Another Town Heard From (and a brush with media stardom)

On Tuesday night, May 29th, the Town Meeting of Brookline, Massachusetts voted by a 2-1 margin to endorse a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush. (For those who don't know Brookline, it is the home town of two famous Mikes, Dukakis and Wallace.)

Your editor was personally involved in this. Although not a member of the town meeting (an elected position in this town of 56,000 people), he wrote and circulated the petition, and spoke to the meeting on its behalf. The actual vote was 104-52.

You can read the resolution here.

The vote was symbolic and the resolution aimed at attracting public attention. Interestingly, The Boston Globe, which is owned by The New York Times did not cover the story until two days after the vote (your editor sent a release about the vote to the Globe, the Times and AP the morning after it took place.) The Boston Herald, a tabloid that is generally aligned with the administration, at least more so than the Globe, ran a story in advance, and another reporting the vote on the morning after. The Globe's story became a follow-up piece.

Take a look at the Herald's morning-after story. It does get the essential facts right--that the vote was held and that it was 2-1. Beyond that it's acquaintance with facts is glancing at best, and it's written like the editorials in college newspapers. (Was I repeating the "embittered claims of the left" that Bush lies and that he picks and chooses which laws to obey, or was I merely stating facts? You decide.) Still, the Herald made sure that word of the vote got all the way to the White House, by calling and asking for a comment. Way to go!

(The Herald even ran an actual editorial on the subject today, keeping it alive for another day. Apparently, they haven't heard that there's no such thing as bad publicity.)

The Globe story displayed the spurious balance (after all, the Town Meeting vote was 2-1, and Bush did get only about a quarter of the town's vote in 2004) that has become the bane of so much mainstream "journalism." (At least the Globe did interview your editor.)

Your editor found the episode--which history will surely little note nor long remember--instructive. First, he was reminded that media "stardom" (calls for some interviews, appearances on a couple of call-in shows, one of which featured a few callers labeling him a traitor) is more trouble than it's worth. Also, from the email and nasty phone calls he's received from a few loonies, it looks like at least some people who support Bush are getting nervous.