Bio hazard: Gov’s book deal exposes him as author-tunist
By Howie Carr | Sunday, March 30, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
How many times have I told you? With Deval, it’s all about showing him the money.
Originality is not his strong suit; he follows in the footsteps of others. Jesse Jackson makes a fortune in the racket Tom Wolfe called “steam control,” and Deval shakes down Coke and Texaco. But when you’re building a $7 million mansion in the Berkshires with a nut of maybe $30,000 a month, it doesn’t matter how big your “severance packages” were, you always need more dough.
So now Deval mimics Barack Obama. He finds some new marks and scores a $1.35 million advance for his book. Good job, Todd Shuster! The way you know you’ve made a score in book publishing is when the author doesn’t ever collect any royalties, because the advance was so over the top that the publisher could never make his money back. That’s what we’re looking at here, folks.
Deval is laughing all the way from the bank.
It’s a jackpot for a crackpot. Some people have a dream, Deval has a scheme. The corporate gigs are over, obviously he can’t run another political grift. So he doubled down. And now, to use the favorite expression of another one-term Massachusetts Democrat governor, Edward J. King, Deval Patrick is Makin’ It In Massachusetts.
The publishers, in that first flush of excitement before they are inevitably overcome with the same buyer’s remorse that now afflicts the Massachusetts electorate, are comparing the tome (“Slaughterhouse Jive”?) to “the way President Kennedy inspired the nation with his celebrated ‘Profiles in Courage’.”
With Deval, it’s “Profiles in Currency.” But the reference raises the question - who will be Deval’s Ted Sorensen? I know, he says he’s going to write it in his spare time (of which he has plenty). But he also said he was going to cut your property taxes.
Sooner or later, a “book doctor,” a ghostwriter, will have to be called in. Does anyone have the phone number of “slam poet” Patricia X. Smith - she could do this story justice. I just hope they devote an entire chapter to that brutal attack Deval suffered as a youth, when a South Side gang member supposedly bounced an empty soda can off his head.
Suggested chapter title: “Coke Can Con.”
“Gov. Patrick,” the publisher said, “will give readers everywhere a whole new sense of what is possible in both their personal and civic lives.”
Oddly, that book, too, has already been written, and once again by Tom Wolfe. Its title was “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.”
This fade-out of politics by Deval is just his standard MO. He never stays long in any one place. If you include the 2006 campaign, this is about as long as he’s ever stayed in any “job.” Stick around and actually try to do something? No dice, says Deval.
He’d rather be on the board of directors of a bunch of dodgy corporations like Long Beach Pawnshop Inc. They have quarterly meetings in sunny places for shady people. You get big money for no work, plus stock options. How long until he’s offered a radio talk show on a weak station - at least if he can get himself convicted of a felony he can blame on drug abuse?
Ben LeGuer is probably on suicide watch now, but bleep happens. Deval’s all about hope and opportunity. He was hoping for an opportunity, and now he’s got one. So what if it’s curtains (get it?) for the Patrick administration? How long until Tim Murray holds a confessional press conference about his girlfriends, even if he doesn’t have any?
“An unspecified portion” of Patrick’s royalties will go to A Better Chance, the organization that helped the governor attend Milton Academy.”
Let me translate: “Unspecified” means “very small.”
Coke . . . Texaco . . . Ameriquest . . . and now Random House. By Deval’s earlier standards, this isn’t much of a score. But at the State House, $1.35 million is big dough. It’s walking-around money. It’s golfing-with-Donald Trump money.
Which leaves one final question:
Who’s laughing now, Sal?
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1083857