in courtright now. But through all this garbage, lying, slander, cheating, andstealing, she is still better than the black guy. I don't know if shehave a grip on how that comes out. Holy moly.Now Hillary is in victim mode with WTKK and the rest of the 'media'.How can she be a victim, they NEVER, NOT ONCE dare to bring up the past.I've stated more about 'misdeeds' in this15 line email than the mediahas in her 4 years on running for president. SHE'S GOTTEN A FREE PASS.But then haven't all white women,and maybe they're not used to not beingthe only one who does.
Is Being a Feminist Embarrassing?
Last night I talked about how the super-feminists are embarrassing a lot of women. Here's why:
http://www.observer.com/2008/stumping-clinton-steinem-says-mccains-p-o-w-cred-overrated
Gloria Steinem belittles John McCain. What? You can support women without ripping up a war hero.
Then we have the NOW femi-nazis using violent language that should be reserved for women who were victimized by sexual attackers for how Hillary Clinton has been treated.
http://www.nownys.com/pr_2008/pr_011108.html
Hey - as a woman in a Man's World the last thing you want to do is whine that you are getting picked on because of your gender (clip of last week's debates where Hillary complains that Tim Russert picked her first)...
The real feminists are women like Tina Fey - who declared "Bitch the New Black." Now THAT'S feminism.
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/#mea=221773
http://www.observer.com/2008/stumping-clinton-steinem-says-mccains-p-o-w-cred-overrated
Gloria Steinem belittles John McCain. What? You can support women without ripping up a war hero.
Then we have the NOW femi-nazis using violent language that should be reserved for women who were victimized by sexual attackers for how Hillary Clinton has been treated.
http://www.nownys.com/pr_2008/pr_011108.html
Hey - as a woman in a Man's World the last thing you want to do is whine that you are getting picked on because of your gender (clip of last week's debates where Hillary complains that Tim Russert picked her first)...
The real feminists are women like Tina Fey - who declared "Bitch the New Black." Now THAT'S feminism.
http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/#mea=221773
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
