Where do I sign up? Seriously, where/how do I get on this gravy train? EBT? SSDI? How do I get on board.
Not the Spotlight they sought
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Howie Carr
For once, I have to agree with Mumbles. The latest Globe Spotlight series about Boston cabs was “too long,” and I didn’t read it either.
Which is why I didn’t know until yesterday that the “undercover” Globe reporter/taxi driver got into a big smashup at Stuart and Clarendon streets last November. Even more damning, before the scribe and his two passengers were transported to the hospital, he gave the cops a story that he later had to, ahem, “correct a factual flaw in.”
Is correcting a factual flaw anything like changing your story?
And now these “crack” journalists have neglected to print the other side of the story, from the other driver. Not giving both sides of the story — what did the Globe think, that it was still misreporting on Granny Warren’s alleged Indian heritage?
But the bow-tied bumkissers should look on the bright side of this fiasco. At least this one Globe story wasn’t made up, or plagiarized. The accident really happened, believe it or not.
What you have to understand about this Spotlight series is that the Globe was trolling, once more, for a Pulitzer Prize in Public Service. As Alexander Cockburn (a noted lefty) once observed, these awards invariably go to “stories you haven’t read, about issues you don’t care about.”
This is where the length comes in handy, no matter what Mumbles thinks. These interminable series are delivered to the Pulitzer judges’ doorsteps in wheelbarrows, and the judges’ spirits sink as they contemplate actually having to read volumes of such dreck. The only alternative is to … just give them the damn prize. That way no one will call you on not reading it. In addition to being long and boring, the winning Pulitzer Public Service entry must be Politically Correct. God forbid the Globe should try to shine its nickel-and-dime flashlight on, say, EBT-card abuse. Too mean-spirited.
From a PC viewpoint, the great thing about Boston cabbies is that most of the drivers are “immigrants.” Thanks for pointing that out, Globe, we never would have known otherwise.
The Globe said the reporter/hack “revealed his identity” to his passengers. Did he really have to? I’m guessing his ascot gave him away, or when he first asked them, “Where to, old chaps?”
The CEO of Boston Cab asked a good question: “Who knows what he’s doing — while he’s out there, he’s not a professional cab driver.”
Or working on his resume? You do understand that on Morrissey Boulevard, the end is near. The Globe theme song is, “Any day now.”
As of yesterday, the throne-sniffers hadn’t deigned to print a correction, or even a clarification, admitting that the other guy is blaming the Globe reporter’s Ted Kennedy-esque driving.
They can’t, because if the Pulitzer judges see that, they won’t have to even pretend to read
the series before they dismiss it.