For something teed up in Friday’s Globe as a “no-holds-barred political slugfest,” the showdown over South Boston’s annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast quickly got downgraded into more of a playground skirmish.
For a few hours, however, it looked like we had an old-fashioned Boston political donnybrook going, with all the requisite ingredients of turf, race, and hidden electoral agendas. The Globe’’s Billy Baker reported that Linda Dorcena Forry, the veteran Dorchester state rep recently elected to the state Senate seat representing South Boston, was preparing to host the annual breakfast blabfest next year, continuing the decades-long tradition of the state senator who represents Southie presiding over the political roast. But Bill Linehan, the neighborhood’s district councilor, calling it “a cultural thing,” said that honor ought to remain with a South Boston resident, namely, him.
Lost on no one was the fact that Forry, the first non-Southie resident to represent the neighborhood in the Senate in anyone’s memory, happens to be black. As Baker wrote, the breakfast is “a symbol of South Boston’s lengthy position of power in the political infrastructure, and the idea that a black woman from Dorchester is poised to take over the cherished Irish-American event is culturally and politically loaded.”
Forry, the daughter of Haitian immigrants, said times change, and so, too, must some traditions. What’s more, she is hardly unfamiliar with the rich traditions surrounding St. Patrick’s Day. She is married to an Irish-American son of Boston, Bill Forry, with whom she has four biracial children. That multicultural imprint extends to the Forry family’s community newspaper business. They publish not only the weekly Dorchester Reporter, but also the Boston Irish Reporter and Boston Haitian Reporter.
Linehan’s move left a decidedly bad taste in people’s mouths, an appropriate descriptor when discussing an event whose gathering place has been dubbed “Halitosis Hall.” If the one-day skirmish seemed to harken back to days of Boston’s ugly race-riven past, the near unanimity of opinion siding with Forry provided a better gauge of where the city stands today. Mayoral candidates jumped to say they sided with Forry, as did past Southie breakfast hosts Bill Bulger and Steve Lynch. Linehan quickly gave up the fight.
It was surprising to hear from Bulger, who has virtually been in hiding since his gangster brother’s trial began earlier this year. But in an indication of just how wired in to Boston’s Irish-Catholic political world Forry is, Bulger’s willingness to share his thoughts on the issue — with the loathsome Boston Globe no less — may have something to do with longstanding ties between Bulger and Forry’s father-in-law, Ed Forry, cofounder of the Dorchester Reporter that his son now runs.
Some might have hoped to see national attention drawn to the wide-open mayoral race to succeed Tom Menino, which features a racially diverse field of capable candidates offering plenty of forward-looking ideas for the “new Boston.” But the storyline of Boston racial tribalism is too irresistible to the national media, the perfect political complement to all the Boston gangster focus of late. So with the mayor’s race heading down the home stretch, the New York Times weighed in yesterday with a story reporting on the brouhaha over the breakfast — and its quick resolution.
Boston Magazine’s David Bernstein speculated on Friday that the whole thing may have been a move by Linehan to rally old-time Southie forces behind his campaign as he faces a tough reelection match with Chinatown resident Suzanne Lee, who came within 100 votes of toppling him two years ago. It’s not clear, however, that he really needed to gin up support among those who would be with him anyway. His tin-eared gambit may well backfire, revving up support for Lee in Chinatown and the South End, as well as among Southie residents not taken by Linehan’s brand of parochial politics.
The breakfast kerfuffle provided Lee with a perfect opening to share some thoughts with Adrian Walker — and a few thousand Globe readers in the council district.
“We should be focusing more on how to bring everybody together,” she tells him. “That’s what I’ve been working on my whole life, how to bring people together and not to divide people. When you’re in a leadership position, you have an important role to bring the city forward.”
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
The state cited the Mattapoisett Housing Authority with a “pattern of mismanagement” and ordered the executive director to return all the authority’s computer equipment and work out of the office rather than at home.
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
CommonWealth’s Michael Jonas writes that Mayor Tom Menino’s recent quip to the New York Times that he’d “blow up” Detroit and start over shows a misunderstanding of how cities work, including how Boston came to thrive during his tenure.
Menino will roll out a plan today to try to boost the stock of affordable housing in Boston, the Globe reports.
Boston officials are holding up a permit for the annual pro-cannabis rally on Boston Common this weekend, which had planned to expand to two days of mirth and munchies this year.
Lenox studies whether its $10 parking tickets helped or hurt the town’s goal of freeing up more parking spaces during the summer.
The Mashpee Wampanoag’s Supreme Court, the judicial arm of its tribal government, issues its first ruling.
Cambridge’s planning board grants a development permit to Forest City for a Central Square biotech building. The permit comes on the developer’s third trip to the planning board, and after well more than a year of debate.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
US Sen. Edward Markey collected more than $1 million during his campaign from political action committees, many with business before the committees on which he serves, the Associated Press reports (via Telegram & Gazette). The Salem News tears into Markey for voting present on whether to intervene in Syria, calling him a national laughingstock.
NAACP President Benjamin Jealous plans to step down at the end of the year.
Western Maryland’s push to secede from the rest of the state highlights the growing urban-rural divide across the US.
Outgoing New York mayor Michael Bloomberg gives an extended interview to New York magazine. The magazine also looks at construction and rampant gentrification under Bloomberg’s watch.
ELECTIONS
Boston mayoral candidates John Connolly and David James Wyatt get the profile treatment on Keller@Large.
The Globe profiles candidate Bill Walczak, who is rolling out the first attack ad of the mayoral race, a critique of his opponents’ stands on the proposed Suffolk Downs casino. Dan Conley also looks to make hay out of the casino issue.
Creative types will bring arts issues front-and-center in the Boston mayor’s race with a candidate forum tonight.
Mayor William Lantigua declined to be there, but four of the six candidates for mayor of Lawrence are squaring off tonight in a debate sponsored by CommonWealth and the Eagle-Tribune. The Eagle-Tribune profiles one of the candidates, Juan (Manny) Gonalez, a “regular guy” who wants to be mayor. Here is the newspaper’s earlier profile of Lantigua.
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Jonathan Bush, of athenahealth, says the new software services tax unfairly targets companies like his, but then has to backtrack a bit after learning the tax doesn’t affect his firm, CommonWealth reports.
The Wall Street Journal looks at the financial meltdown, five years later.
Smartphones and other consumer electronics are crowding the already-fading AM radio spectrum.
EDUCATION
Beaver Country Day School in Chestnut Hill is integrating computer coding instruction into its curriculum in a big way.
The MetroWest Daily News jumps on the let-high school-students-sleep-in bandwagon.
HEALTH CARE
With the flu season just around the corner, public health officials are touting a new vaccine that they say will protect against four strains of the virus, as opposed to three from the current inoculation.
TRANSPORTATION
The ferry between Salem and Long Wharf in Boston carried 42,500 passengers through the end of August, up 49 percent compared to last summer, the Salem News reports.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Hurricane season has been quiet so far, prompting a debate over climate change, Time reports.
Slate asks how green all-electric cars really are; the answer depends on how much coal your local power plant operator burns.
Wareham officials are seeking a $1 million grant from the state to repair and restore the leaking and crumbling Parker Mills Pond Dam, deemed one of the state’s top 100 unsafe dams.
MEDIA
Poynter’s Rick Edmonds reviews Riptide, an oral history of how legacy media got washed out to sea by digital currents. The oral history appears on the Nieman Journalism Lab website.
The New York Post says it has a diary belonging to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in which he recounts his sexual escapades and struggles with his “lust demons.”
