This Just In

Fresh air does wonders in politics

SARA FAITH ALTERMAN — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:49:50 GMT

Green Grassroots Effort
Overwhelming local support for a nonbinding ballot initiative indicates that a push for a greener future may have legs.

One Day you'll learn

CASSANDRA LANDRY — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:29:13 GMT

Second Courses
College students are told relentlessly to enjoy their time in school.

College students are told relentlessly to enjoy their time in school. "Once you're in the work force, that's it," parents and grandparents and teachers warn them. "I would trade with you any day."

That day, as it were, just got a lot closer.

One Day University (ODU) — the ultimate day of college, minus beer pong and homework — is a program that brings together top-ranking professors from some of the country's most respected colleges for one-day programs that recreate an academic atmosphere for those who are, as the hype on onedayu.com puts it, "nostalgic for a time when life was more about learning than job performance."

A day at ODU is relatively affordable — four lecture courses and lunch for $259, a far cry from the wallet-draining cost of a full top-tier enrollment. On top of that, ODU students need not sweat bullets over any standardized tests or submit any applications to bask in the enlightenment. Sessions are held in a dozen cities throughout the country several times each semester. Upcoming Boston-area days are scheduled into 2009 for December 7, January 17, March 7, and May 2. Each day's schedule is devoted to a slate of specific disciplines, such as science, history, music, and economics.

Shawn Achor, professor of positive psychology at Harvard, was approached by ODU directors after his psychology class on happiness garnered national attention for enrolling one out of six students on campus. "I love seeing the attendees make my research come alive. They're listening to the lectures not to get better grades, but to get a better education. It is what college should always be like," he says. "[ODU] students have a lot more life experience, so when I talk about psychology research, they nod their heads and smile, connecting the research to their own experiences in their work life and family life."

Professor of political science Matthew Baum — also at Harvard — is participating for the first time in December with a lecture on media, public opinion, and foreign policy. "My experience with adult education is that I get people who are very attentive and are already well-educated," Baum says. "I think continuing adult education is a terrific thing. Whether ODU is the answer to all continuing education, I don't know, but I do think that this sort of concept is the right idea."

"ODU provides a missing gap in education where we often think that school is over after our last degree," says Achor. "You are getting a higher quality of teachers than even Ivy League students normally get during a semester."

No chopped liver

JEFFREY GANTZ — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:40:30 GMT

Wait Wait in Boston
NPR's weekly quiz show, Wait Wait....Don't Tell Me , visits the Wang Theatre with some recognizable panelists.

If they’d been handing out chits for Carl Kasell’s voice on your home answering machine, they couldn’t have crammed more people into the Wang Theatre entry a week ago Thursday evening. An “intimate” evening with U2? Miss Saigon with the real helicopter once again? No, for the first time in some eight years, National Public Radio’s weekly news quiz game, Wait Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me, was taping in Boston. Forget the Rockettes.

Inside, the crowd cheered host Peter Sagal, official judge and scorekeeper Carl Kasell, and the evening’s three panelists — Boston Globe writer (and former Phoenix staffer) Charlie Pierce, Amy Dickinson of the syndicated column Ask Amy, and “TV personality” Mo Rocca — as if they were rock stars. Saying that this was “the largest paid audience we’ve ever had,” Peter allowed as how Boston was sort of his childhood home and added that, coming back, “It’s different. I got a scent of it in the air. Your sports teams are all winning. Your presidential candidate did pretty well. [Huge applause.] What’s not to like?” That was too much for Charlie: “Have you tried the subway, my son?”

Just two days after the presidential election, everybody was in a celebratory mood. Peter made Hahvahd jokes and used the word “approbation” in homage to Doris Kearns Goodwin. The folks in the balcony shouted down that they couldn’t hear, so the Wang sound system was ratcheted up, which left those of us sitting close hard-pressed to get all the jokes. Soon we were off with Marci from Montana, who made her political allegiance clear with a light-hearted answer identifying Governor Palin as “our Caribou Barbie.” After Peter related a story — perhaps apocryphal — about the governor’s opening her hotel door to McCain aides dressed in nothing but a towel, Mo came up with the movie title: “A Bridge to No Underwear.”

You probably have your own questions about the show. Where does everybody sit? In this case, Peter and Carl stood, next to each other stage right, and the panelists were seated at the traditional table, stage left, with the production team shrouded in darkness behind them. What does everybody wear? Peter and Carl sported coats and ties (for radio!); Mo and Charlie went respectable-casual; Amy wore a bright red party dress. Did the taping sound like what would air on WBUR that weekend? Mostly, yes. It’s as rapid-fire as what you hear; there’s not a lot of hemming and hawing while trying to think up one-liners. (Mo’s going into a prolonged huddle was surely deliberate; Peter had to snap him out with a “Lightning, Mo! This is the Lightning Round.”) Most of what’s different is that some material gets cut and rearranged to fit the show’s 50-or-so-minute time frame. We lost a lot about Big Bird, and a question about political parties in Malaysia, and one about unruly children in Lambeth. A caller mentioned that it was dark outside; you knew that wouldn’t make it on a show that airs Saturday at noon in Boston.

Parental discretionary donors

SHUCHI SARASWAT — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:14:51 GMT

How Sarah Palin generated over $1 million in donations to Planned Parenthood
Polarizin’ Palin has people everywhere opening their pocketbooks to the pro-choice movement’s benefit.

Schlepping for Obama

SARA FAITH ALTERMAN — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 06:59:55 GMT

The Boston roots of Sarah Silverman's Jewbama crusade
Chances are, by now you’ve heard about the Great Schlep, the Sarah Silverman–endorsed political/social experiment that’s urging Jewish youth to trek down to vital swing-state Florida this weekend and encourage their doting grandparents to vote for Barack Obama.

Since Harvard came out

HARVEY SILVERGLATE — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 06:23:23 GMT

Freedom watch
It was a typical Harvard alumni event, but not a typical, self-congratulatory Crimson “glory days” fest.

Bringing up Baby

JIM SULLIVAN — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:47:40 GMT

The most famous three-legged, barkless dog in the world
Few things in life are certain, but this is: a gentle, white miniature poodle named Baby is the most famous three-legged, barkless dog in the world.

Few things in life are certain, but this is: a gentle, white miniature poodle named Baby is the most famous three-legged, barkless dog in the world. She’s also the only one to tour the country in a bus with her likeness emblazoned on the side, and have her picture taken with, among others, Barack Obama, Bill Maher, Amy Sedaris, Steven Tyler, Jane Fonda, and Eric Idle. “She transcends political parties,” says Jana Kohl, her owner. “People from so many walks of life are so moved by her.”

Baby has gone from rags (in a puppy-mill cage, where she spent most of her life in squalor) to riches (this past week she was riding in a plush baby carriage at the Four Seasons). She is on the road with Kohl, who’s wrapping up a 30-plus city tour promoting her book, A Rare Breed of Love, and exposing the horrors of puppy mills (as well as championing other animal-related issues). Kohl, 49, and Baby met for a vegan lunch with some folks this past Thursday in a function room over the Bristol Lounge.

I sat next to Baby, who made loving eye contact and was pleased to be petted. Kohl — a psychologist from Chicago — was on Baby’s other side. Baby, now 12 or 13, is a rescue dog. By age eight or nine, she was a worn-out birthing machine in a Californian puppy mill. The breeder had cut her vocal cords so she couldn’t bark. Her bones were brittle; she had osteoporosis. (That later led to a leg break and amputation.) Her breeding use had ended.

As for Kohl, her previous dog, Blue, had died and it was time for another. The journey to Baby — who she found on a rescue Web site — started with exposure to the inhumane world of puppy mills, where breeding stock like Baby are kept alive, caged, and pregnant so they can churn out litter after litter for retail sale. Kohl saw shit, piss, and insects. She collected comments from breeders such as, “Animals don’t have feelings.” Little did Kohl — granddaughter of the founder of the Kohl’s department stores — suspect then that she’d become a leading critic of the mills. (Kohl has a cat, too, a stay-at-home named Kitty Pie, and she considers cat-breeders — catteries — just as vile.)

The people's gravelly voice

CLIF GARBODEN — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:23:36 GMT

Alan Lupo, 1938–2008
There’s a lot to be said about Alan Lupo. All of it good. Much of it colorful as hell.

True dat?

ADAM REILLY — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:02:01 GMT

Rory O’Connor ponders the future of journalistic trust at Harvard
Rory O’Connor’s timing couldn’t be much better.

Rory O’Connor’s timing couldn’t be much better. We’re in the midst of a presidential campaign where the very notion of Truth-with-a-capital-T seems to be at risk: think Barack Obama’s alleged Muslim-ness or Sarah Palin’s alleged rejection of the Bridge to Nowhere. And now O’Connor — the veteran journalist and media critic and alum of the Phoenix, the Real Paper, Boston magazine, the Globe, WGBH, and WCVB — has returned to Boston from New York for a fellowship at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, where he’ll be pondering the future of journalistic truth and trust. An edited excerpt of his recent conversation with the Phoenix follows; for a fuller version, visit the “Don’t Quote Me” blog.

What is the goal of your study at Harvard?
How do we know that what we see and hear is really true? That goes both ways. There’s a high level of distrust between the citizenry and the professional journalism priesthood, whether they’re on the right or the left. And the professionals are up in arms, too. They don’t trust citizen journalism at all; they’re afraid of people getting their news and information from viral e-mails; they know things are changing rapidly throughout the mainstream media; they feel, quite rightly, like they’re under assault. What I’m going to be looking at is trust, journalism, and social networks, and the role they can play in enabling people to get news and information they can trust. Obviously, that’s really vital to having a fully functioning democracy. And one could argue we don’t have one at the moment, or that we’re right on the edge of not having one.

So are John McCain and the GOP being savvy in telling people, “don't get your information from the media because they’re not trustworthy”?
Attacking the media hasn’t worked so well in the past, but I think it's working better now because of personalization — my Yahoo, my news, my Republican Party, my Democratic friends. And as people move away from mainstream transition belts, everything becomes media. You’re getting pushed directly from the campaign, or seeing their information on YouTube — that’s media. You’re mashing it up and making something new: photoshopping and putting Sarah Palin’s head on top of somebody in a red, white, and blue bikini, holding a giant gun, which also wasn’t true. That’s media. The other thing I want to look at is the mainstream media playing in fields of Facebook and MySpace. What are they doing? YouTube just partnered with the Pulitzer Center; CNN has a new thing going with Digg; Reuters built a bureau in Second Life. Nobody knows if any of this stuff’s going to work, but they know something’s happening.

Naming convention

LANCE GOULD — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:17:16 GMT

We asked, you answered: our readers text in votes for Sarah Palin's next baby name
Gwyneth had Apple. Posh had Brooklyn. And moose-killing miracle mom Sarah Palin beat them all with Trig Paxson Van Palin, a name so cool that it rhymes with “Eddie Van Halen.”

Justice on the hoof

HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND KYLE SMEALLIE — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:11:52 GMT

Nude-dance case ends with a whimper
The case of a political activist busted three years ago for a naked dance in Harvard Square, has ended with a whimper.

The homeland is officially secure

DAVID S. BERNSTEIN — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:48:55 GMT

Vicente Lebron freed
After being locked up by federal authorities for three months, Either/Orchestra percussionist Vicente Lebron was released this past Thursday.

Checking into the broads

SARA FAITH ALTERMAN — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:34:11 GMT

The now-famous "hockey mom" analogy
Unless you’d like to see what the sinew and tissue inside your shoulder socket look like, never come between an Alaskan grizzly bear and her young.

Unless you’d like to see what the sinew and tissue inside your shoulder socket look like, never come between an Alaskan grizzly bear and her young. And unless you’d like to see what the sinew and tissue inside your shoulder socket look like while you’re being called a goddamned son of a bitch assface, you assface, never come between an Alaskan hockey mom and her kids.

By painting herself as a hockey mom — and comparing the breed of zealous matriarchs to pit bulls with lipstick — during her speech at the Republican National Convention, vice-presidential hopeful Governor Sarah Palin conjured an image of a fiercely devoted protector who will latch onto the manhood of any predator and shake it until it stops yelping for mercy. Yikes, Democrats. This doesn’t look good for your livelihood. Or, you know, your naughty bits.

The general rules of hockey-momdom seem to set up women as superfans and body guards, nurturers and destroyers, lovers and fighters. Embracing a tough-love sensibility, hockey moms endure ass-crack-of-dawn practices, bitterly dank rinks, and an absurdly comprehensive array of paraphernalia (now including “jill straps” for the little ladies), all in order to fuel their kids’ fire for the ice. Hockey parents are notoriously rowdy, so it seems natural that maternal instinct combined with aggressive spectatorship make for one nasty bark, with a nastier bite. But is there actual truth to this pit-bull analogy, and does it mean that hockey-mom status will ensure Palin would make a formidable vice-leader?

“I think being a hockey mom means a positive thing,” says Liz Goddard, the executive director of hockeymoms.com and a hockey mom herself. “A hockey mom has got to be organized, a great time manager, a finder and planner of resources. She’s got to be an encourager, she has to be able to analyze and give feedback on skills and behaviors. A homework helper in the car usually, she has to give good examples in terms of leadership and fair play. . . . those are skills that are very easily transferable [to a political office].”

“A hockey mom should be someone who takes an interest in her child, supports them whether they win or lose,” says Lillian DeMarco, a hockey mom from New York, “but I am the extreme opposite of some of the parents I’ve seen. I’ve been in stands where some of the mothers and fathers are just really obnoxious. Screaming at their children, screaming at the opposing team. I’ve seen kids kick other kids with a skate while they’re down. When you see their parents, you see that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

The good soldier

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:45:20 GMT

In Minnesota, Mitt keeps the faith
It can’t be easy being Mitt Romney nowadays.

It's all okay with Mitt, even though he’s been upstaged by a sportscaster turned one-term governor.

BLOOMINGTON, MN — It can’t be easy being Mitt Romney nowadays. Imagine: you find your place in the Republican firmament, make a serious run at the GOP’s presidential nomination, earn frequent mention as a possible running mate for John McCain — and then watch as McCain picks an obscure, untested, deeply flawed hockey-mom-cum-Alaska-secessionist for the job.

Maybe, deep down inside, our former Massachusetts governor rages at the injustice of it all. But rather than retreating to Belmont to lick his wounds, Romney is here in Minnesota for the Republican National Convention, doing his darndest to get McCain and Sarah Palin elected in November. Speaking to the Massachusetts GOP delegation over brunch on Tuesday, Romney offered some insight into how he does it.

“When you lose an election, lose the nomination, if you think the election is just about the person — one person — then of course you have sour grapes,” Romney said. “You don’t get involved with the new person. But if you believe, as I do, that the election is about a series of beliefs and values you think are important — for your constituency, for your state, and for your nation — then when one person loses and the other person wins, who shares those values and those views, then you jump on that team and work just as hard as you did the first time.”

Bless his heart, Romney seems to be doing just that. There was no sense at Tuesday’s exhortatory breakfast that Mitt was going through the motions. He was earnest, animated, alternately humorous and heartfelt. Take, for example, this little joke, which was delivered with characteristic Romney aplomb.

“The story is, John McCain and Barack Obama, the race’ll be so close that neither the voters nor the Electoral College will be able to decide it. So it’ll be determined — the next president — based upon an ice-fishing contest in Minnesota, right here! And the person that catches the most fish over four days wins.

“They separate them on different lakes. On day one, John McCain comes in; he’s got 10 fish, Barack Obama’s got none. Day two, John McCain has 20 fish, Barack Obama has none. Day three, [Senate majority leader] Harry Reid goes to Barack Obama and says, ‘It’s clear John McCain is cheating; go spy on him and find out how he’s winning!’ So Barack Obama goes and watches John McCain, and he comes back to Harry Reid and says, ‘You won’t believe what John McCain is doing. He’s cutting a hole in the ice!’ ”

Clinton women for Palin? No way

MARY ANN SORRENTINO — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:23:04 GMT

Gender politics
Memo to John McCain: We may be angry, but we haven’t gone completely mad.

Laurels for a Boston media vet

ADAM REILLY — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:29:25 GMT

Breaking down barriers
Congrats to Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers, who’ll receive the Society of Professional Journalists’ Helen Thomas Award for Lifetime Achievement.

The art of being homeless

IAN SANDS — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:28:05 GMT

Street photography
Jake Anderson was a high-school sophomore from Lexington, walking down a Boston street, when a man rattling change in a cup asked for help.

A legal setback for Charlie

HARVEY SILVERGLATE — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:21:55 GMT

Freedom Watch
Free speech has won in the struggle between the MBTA and three MIT undergrads who claim to have uncovered flaws in the T’s electronic fare-collection system.

Free speech has won in the struggle between the MBTA and three MIT undergrads who claim to have uncovered flaws in the T’s electronic fare-collection system. At a follow-up hearing on Tuesday, Federal District Judge George O’Toole, who earlier had continued an emergency 10-day temporary restraining order prohibiting the students from disclosing their findings, reversed course and denied the MBTA’s request for a preliminary injunction.

Tuesday’s hearing was Round Three in the T’s legal struggle to silence the students.

A quick recap: on August 9, Judge Douglas Woodlock issued a temporary restraining order, one day before Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan, and Alessandro Chiesa were scheduled to deliver their insights on re-programming Charlie Cards (thus implying free rides — at least for select geeks) to the DEFCON hackers’ convention in Las Vegas. O’Toole continued the order at an interim hearing, held August 14, but promised to resolve the question on August 19, after further study. At that most recent hearing, O’Toole recognized the MBTA’s flawed arguments and refused the injunction.

How, until Tuesday, it was deemed lawful to prohibit speech when the only thing at stake was the MBTA’s possible loss of revenue, has left First Amendment advocates scratching their heads. The Supreme Court ruled in 1931 that speech could be enjoined in advance of its being spoken or published only in the “exceptional cases” where, if the speech were allowed, there would be irreparable, dire consequences. The example given was the so-called troop-ship scenario, where “a government might prevent actual obstruction of its recruiting service or the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops” in time of war.

Over the years, other high-court decisions echoed this high standard for “prior restraint of speech.” In 1969, the court ruled that a speech advocating violence could not be prohibited in advance unless it involved “advocacy [that] is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” (That case involved a KKK rally where speakers suggested violence against blacks and Jews.) And in 1971, there was the mother of all subsequent-prior-restraint decisions: the Supreme Court allowed the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish the Pentagon Papers, a leaked classified report detailing US involvement in the Vietnam War, despite government claims that national security would be irrevocably compromised. Publication even of those controversial documents was not deemed to fit the “troop-ship exception” (though post-publication criminal prosecution was left open).

Terror 'toonist

CLIF GARBODEN — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:29:00 GMT

Dept. of gallows humor
Earlier this month, syndicated cartoonist Matt Bors found a new fan in none other than Salim Hamdan, the man tried and convicted for once having been Osama Bin Laden’s driver.

Club-to-theater update

JIM SULLIVAN — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:20:19 GMT

Venue shifts
“If you take the biggest 100 names in comedy, you’ll see 90 of them here in the next couple of years.”