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Yes- we can agree to disagree on this. But just out of curiosity I checked your page. You have an Illinois flag on your page. Have you been to Southie lately? Do you know anyone who lives there now? Not trying to be a snot- but I don't think you quite understand what the Bulger crime family did to your beloved Southie in the 80's and 90's. An entire generation of kids were destroyed- given up to drugs, jail, violence, prostitution (Whitey liked to pimp out young teen girls by the dozen- 12,13,14 year olds), insane asylums, welfare, alcholism and suicide. I am not saying none of these problems didn't exist before- but there is definite evidence they became far worse while Whitey and his brother had free reign. Whitey is not some romantic gangster that I think you kinda see him as (I may be wrong)- he was a sick twisted man who raped young girls, helped murder at least one young girl the Rifleman Flemmi was screwing around with while dating the girls mother, and helped destroy hundreds of Southie youth with drugs. Organized Crime people are not the Soprono's or the God Father- they are complete amoral animals who are parasites on their communities.

And PS- my family has direct roots from both sides in Southie and Dorchester.

Not trying to be a snot- but I don't think you quite understand what the Bulger crime family did to your beloved Southie in the 80's and 90's. An entire generation of kids were destroyed- given up to drugs, jail, violence, prostitution (Whitey liked to pimp out young teen girls by the dozen- 12,13,14 year olds), insane asylums, welfare, alcholism and suicide. I am not saying none of these problems didn't exist before- but there is definite evidence they became far worse while Whitey and his brother had free reign. Whitey is not some romantic gangster that I think you kinda see him as (I may be wrong)- he was a sick twisted man who raped young girls, helped murder at least one young girl the Rifleman Flemmi was screwing around with while dating the girls mother, and helped destroy hundreds of Southie youth with drugs. Organized Crime people are not the Soprono's or the God Father- they are complete amoral animals who are parasites on their communities.

DAYUM!! I moved from Beantown in 1987- didn't know Whitey was up to all this since that time, unless some of it was undercover while I still lived there. Pitiful.

Nice tagline. That was Calvin Coolidge who said that.

I was last in Southie in the mid-nineties when I handled a divorce in a suburban court just south of Boston and spent an hour or so, driving the streets of Southie and recharging my Irish batteries on the way to Anthony's Pier 4(?) restaurant.

The entire generation???? They are ALL druggies, thugs. prisoners, on welfare in insane asylums, drunks, prostitutes or suicides? If we take out drinking, a neighborhood tradition, what percentage of the rest? I mean, we are talking about South Boston and not Bedford-Stuyvesant or the South Bronx. Whitey and the Rifleman are pillars of society by comparison with Ted the Driver, Ketchupboy and the Congressman who made Hot-bottom's male prostitution service famous or Rep. Gerry Studds who had the bad habit of turning over a new page, usually under 17 years of age. None of those would have lasted ten minutes in James Michael Curley's Boston or his Massachusetts for that matter.

Organized crime is less of a burden than unorganized crime. Even Junior Patriarca was not much of a problem compared to the Rastamen, the Dominican drug dealers and the Russians. Patriarca and Whitey had in house rules.

The suggestion that Billy Bulger had anything to do with pimpimg 12-year olds is beneath contempt and deserves no response. For someone claiming roots in Southie and Dorchester (presumable long ago in Dorchester), you are suffering an overdose of respectability and trying to do so at Billy's expense. Billy should be mayor. You referenced Whitey in the past tense. Is he dead? Or captured? Or disabled?

Richard Brookhiser, Yale mid-70's and a member of Skull and Bones, a Presbyterian from Rochester, New York, once heir apparent to Bill Buckley at NR who decided on writing biographies of such early gangsters as George Washington, the Adams dynasts: John, John Quncy, Charles Francis and Henry, Governeur Morris, Alexander Hamilton and other early gang figures, was delegated by upper crusty The New Yorker to go to Boston when Billy was still State Senate President to write a two-issue profile of he legendary bad boy of the Massachusetts State Senate. I know Rick. He went there intending something of a hit piece. No one threatened him. It wound up being a 14-page epic in prose that would be more than any Irish mother could hope, by far. Rick became a rabid admirer.

I refuse to allow HBO in the house so I don't know about the Sopranos. The Corleones were patterned rather closely on the Genovese Family in New York by Mario Puzo who well knew the situation. Now that the five New York Families have been badly damaged, crazy non-Italian gangs and NOT Whitey's terrorize afflicted neighborhoods and have no rules and no scruples. Pick up a copy of the 1928 book called Gangs of New York which was reprinted in paperback when the movie of that name (based on one chapter) was released. The Mafia brought relative peace to New York Streets. Lucky Luciano impose order. Rudy Giuliani, as U. S. attorney, whatever his virtues, broke that order and ironically had to deal with the results as mayor. He did well but the tapestry of nationality gangs still function and Bloomberg is clueless. Even the Teflon Don was a substantial degeneration from Carlo Gambino.