Tom Keane

Adolf Who?

Don't blame kids for not learning about history. Blame schools for the way they teach it. But there's hope yet.

Some people's recurring nightmare is falling off a cliff. For others, it's being naked in public. For me, it's high school history (although naked does come in a close second).

I hated history. True, I took it a long time ago, and teachers tell me things have improved. Not much, though. A study released this year by the education reform group Common Core found stunning ignorance about history among US students. Almost a quarter of 1,200 17-year-olds polled didn't know who Hitler was. Four in 10 didn't know about the Renaissance. I don't blame the students; I blame the way they're taught. In 2004, the Thomas Fordham Institute (an educational nonprofit) reviewed 12 widely used American and world history textbooks and damned them all. "They make history dull," the institute concluded. "Something in the very nature of today's textbooks . . . blunts the edges of events and strips from the narrative whatever is lively, adventurous, and exciting."

I hold one of those books in my hands: McDougal Littell's World History, now in use in Boston's public high schools. Unreadable, with an endless stream of facts, it gives short shrift to the important and is sometimes spectacularly bizarre. The Holocaust, for example, gets four pages. And why, the textbook wonders, does the Holocaust matter for today's students? The main reason given: Hitler's mass extermination "led to the founding of Israel." Amazing. So much for millions dead.

It doesn't have to be this way. Since 1976, Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit based in Brookline, has been promoting a different way of learning about the past, by training teachers to link history to ethical questions and by publishing materials that connect yesterday's events to today's students. Facing History concentrates on a few significant events (such as the Holocaust, political refugees, and the US eugenics movement). Using first-person remembrances, it puts students in the shoes of people who lived through those times and pushes them to think about why those people – be they leaders, followers, dissenters, or bystanders – made the choices they did. Teachers rave about it. It "makes kids step into history," says Josh Otlin at Hudson High School. Students learn history is "something that's not predetermined," says Carolyn Smith, who teaches at the Edwards Middle School in Boston. (To see this in action, visit Facing History's exhibit, "Choosing to Participate," now at the Boston Public Library in Copley Square through May 20.)

The program has a worldwide reach, with an estimated 1.6 million students taking its courses annually and 24,000 teachers trained in its approach. Indeed, most Boston middle schools are in the process of implementing a Facing History program on the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas. Yet Facing History is a supplement to, not a replacement for, traditional history courses. (My eldest daughter, a senior at Boston Latin Academy, took the course as an elective.)

You're probably thinking this is OK, that kids need grounding in history – typified by the year-long survey course – before they can focus on specific moments of the past. I disagree. Survey courses are themselves the problem. It is impossible to teach well all of American or world history in a year or two; individual events become a meaningless blur.

By contrast, we don't use the same method when we teach high school literature. We don't compel students, for example, to learn the plot lines and main characters of the top 1,000 books ever written. Rather, English courses concentrate on perhaps five or six volumes – a work by Shakespeare, The Great Gatsby, and a few others – and explore them in depth.

That should be how we teach history. This isn't Facing History's mission (its focus has been on issues of racism and intolerance), but its approach shows the way: It is better to learn a few things well than many things badly. Doing so would require changing state curriculum standards, allowing teachers to dwell on a comparatively small number of topics. What we would get in return might be genuine understanding – and a sense that history is not something that simply happened to other people, but rather stories about choices and consequences, the same kinds of choices and consequences that we face in our lives today.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, April 27, 2008.

Stayin' Alive

Well, it gets me down the way they like to talk,
She’s a harridan, they like to mock.
Men too loud and women scorned, we’ve been
Kicked around
Since I was born.
But now it’s all right, good Tuesday.
And I’ll take 10 most any day.
Dems are soon to understand
They can’t stop Clinton's master plan.

Thanks to all the mothers and not too many brothers,
I’m stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Feel Obama shakin’ and the supers start breakin’,
And I’m stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive.

Well now, two states more, my votes get high,
And if I can’t get both then I’ll really cry.
Keep the Rev. and “bitter” in the news.
Indiana then I just can’t lose.
You say it’s not right, it’s foul play.
I’ll live to see another day.
Dems are soon to understand,
They can’t stop Clinton’s master plan.

Was goin’ nowhere, Ohio helped me.
Then Texas helped me, yeah.
Still goin’ nowhere, then P.A. helped me.
Ev’rybody helped me, yeah. Stayin’ alive.

The Wrong Call

Like everyone, I'm infuriated by drivers who talk and text on their cellphones. But banning hand-helds isn't the answer.

It's hard to be a Libertarian with all of these knuckleheads around.

I'm not really a card-carrying member of the Libertarian club. I pay taxes; I even think they're a good idea. Still, I find myself instinctively bothered by this incessant nanny-state desire to pass laws to tell people how to behave. Then those instincts run smack dab into those idiotic drivers text messaging while behind the wheel. It makes you wonder: If they're that stupid, maybe they do need a law to tell them what to do. And while we're at it, let's ban hand-held cellphones as well. That's the proposal now before the Massachusetts Legislature.

One chilly Saturday last month, I spent a half-hour on a Copley Square street corner, watching traffic pass by. All told, I counted 468 cars; 42 drivers had phones to their ears. Those weren't the ones that scared me, however. I saw several drivers animatedly engaged in conversation with a passenger, turning their heads, gesticulating wildly. One woman was stretching both arms wide, as if to show the size of a fish she had caught. A man, hands off the wheel, was putting on sunglasses.

The phenomenon I observed is called "driver distraction." Cellphones are part of that, but how much is uncertain. A 2001 University of North Carolina study concluded cellphones were the distracting factor in crashes only 1.5 percent of the time. The National Conference of State Legislatures came to a similar conclusion. California, for example, found cellphones contributed to no more than 611 crashes out of 491,083 during a six-month period in 2002. On the other hand, a much-ballyhooed 2003 study from the University of Utah said cellphone users drove as badly as drunks, while a 2005 pilot study of 100 drivers in the Washington, D.C., area came to the startling conclusion that driver distraction caused almost 80 percent of all crashes (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration believes it's more like 25 percent), with cellphones a major contributor. There's a big problem with these inflated estimates. If there were that many new "drunks" on the road, or if cellphones were a significant cause of driver distraction, one would expect to see that reflected in accident statistics. But crash rates nationwide, in fact, have been dropping even as cellphone use has increased, from 26.6 in 1997 for every 10 million miles traveled down to 19.8 in 2006.

Still, even if they don't cause a lot of crashes, cellphones and text messaging do appear to contribute at least to some, such as the horrific accident in December in which a boy was killed in Taunton by a text-messaging driver. So, again, why not a ban? Bans are needed, runs the argument, because people on their own don't know what to do. We look to the law to tell us what's right and wrong.

Really? Despite it being a crime, 40 percent of Americans 12 and older have tried marijuana, according to a 2003 survey. I'd bet that all of us, at one time or another, have exceeded the speed limit. Then there's New York's experience. It banned hand-helds in 2001. Yet, while use of the phones dropped a bit the following year, it then climbed back up to pre-ban levels, according to the NHTSA. In other words, just because we make something illegal, that doesn't mean we stop doing it. Activists counter that tougher laws are the cause of a decline in drunken driving, but, really, those laws more reflect a sea change in our culture. Where once being inebriated and behind the wheel was a joke (remember Dean Martin?), today it would garner few laughs.

The point is that the law is a clumsy and ineffective tool for trying to make us better people. Most of life - driving included - requires good judgment. A law can't provide you that. Moreover, cellphone bans have a feel-good, do-nothing quality to them. Researchers have concluded there is little difference in the distracting effects of handheld phones and hand-free phones, yet the Massachusetts legislation (and the laws of every state with a ban) would permit hands-free calling. And even with a ban, we'd still have drivers fiddling with their radios or eating a Big Mac while merging onto the highway. How do we deal with those? More laws? Enlightenment philosophers long ago argued that compelling people to be religious wouldn't save their souls. In the same way, I suspect, merely banning hand-helds and text messaging would do little to make even the most knuckleheaded of drivers more responsible.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, March 23, 2008.

Does Boston Really Need a Mayor?

More and more, the job of running a municipality seems better-suited to a professional manager.

Eighty-six percent of Boston voters didn't show up at the polls in November, a fact that infuriates me, until I begin to wonder if perhaps the no-shows have got it right. Maybe local politics really doesn't matter after all.

When Ray Flynn was elected mayor in 1983, 70 percent of the city's voters turned out. In a recent column for a community newspaper, he agonizes over the drop. Something must be to blame. Is it the media's fault? The fragmentation of our communities? Are we all so busy with our Second Life that we no longer have time for the first?

Or is it none of that? After all, we still seem engaged in statewide and national politics (the February presidential primary saw Boston's turnout almost triple). Could it simply be that the task of running a city or town these days is less political than it is managerial, less ideological than it is technical – and that voters have finally figured that out?

Imagine you're a local pol. You have no control over town revenues. The property tax is subject to the stringent limits imposed by 1980's Proposition 2 1/2, and state aid amounts are dictated by Beacon Hill. You're perpetually short of money, but state law prohibits you from coming up with new taxes of your own. The decisions you make are rarely political. Snow removal and crime fighting are hardly controversial; no one has ever successfully campaigned against either. The measures of success are innovation and efficiency. They have to be. With money short, your grim days are spent less on "What do I fund?" than on "Where do I cut?"

And the big, fun clash-of-values issues? Cities were once the battlegrounds of powerful ideological struggles. Now, those fights are at the State House or in Washington. Even rent control – a longtime local concern – is subject to (and banned) by state law.

At least, you think, I can get my friends jobs. Oops. Not true. In the Bay State, it's now largely illegal. Civil service rules mean that, aside from a few close staff, the only things you're handing out are invitations to your next fund-raiser.

These changes may help explain why so many Massachusetts towns – 305 out of 351, according to the Massachusetts Municipal Association – don't have elected mayors and rely on professional administrators instead. Even some of those with mayors (Lowell, Cambridge, and Worcester) have what are called "weak mayor" governments, where the mayor is mostly a figurehead and the real power lies with the city manager. And why not? There's a lot of research that suggests professional administrators do a better job than elected officials when it comes to delivering services effectively. For one, they actually go to school to learn their jobs, getting degrees such as a master's in public administration. They're hired under long-term contracts, and because they don't have to worry about elections, they're not constantly trying to placate interest groups. That means, for example, that they can negotiate with public employee unions without fearing their opposition come the next election.

I raise this with smart people who study this stuff, and they point out counterexamples. While the general trend is toward hiring career professionals, says Geoffrey Beckwith, executive director of the MMA, there are a number of municipalities that have opted for an elected mayor instead, including Braintree, Amesbury, and Greenfield. Wilbur Rich, a political science professor at Wellesley College, argues that sometimes municipalities need mayors. When populations are divided – newcomers versus old-timers, for instance – elected politicians can bridge the gap. And mayors with sufficient power can better deal with a political crisis or help promote the city to outsiders.

I'm unpersuaded. Granted, sometimes politicians can do things managers cannot. But as cities and towns find themselves, for good reasons and bad, with ever less power and discretion, local politics seems ever more irrelevant. A big city like Boston will, if only for tradition, probably never stop electing a mayor (although Menino – whom Rich calls a "good housekeeping mayor" – perhaps proves the general point that residents care more about efficiency than they do politics). I sympathize with Mayor Flynn's lament, yet think he's mistaken to believe the halcyon days he remembers will ever return. Local politics was once this region's favorite sport. No more.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, March 2, 2008.

The Grass Isn't Greener

The Greenway is nothing more than the world's most expensive median strip - and a hard lesson for the city.

In 2004, Big Dig workers began dismantling the old elevated Central Artery, leaving a moonscape of debris and construction equipment in their wake. But fear not, officials assured us, something wondrous would soon emerge: the 15-acre Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

Well, it's emerged, all right. Not wondrous, though, wretched - wretched not only in execution but also in conception. Poor Rose's Greenway neither cures the ills left by the Big Dig nor gives us a decent piece of open space.

Odds are, you've never walked its length, and in your mind's eye the notion of a "greenway" conveys some sense of meandering parkland, a cool, green r espite from urban rigors. Far from it. The Greenway is less a park than a series of disjointed "parklettes." Officially, there are four (Chinatown, Dewey Square, the Wharf, and the North End). In reality, it's more like 15, with each of the spaces cut up by cross streets. The parklettes are filled with the various gimcracks beloved by landscape architects who try to "define" spaces, inject "whimsy," and "echo" history, but which really look more like leftovers from a giant Tonka Toy.

I walk the Greenway at noon on a pleasant winter's day, and it feels as if I'm on the world's most expensive median strip. Three lanes of traffic travel on each side of me, two roaring and honking mechanistic rivers. People are out; the city is busy. Yet on my excursion, it occurs to me that I have found the answer to Southwest Airlines' "Wanna Get Away?" query. Visit the Greenway. I'm the sole pedestrian, alone in a crowded city. If Thoreau were alive and seeking solitude today, he might have chosen the Greenway over Walden Pond.

I'm being unfair. Come summertime, I have little doubt that workers from nearby office buildings will venture outside to catch some noontime sun. Good for them. Still, I imagine I could put together a list of 100 things Boston might have done to improve itself, and nowhere on that list would be, "Create more outside places for office workers to lunch." But $14.8 billion later, that's what we've got.

The real problem, however, is not the insipidity of the parklettes. Rather, it's the notion of the Greenway itself. I have long been skeptical that open space was the best use for these new acres. I had hoped to be wrong, but, sadly, am not.

What should we have done instead? Stand in one of the North End parklettes and look east. You'll see the densely packed brick buildings of the North End. Look west and, lo and behold, you'll see the same kinds of buildings in the Haymarket. Why is that? Because the two sides used to be one. The elevated highway was built back in an era - the 1950s - when urban planners did whatever they wanted. They wanted a north-south highway and, r-i-i-p, homes were torn down and 20,000 residents were summarily displaced. ("Ah," I can hear real estate developers sighing, "Those were the days.") Many, quite accurately, described the Central Artery as a wound through the city and, carrying the metaphor further, the purpose of the Big Dig was to close that wound.

Instead, we've just turned the wound into a scar. The right approach would have been to build across, filling in the emptiness with the kinds of buildings that exist on both sides and knitting the two halves together. That's true not only of the North End, but also of the other halves divided by the parklettes: Chinatown could link with the Leather District, downtown with the waterfront. Instead, we've kept in place a mile-long moat between two parts of the city. Sure, with the elevated highway down, at least one can see the other side. But the division remains.

And so the Greenway fails. As a park - or series of parks - it's dull, hard to reach, and seems doomed to become a trash-strewn no man's land. Ultimately, it's an object lesson for the next time we decide to fix one of our broken spaces (City Hall Plaza leaps to mind). The Greenway lacks courage, insisting on remembering - or paying homage to? - a regretted roadway that would have been better forgotten.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, January 27, 2008.

Campaign tinkering

The Fortnight That Wasn't

IN THE wake of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, the candidates worked hastily to retool their campaigns. Barack Obama announced that in an effort to shore up his appeal to white ethnic voters, he was changing his surname to O'Bama. Mitt Romney promised voters in Michigan that if they chose him he would stop using metaphors that related to the Olympics. While saying he was pleased with the results in New Hampshire, John McCain asked that votes be counted more quickly in future primaries so that he could give his victory speeches prior to bedtime.

Looking ahead to the next round of primaries, Hillary Clinton warned voters that she would come to their states and start tearing up if polls there showed they were not supporting her candidacy. Rudy Giuliani defended his decision not to campaign in the early primaries, saying they were mostly beauty contests that measured little more than candidates' likability. "Later on, once people are ready to vote for someone unlikable, I feel confident they'll choose me," he said. Huckabee supporters rejected feelers from the Romney campaign to switch their support, saying they "weren't born yesterday." However, they did concede they were created just 6,000 years ago.

And in Massachusetts, residents said that Obama's inspirational message of nonpartisanship and "yes we can" reminded them of Governor Deval Patrick's own "together we can" campaign in 2006, and they looked forward to the day when Obama is president and every state in the country would have destination casinos.

In other news, global warming skeptics said that near-record snowfall in New England at the end of 2007 vindicated their doubts, while global warming advocates said record warm temperatures in early January proved they were right all along.

Google unveiled Oogle, the latest iteration of its Street View software. Unlike Street View, which displays a 360-degree views of streets at ground level, Oogle concentrates on second and third floor levels, using photographs shot in the early morning and evening. Google dismissed complaints by privacy advocates that Oogle was a blatant attempt at voyeurism. "All these images are taken on public streets," said a spokesperson for the company. "It's exactly what you could see walking down the street - if you were 30-feet tall, that is."

In the latest development of a controversial business practice, Fenway Franks announced that it had purchased from the Red Sox the naming rights for Fenway Park, which would henceforth be known as Fenway Park. "Until now, all people thought of when they said 'Fenway Park' was a Boston neighborhood," said a spokesperson for the Company. "But now that we've spent all this money, they'll have to think of our hotdogs."

NASA announced a stepped-up schedule of flights for the shuttle and dismissed worries that the 27-year-old craft was too aged to handle the strains of the additional missions. "We're talking technology from the 1980s, some of the best that's ever been made," said a senior NASA official, as staffers demonstrated how they continued to rely on their 3-pound DynaTAC cellphones, Commodore 64 computers, thermal-paper fax machines and dot-matrix printers. "Sure, today's new-fangled technology may be lighter and a bit glitzier," added the official, "But we're talking rocket science here - not Second Life."

Scientists said they had successfully created a new strain of fluorescent, glow-in-the-dark pigs. Analysts said the market for the animals was likely huge. "This will be a particular boon to people who dine in those dim, pricey, candle-lit restaurants," said one. "Now they'll be able to find their food."

Pitcher Roger Clemens strenuously denied using steroids but did concede that he had received injections of vitamin B12 and painkillers from his former trainer, Brian McNamee. "I did keep wondering why he wouldn't just let me take a One-A-Day and some aspirin," Clemens recalled. "But heck, he's the trainer - if he says I needed a painful shot in my buttocks, who am I to doubt him?"

And finally, the federal government announced a $1.5 billion program to help owners of old-fashioned televisions purchase the equipment needed to keep their sets working after digital signals replace analog a year from now. Officials denied that most of those with the obsolete televisions were NASA employees.

Published on January 13, 2008 on the op-ed page of The Boston Sunday Globe.

Tall Order

If Boston is serious about going green, it needs to join other major cities and embrace the skyscraper.

Sixteen Boston buildings rise 500 feet or more above the city. These are our skyscrapers - a respectable number, but we haven't been keeping pace. All but three were built in the 1980s or earlier. The tallest, the John Hancock, no longer impresses; it now ranks just 46th in the country. Meanwhile, the destruction of the World Trade Center notwithstanding, other cities race ahead. San Francisco has 14 skyscrapers either approved or in planning. New York has 39, Chicago has 30, and Toronto (Toronto!) 19.

Boston is looking to build - maybe - two. That's right: two.

Carol Willis, executive director of the Skyscraper Museum in (where else?) New York, theorizes that skyscrapers are potentially about three things: sex, power, and money. I think this a profound observation until it occurs to me that pretty much everything is about sex, power, and money. Still, stay with her formulation and one can begin to understand why we lag. A lot of us New Englanders are embarrassed about sex, don't like to brag about power, and cringe at ostentatious displays of wealth. Add to that our never-ending love affair with five-story 19th-century town houses and brownstones and a near pathological fear about the "Manhattanization" of Boston (all a consequence, argues Northeastern architecture dean George Thrush, of the way we have made a fetish of our Colonial origins), and one can begin to understand why Boston is so averse to making its skyline bigger and taller.

I know. It sounds as if I have some sort of edifice complex myself. Boston's beauty is its small scale, its human-sized buildings. Real cities don't have to have skyscrapers, do they?

Yes, they do. It's not that I don't like those cute town houses - I live in one. But density is what cities are all about, skyscrapers are the ultimate form of density, and - here's the kicker - they are flat-out the greenest way to build. If we care about Boston, if we care about the environment, we should build up and build tall. A skyline is nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, it may save us all.

Smirking analogies aside, skyscrapers aren't really about sex or power, says the museum's Willis. What they are about is money. The first skyscrapers were built because they were an extraordinarily efficient way to add square footage to a parcel of land. When land is expensive, it is far cheaper to build upward. The taller you go (at least until you hit 80 stories), the less the cost per square foot.

Yet today, the most compelling argument for skyscrapers is ecological. Newer skyscrapers are being designed in ways that dramatically minimize their impact on the environment, allowing them to achieve the highest rank possible ("platinum") under the LEED Green Building rating system. Water and heat are recycled. Solar panels reduce the need for outside energy. The entire life cycle of the building is managed, from construction to obsolescence, with some of the original materials getting reused to build other structures. This is all possible because of the building's size, which makes it economically feasible to do things that in a smaller structure would be far too costly.

But even if a skyscraper isn't LEED certified, it is the way the building is used that makes it so profoundly green. When people are packed together, the services needed to support those people are easier and cheaper to provide. Less travel is required. Everything can be provided in bulk. That's why, as David Owen argued in a seminal New Yorker piece in 2004, Manhattan on a per-capita basis may well be the most energy-efficient place in the country. The reason largely boils down to the fact that it is also the densest.

Building tall is building smart. Yet here in Boston, we're unmoved. Catcalls greeted Mayor Tom Menino's push to build a 1,000-foot tower at 115 Winthrop Square. Scorned for its hubris, it was mockingly dubbed "Tommy's Tower," making for an amusing but wrongheaded cheap shot. The very thing that makes cities vital - the proximity of everyone and everything - is what skyscrapers do best. In a world where environmental issues loom ever larger, "the heart of the question is how we build sustainably," says Diane Georgopulos, president-elect of the Boston Society of Architects. Skyscrapers are the answer.

Plus, they do look cool.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, January 6, 2008.

So who, exactly, voted for Putin?

The Fortnight That Wasn't

TIME MAGAZINE named Vladimir Putin its "Person of the Year." Time Inc. officials said they were surprised at the choice, since the Russian president hadn't been nominated for the honor and no company staffers would admit to having voted for the man. "But an election is an election," said a Time Inc. spokesperson. "The guys we hired from Little Odessa to count the vote said there was no doubt - Putin got 98 percent."

With the Iowa caucuses just four days away and the New Hampshire primary a week from Tuesday, Americans braced for the possibility that the nominating contests of both major political parties could be over by the second week of January. "For months, we've been inundated with baseless allegations about Edwards's affairs, Obama's drug taking, Mitt's religion, Hillary's sexuality, and Rudy's mistresses. It's been great entertainment," said one New Hampshire voter. "Now, sadly, all of it may be going away." Voters said the only bright spot was that at least the Spears family was back in the news.

Skepticism greeted Mitt Romney's claim that he had seen his father, George Romney, march with Martin Luther King Jr., and in a clarification Romney said it was possible he was actually remembering an incident when the late Michigan governor took the family maid through the house pointing out various rooms that needed dusting. "The point is," a Romney spokesperson said, "Mitt did see his father with an African-American and they were walking together."

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton continued to emphasize her experience, pointing out that while at the White House she had been deeply involved in decisions relating to furnishings and interior decorations. "I left everything just as I wanted it," the former First Lady said. "As president, you won't see me distracted trying to redesign rooms or worrying about what colors to paint the walls. I'll be ready to go to work."

And in a touching display of bipartisanship, the presidential candidates united to condemn the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and offered their help. John Edwards volunteered to lead malpractice suits against Bhutto's doctors, Barack Obama promised an inspirational message, Rudy Giuliani vowed to travel to the scene of her murder and glower at people, and Fred Thompson said he would spend the evening learning where Pakistan is on a map.

After a disappointing Christmas shopping season, the nation's retailers cheered recent scholarship that suggested Jesus was actually born in March, and urged Americans to celebrate a newly created "Springtime Christmas." "In deference to those who would like to maintain the traditional date of Dec. 25, we think we should all celebrate two Christmases a year," said a spokesperson for the retailers, adding that research is underway to determine if Jesus might have been born in the summer and fall as well.

Here in Massachusetts, Governor Deval Patrick signaled he was willing to consider cutting the state's corporate income tax rate in an effort to boost economic growth. Unlike similar proposals from previous Republican governors, Patrick's plan was not corporate welfare, administration officials said, because it was being proposed by a Democrat.

Massachusetts Lottery officials unveiled plans to make lottery tickets available at major retail chains such as Home Depot, CVS, and Dunkin' Donuts. Officials predicted that the new locations would dramatically increase lottery revenues, but added they also planned to boost funding for addiction counseling. "We think this strikes the right balance between encouraging people to gamble while not appearing to harm the most vulnerable," the officials said, adding that since anti-gambling programs were largely ineffective anyway, they doubted they would be cutting into their customer base.

Longtime Boston pol Albert "Dapper" O'Neill died at age 87, ending one of Boston's last links to the era of James Michael Curley. Bostonians fondly remembered "The Dap's" legendary intolerance for immigrants, feminists, and gays. "You don't find many more around here like him," said one local politician. "Instead, they're all running for the Republican nomination for president."

And finally, as 2007 wound to a close, Americans resolved for 2008 to elect a government that is decent, compassionate, principled, and respected around the world. Experts said that, like most New Year's resolutions, they expected this one to be forgotten by February.

Published on December 30, 2007. "The Fortnight That Wasn't" appears every other week on the op-ed page of The Boston Sunday Globe.

Securing the peace

The Fortnight That Wasn't

A NUMBER of Americans sort-of-remembered "a date which will live in infamy" about an attack that happened on December something-or-other 60 or 70 years ago when some country attacked a US harbor way out west in California or maybe even in Hawaii.

The Bush administration said that after unrelenting and escalating pressure by the United States in 2006 and 2007, Iran finally stopped its nuclear development program in 2003. "This marks a major victory in the president's efforts to secure peace," said a White House spokesperson, who added that the president's next major diplomatic initiative would be to mount a campaign to force East Germany to tear down the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Vladimir Putin offered to assist Hugo Chavez in future elections after the Venezuelan president narrowly lost a contest to revise his country's constitution. The Russian president, who recently won a lopsided vote in his favor, said he would send technical advisers to help Chavez better intimidate opposition parties and manage vote counting. "With our expertise in these matters, we'll make sure that next time around President Chavez turns this disappointing defeat into an overwhelming victory," Putin added.

The CIA announced a major technological breakthrough in evidence destruction. "Thirty years ago, the best we could manage was 18-minute gaps in tape recordings," officials testified in closed-door hearings before Congress. "Now, we've learned to wipe out videotapes altogether." Members of Congress said that while they felt compelled to appear upset at the news, their seeming rage would diminish once they were provided with access to the same know-how.

As the Iowa caucuses loomed, the presidential race began to heat up. With Oprah Winfrey stumping for Barack Obama, Curt Schilling campaigning for John McCain, and Madonna backing Hillary Clinton, other candidates began scrambling to secure their own celebrity support. Polls showed the endorsements mattered. "If these candidates aren't good enough for a celebrity, they certainly aren't good enough for me," said one typical voter. A major beneficiary of this attitude appears to be Fred Thompson, who, as a well-known actor, is in the unique position of being able to endorse himself. Thompson's staffers said they hoped such an endorsement would be forthcoming, but had not yet awakened the candidate to ask him.

In a major speech, Mitt Romney spoke to conservative Christian ministers, assuring them that his religion was no more outlandish than theirs. "You believe the Earth began less than 10,000 years ago; I believe an angel gave golden tablets to a 17-year-old," Romney explained. "You believe the Bible is literally true; I believe in baptism of the dead." The ministers said they were impressed by Romney's words, but still thought their beliefs less preposterous since they happened a long time ago.

Republicans said they were embarrassed by a YouTube/CNN debate that featured questions about the Bible, gays in the military, the North American Union, and the size of their gun collections. "Sure, this is what we talk about with our true believers," said one candidate, "but we certainly didn't want all of America to know."

Rounding out the campaign news, the major presidential candidates all agreed to suspend campaigning during Christmas week. "There comes a time when we all need to pay attention to the things that really matter," the candidates said. "So our message to Americans this season is, please, go to the mall. We'll be back with you on the 26th."

And finally, a group of climatologists released a pessimistic report on the newly observed phenomenon of solar dimming, confirming widespread observations that periods of sunlight appeared to be getting shorter by about two minutes every day. "Back in June, we had over 15 hours of sun. Now, just six months later, we're down to nine," the scientists said. "If these trends continue, by next September it'll be perpetually dark." The scientists could offer few solutions. "There's not much we can do but put a brave face on things. Light candles; sing hymns; gather together as families. The truth is, though, we're all doomed."

Published on December 16, 2007. "The Fortnight That Wasn't" appears every other week on the op-ed page of The Boston Sunday Globe.

Giving thanks for sales

The Fortnight That Wasn't

MILLIONS OF Americans celebrated Thanksgiving by forgoing the traditional turkey meal with friends and family and lining up early outside of malls for Black Friday sales. A spokesperson for the nation's retailers said the industry was thrilled by the turnout. "Having already effectively ruined the spirit of Christmas, we're pleased at our success this year in our new campaign to undermine the meaning of Thanksgiving."

With the Iowa caucuses just over a month away, the Democratic presidential candidates hastily began focusing their attention on domestic economic issues after disturbing news emerged that the war in Iraq may be going well for the United States.

New polls showed that voters ranked Hillary Clinton lowest of all candidates in terms of "honesty." Clinton said there had to be some sort of mistake. "They're obviously confusing me with my husband," she told reporters.

Meanwhile, John Edwards unveiled a website, PlantsForHillary.com, which mocked Clinton's use of staged questions during campaign events. Edwards's strategists said they could have been spending their time improving the former senator's healthcare plan, but that it was a lot easier to taunt other candidates than deal with hard policy issues.

On the Republican side of the presidential race, Mitt Romney came under attack for appointing as a judge a woman who had 18 years of experience as a prosecutor while Rudy Giuliani was criticized for befriending Bernard Kerik even though he didn't know that Kerik was allegedly corrupt. Romney said that he would make sure any future judicial appointments had at least 19 years of prosecutorial experience while Giuliani vowed never to be friends with anyone again. Analysts were dubious about Romney's promise but felt certain Giuliani could keep his.

Hopes for a breakthrough in the Iraq war rose briefly after Vice President Dick Cheney was hospitalized for heart irregularities, but faded when he was released three hours later.

US education officials said they were unworried by a Boston College study showing reading skills for the nation's fourth graders falling even further behind those of children from other countries. "America is the land of opportunity," said a spokesperson. "And just because you're a bad reader doesn't mean you can't achieve whatever you want - heck, you can even become president."

The cruise ship Explorer struck an iceberg in the Antarctic and sank. Rescue workers said they had been able to save all 150 people on board, and discounted reports that one young man, supposedly an artist and drifter, died in the frigid waters while holding hands with a 17-year-old female passenger who had been traveling in first class.

As the writers' strike entered its fourth week, entertainment-starved television viewers turned their attention to the news, only to find reruns of the California wildfires and the O.J. Simpson trial.

Pop singer Neil Diamond revealed that his love song "Sweet Caroline" was inspired by picture he saw of 12-year-old Caroline Kennedy sitting on a horse. Massachusetts public safety officials said it was still OK for the Red Sox to play the song during home games but added they thought Diamond might need to register as a sex offender.

Boston police announced a program to search homes without warrants. City officials said protests by the ACLU to the plan were ridiculous since homes would only be searched if occupants gave their permission. "Of course, if they don't let us in, that's probably good enough for us to get a warrant," said a department spokesperson, who added that the program had been carefully crafted to target only poor, minority neighborhoods that would be too intimidated to object anyway.

Referenda questions to repeal the Bay State's income tax and decriminalize marijuana collected enough signatures to appear on the 2008 ballot. Although the tax question would slash state revenues - wiping out spending on schools, infrastructure, and human services - proponents said that shouldn't be a concern since by then everyone would be too high to notice.

And finally, the nation lampooned Massachusetts for a proposed law that would ban corporal punishment of children. "What's next?" asked one parent. "If I can't hit my kids, then I'll have to kick the dog. Are they going to ban that, too?"

Published on December 2, 2007. "The Fortnight That Wasn't" appears every other week on the op-ed page of The Boston Sunday Globe.