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From crossbow crusader to our hack du jour
By Howie Carr | Friday, February 22, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com

The hack du jour is former state Sen. Cheryl Jacques, which rhymes with “Fakes.”

Some people mispronounce her name as Jacks, which rhymes with “Hacks,” which would also be appropriate, considering where she is landing - at the Division of Industrial Accidents, as an administrative judge, for approximately $107,000 a year.

Not bad, but didn’t I read once in the Globe that she was a “tenacious lawyer?” A hundred grand and change ain’t much for a “tenacious lawyer.” That’s what you’d pay for a standard issue failed hack, which at age 45 is what Rhymes-with-Fakes has become.

The job needed a woman, and the woman most certainly needed the job.

Did I mention she was a lesbian, or did you just assume it, knowing that Gov. Deval Patrick appointed her? Hey, it had been almost a week since his last lesbian judge, the woman in Amherst whose galpal gave a grand to Barack Obama on Jan. 21, one day before her appointment to the probate and family court bench.

Cheryl of course has her own live-in galpal who used to work for her at the State House during which time her pay increased 92 percent.

I took a look at Jacques’ resume, and strangely she neglected to include what I always recall as the pinnacle of her career, those glory years on the Norfolk County Mosquito Control Board. Do those years count toward the pension?

Also no mention on her C.V. of any tenacious lawyering, but she does include her career as “public speaker - write and speak nationally on issues of diversity, civil rights and politics.”

Mostly, diversity.

In the state Senate, she authored “the landmark 1995 Gun Control Act.” Yes, that was quite a landmark. A watershed, so to speak. Now, nobody gets killed in Massachusetts with an illegal firearm. Everyone can still remember where they were when they heard that the landmark Gun Control Act of 1995 had been passed. They’ll be putting up a statue of her any day in Dorchester, probably in Brockton, too.

Funny, she didn’t mention her jihad against the state’s beauty parlors. Or her crusade against crossbows, to end the senseless slaughter on our commonwealth’s highways.

How many more must die, Mr. Speaker (or President, as the case may be). How many more?

And indeed, none has, since Jacques stepped up to call a halt to the epidemic of crossbow violence. Who says government can’t make a difference?

She tried to run for Congress in 2001, but there weren’t enough gals of her persuasion in Jamaica Plain to make up for Steve Lynch’s boyos in South Boston. Then she quit the Senate to become the head of some “diversity” organization in D.C., but she couldn’t pull off a benchmark, let alone a landmark or a watershed. Soon she was unemployed - excuse me, she was “adjunct professor of law” at Suffolk University.

Adjunct means, for the time being. It also means, close to minimum wage.

How ironic it must have been, for Cheryl to be starving to death while her brother Steve, for whom she procured a hack job at the Turnpike, was making $96,485 a year as a payroll patriot. Now, though, the injustice has been rectified. At least for the six years of her term, she’s making a bit more than Steve at the public trough where all Jacques end up.

But the one smart thing she did do was get on the Deval Patrick bandwagon early on. It was the fashionable move among her crowd. And now she moves into the steamroom that is the Deval Patrick administration.

My only question is, now that Cheryl’s been taken care of, how long does cross-dressing drunk-driving Judge Robert Somma have to wait for his telephone call? He’s at least as qualified as Rhymes-with-Fakes.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1075194