Tom Keane

Irate Mothers

The fortnight that wasn't

AFTER A new national poll showed Mitt Romney stuck in fourth place, the former Massachusetts governor vowed to shake up his campaign by taking new positions on hot-button issues on which he had previously taken new positions. "Abortion, gay rights, immigration - you name it. I'm ready to be firm, resolute, and unwavering on whatever you want," Romney told audiences.

Meanwhile, the same poll showed over 50 percent of Democrats now support Hillary Clinton for president, attracted to the former first lady largely because of her warmth, compassion, and sense of humor.

President Bush met in the Oval Office with the Dalai Lama for a private conversation about peace, love, and understanding. Bush said he had enjoyed the respite from his daily affairs as he turned his attention afterward to sustaining his veto of a children's healthcare program and circumventing congressional restrictions on torture.

Archaeologists discovered an 11,000-year-old wall painting in an underground cave dwelling in northern Syria. The scientists said only a portion of the drawing had been preserved as it appeared that much of it had been erased by an irate mother upset at her child for defacing the family's home.

French citizens were upset after President Nicolas Sarkozy said he was divorcing his wife, Cecilia. "This has never happened before," said one observer. "Our leaders are supposed to take lovers, not split up." Commentators said Sarkozy's refusal to honor the French tradition of maîtresse en titre showed he really was far too beholden to Americans.

The Nobel committee was sharply attacked for politicizing the Peace Prize after awarding it to former vice president Al Gore. Critics acknowledged that some former recipients, such as Poland's Lech Walesa, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger were also political, but said they were different because they were politics with which they agreed.

TJX Cos. settled a class action lawsuit filed after hackers accessed personal information for up to 45 million customers. The company said it would issue all those affected $30 vouchers good for merchandise at its stores. To get the vouchers, TJX said shoppers merely had to provide their Social Security number, bank account numbers, home and cellphone numbers, and two credit cards.

A consumer watchdog group said there is lead in many popular lipsticks and warned that the contaminant could affect the brains of those kissed by women wearing the products, potentially making them incapable of rational thought. The lipstick manufacturers defended their products. "Of course they have that effect," said a spokesman. "That's why women use them."

A jury awarded $6.1 million to a woman who said she was forced to strip and have sex in a McDonald's back room after someone called the restaurant posing as a police officer. McDonald's said it would expand the warning currently printed on its coffee cups to discourage others from attempting the same ruse: "Caution: Coffee is hot. Employees are not."

Boston's Tobin Bridge was closed to commercial traffic after inspectors discovered cracks in a support beam. Emergency crews were immediately dispatched and filled in the cracks with green putty laced with red specks that blended in perfectly with the rusty steel. "The cracks are now completely invisible," said a spokesman. "Problem solved!"

Over 25 percent of Massachusetts students failed the new MCAS science exams. Students said the test was unfair because the available answer choices did not include spells, divination, transfiguration or potions.

In sports, George Steinbrenner fired himself as owner of the Yankees after the team failed to make it past the divisional series for the third year in a row. "I've had a great 34 years," said Steinbrenner, "but the real question is, 'What have I done for me lately?' And the answer is, not much." Steinbrenner said that the suddenness of his termination had surprised him and he still was unsure of his future plans. "I'm not worried, however," he said. "There's a good chance that later in the winter I'll change my mind and hire myself back."

And finally, the 2007-2008 NHL hockey season got underway with a 4-1 loss by the Boston Bruins to the Dallas Stars. Both viewers of the NESN telecast said they thought it was a good game.

Published on October 21, 2007. "The Fortnight That Wasn't" appears every other week on the op-ed page of The Boston Sunday Globe.

Not So Fast

After public tragedies, snap judgments rule the day. Will we ever learn?

A bridge collapses in Minneapolis, and we all know why: We've been skimping on maintenance of our infrastructure, and our tightfistedness has cost 13 lives. A stripper claims lacrosse players from Duke University gang-raped her, and we see it as proof that virulent racism is alive and well. A restaurant fire in West Roxbury kills two firefighters, and the cause is clear: The city has fallen down on its inspections, leaving deadly firetraps waiting to explode.

Each one of these incidents follows the same pattern. A dramatic event occurs, and we rush to judgment. The problem is that those judgments were not based on facts.

In Minneapolis, preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board now raises doubt on whether maintenance was actually at fault. Rather, a design flaw from 40 years ago may have hampered the bridge's ability to carry the weight it was supposed to hold. The Durham rape accusation, of course, turned out to be a false claim, made first by the alleged victim and later by a prosecutor run amok. And August's fire at the Tai Ho restaurant came two days after a prominent story in this newspaper about cutbacks in city restaurant inspections. While the problems in that report involved food safety, that seemed almost irrelevant to some politicians and commentators, who immediately focused on fire inspections, blaming the tragic deaths on underfunding in that area and reliance on private firms.

However, recent reports present the possibility that inspections wouldn't have mattered. I tread carefully here, because, as of this writing, a formal investigation is ongoing. But questions about the firefighters' competence have been raised. Regardless of that, others theorize the double-ceiling design of the kitchen itself would have made it difficult for an ordinary inspection to have caught the problem.

"Facts are stupid things," Ronald Reagan once misspoke, and while he was mercilessly ridiculed for that (he meant "stubborn"), it does sometimes seem that we conduct much of our public discourse the same way. There are some issues - matters of liberty, the distribution of wealth, or the role of the welfare state - where values drive the debate. But on a host of other topics - why a bridge falls, whether someone is guilty, or the reasons for a fire - facts should be paramount. Too frequently, they are not. None of this is to suggest that we shouldn't maintain our bridges or that we shouldn't fight racism or that stepped-up fire inspections are a bad idea. But it is to suggest that these measures probably wouldn't have stopped these particular tragedies. Perhaps as important, it also suggests that focusing on dramatic public events prevents us from coming up with the right solutions.

Critics say that in Massachusetts, we've shorted maintenance of our infrastructure by tens of billion of dollars. That may be, but, in fact, almost all major bridge calamities have nothing to do with maintenance and everything to do with design or construction flaws or natural disasters. More attention to bridge-building standards might save more lives. Similarly, according to the FBI, the number of violent racist incidents is decreasing. If battling discrimination is the goal, more attention to the subtleties of, say, day-to-day working conditions might yield better results.

And in Boston, a more intrusive and expensive inspection system may not make much of a difference. In 2005, just 14 fires (of 28,793) were related to restaurant hoods and ducting, according to the state's Department of Fire Services. If one were to conclude that more money should be spent on fire protection, other measures (residential sprinklers or better training for firefighters) might be more worthwhile.

Still, this is analysis in the cold light of day. In the passion of the moment, it's hard not to point fingers, to use one instance to press a favored cause or to find partisan advantage. How can one deny human nature?

The answer, I suppose, is to learn from history and, when the next tragedy occurs, take a deep breath, study the facts, and figure out what happened. It's possible to do. Even as local pols were jumping to assign blame for the restaurant fire, Mayor Tom Menino held back - refusing, for example, to take the bait of blaming state budget cuts. It's less viscerally satisfying, perhaps. But it's the right thing to do.

Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, October 21, 2007.

Silenced Mime

The Fortnight That Wasn't

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY president Lee Bollinger upset many when he caustically introduced guest speaker and white supremacist August Kreis III at a school forum. Audience members said Bollinger's comments - calling Kreis "petty and cruel" and "astonishingly uneducated" - were impolite. "After all, he is a head of state - in this case, the Aryan Nations," said one student, "and he should be accorded the same degree of respect we'd give, for example, to the president of Iran."

Meanwhile, members of the religious right began planning a fact-finding trip to Iran after learning from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the country has no gays. "For the most part, we rely upon the power of Jesus to convert our gays here in the United States," said a spokesperson for Love in Action, which runs homosexuality reeducation programs. "In Iran, we're told, they rely on beheading. Imagine how powerful it would be to combine the two!"

In a related story, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in an interview with The Advocate that she is not a lesbian, but refused to say whether she had ever visited Iran.

In other campaign news, Clinton announced that she had raised $22 million for the primary races in the third quarter, $3 million more than Senator Barack Obama. Obama said that the shortfall proved that, unlike him, Clinton was beholden to the rich and powerful. Obama added, however, that he was ahead of Clinton in fund-raising for the entire year - $75 million to her $62 million - which proved he was far more popular with ordinary folks than the former first lady.

White House officials said that while they sympathize with the pro-democracy protesters who have been getting arrested and killed in Burma, there is little they can do. "Invasion is out of the question," said a spokesperson. "International law prohibits us from interfering with another nation's sovereignty unless, of course, that nation has threatened to assassinate the father of the president." Foreign policy specialists confirmed that Burma's military dictators had, in fact, confined their death threats to the country's indigenous population.

In business, the US dollar fell to new lows and for the first time ever was worth less than the loonie, Canada's term for its dollar. Canadians said they were thrilled with the news but embarrassed that the entire world now knew they had such a dumb name for their currency.

The Gap confirmed that a vendor had lost a laptop containing confidential information for about 800,000 job applicants. In what may be a related development, the unemployment rate dropped sharply when about 800,000 of the once-unemployed told the Department of Labor they no longer needed work after having been contacted by widows of former Nigerian heads of state who needed assistance in moving large sums of money.

New home sales fell nationwide to a record low. White House officials said the drop proved that it had solved the problem of homelessness. "Thanks to this administration's policies, no one who needs a home is without one," explained a spokesperson. "That's why people are no longer buying new homes."

In local news, the president of MIT warned that, while the university encouraged the tradition of so-called "hacks," students had to be careful not to commit any crimes while carrying out the elaborate practical jokes. "Our students are just as subject to the laws of the land as everyone else," said an MIT representative. "And that really won't change until after their first successful IPO."

A new poll showed that, although a majority of Bay State residents supported casino gambling, none wanted the casinos located near where they live. The governor's office said that shouldn't be a problem and submitted legislation to annex New Hampshire.

Red Sox Nation looked longingly toward Brooklyn as the Sox readily clinched the American League's East Division title while the Mets collapsed during September and failed to make the playoffs. "It brings back fond memories," said one wistful fan. "I envy those Met fans: anxiety, despair, and depression. That's what we once wallowed in and now it's ours no more."

And finally, in sad news, famed mime Marcel Marceau died at age 84. He had no last words.

Published on October 7, 2007. "The Fortnight That Wasn't" appears every other week on the op-ed page of The Boston Sunday Globe.

Message from Myanmar

Myanmar was nation of Burma.
Now it’s Myanmar, not nation of Burma.
Been a long time gone, nation of Burma.
Why did nation of Burma get the works?
We’re the junta and we’re nasty old jerks.