Tom Keane

Boston’s Finest’ is fun, but not reality

Who am I supposed to believe: the cops or the TV?

Boston police have just reported that major crimes in the city this year dropped by 15 percent compared with last year. That sounds great, but I’m now three episodes into the new reality television show “Boston’s Finest,” and I’m scared to death. The city is a nightmare, a constant barrage of shootings, stabbings, drug-dealing, and street-fighting.

The TNT show, created by Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block fame, follows the days and nights of a number of cops, ranging from those on patrol to specialized squads such as the gang unit. As reality shows go, it’s pretty good: nice set-piece shots of downtown Boston and its neighborhoods, some interesting storylines and a voice-over by Wahlberg himself, who really does sound as if he’s from Boston. (That’s what happens, Matt, Ben, and Casey, when you actually grow up in the city, rather than Cambridge.)

Of course, “Boston’s Finest” does engage in all of the tricks of the reality show trade. Some scenes are re-enacted and events rearranged to heighten the drama. Consider, for instance, that even the alleged offenders in the show only appear on camera after having signed a release and that for many scenes they are clearly miked up. Sometimes there’s the feeling that they’re just actors playing out a role.

That notwithstanding, the show does — true to its name — shine a bright and positive light on the Boston police. These cops are likeable men and women. One married couple, both members of the force, share household and parenting duties in a way that would make Gloria Steinem smile. Another dotes on her mother and tries to rescue her drug-addled sister. The police are all smart and well-trained, brave in the face of danger, and remarkably sympathetic to the neighborhoods they police. Instead of loose-cannon cowboys or a quasi-military occupying force, they often seem more like social workers — social workers with guns, that is.

The Police Department doubtless welcomes good PR like this; news accounts about Boston cops are often less than flattering. Over the last few years, for instance, we’ve seen stories about police officers grossly abusing overtime, cops being disciplined for using steroids (who do they think they are — professional athletes?), and allegations of police brutality against the Occupy Boston demonstrators. On occasion the missteps have become very expensive. In 2010, the city agreed to pay $3 million to the parents of a fan who died after being arrested after a Celtics game. Last year, the department fired an officer and approved a $1.4 million settlement stemming from allegations the cop used a choke hold on a man that left him brain-damaged.

You don’t see any of this on “Boston’s Finest,” which serves an an antidote to all the negative press.

Still, to those in the city who gave this the green light, including Mayor Tom Menino: What were you thinking?

I understand the allure of television and the incredibly dumb, degrading things people will do for their few minutes of fame. Restaurant owners will let themselves get cursed out by celebrity chefs telling them how to run their business. Aspiring clothing designers will be reduced to tears after a public dress-down. In the case of “Boston’s Finest” it’s not the cops who look bad, however; they come across great. It’s Boston itself.

Wahlberg has observed to one entertainment blog that the lack of crime often made it tough to shoot the show. “We can’t make the bad guys rob a 7-Eleven, right?” Indeed, perhaps one of the best legacies Menino can claim for his 20 years has been the transformation of the city from a place that really was dangerous to one of the safest in America. Credit for much of that belongs to the Police Department: new policing strategies, better-trained cops, and more effective use of data. But against the power of television, none of this matters. Cold statistics may be one thing, but viewers considering a visit or possible move to Boston will quickly come to a different conclusion: Anywhere else would be better.

“Boston’s Finest” risks doing to Boston what “Jersey Shore” did to New Jersey.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on March 31, 2013.

Why gay marriage won’t become a wedge issue

“. . . if the Supreme Court does with marriage what it did on abortion, which is to impose the laws of New York and Massachusetts . . . on the rest of the country by judicial fiat, it will make this issue more divisive and contentious, not less so.”

— Ralph Reed, founder, Faith and Freedom Coalition

In January — 40 years after Roe v. Wade — thousands of demonstrators descended on Washington, D.C,. as part of the March for Life Rally. Might we see similar demonstrations in 2053 protesting same-sex unions?

Not a chance.

The US Supreme Court today hears oral arguments on two gay marriage cases, the final chapter — perhaps — of a book begun a decade ago in Massachusetts. In 2003, the Bay State’s highest court concluded gay couples had the right to marry. This year that idea may become the law of the land.

If so, however, same-sex marriage won’t become a wedge issue as did abortion. Reed’s prediction is grounded in two false premises. One is that same-sex marriage is akin to abortion: deeply controversial, inherently unresolvable. The second is that it is better to let the political process, not the courts, decide the matter.

Abortion is different from same-sex marriage and remains deeply troublesome precisely because there are few who think the act itself — killing a fetus — is a good thing in and of itself. One can argue (as pro-choice supporters do) that decisions about pregnancy should be left up to a woman and still recognize abortion has a moral cost. But it’s hard to see the moral cost of same-sex marriage. Actually, it seems a moral good.

Same-sex marriage, obviously, doesn’t involve any destruction of potential life. And while there are some who argue that permitting gays to marry hurts traditional marriage, the data from states with same-sex marriage don’t bear that out. Divorce rates in Massachusetts, for instance, have declined in the last 10 years. In fact, far from undermining marriage, the battle for same-sex marriage really is an affirmation of its importance. Why fight for something unless you think it has great value?

Meanwhile, the good that marriage creates is quite striking. Marriage is a building block of society, an inherently conservative institution. Long-term coupled relationships create a healthy environment in which to raise children, they reduce poverty by allowing two people to provide mutual support to each other, and they help create strong and stable communities. None of that changes just because the couple involved is of the same sex.

One can agree with all this and still wonder whether it might be better for the courts to stay out of the matter. A judicial decision is anti-democratic, forcing a result many oppose. Again, Roe v. Wade is held out as an example of that. The legislative process, on the other hand, allows people to air their disagreements and build compromise, ultimately coming to a consensus.

Compromise is a great tactic for creating a budget, but much less so when it comes to matters of human rights. And in any event, unlike abortion, gay marriage is not an issue that divides the nation. If the court strikes down DOMA — the Defense of Marriage Act — it will be following public opinion, not taking the lead.

That wasn’t the case when the Massachusetts court ruled 10 years ago. Back then, just 37 percent favored same-sex marriage. Today, however, the mood has shifted. A Washington Post-ABC News poll out this month found a strong majority of Americans now in support. Particularly striking is that the level of approval climbs to 81 percent among those ages 18 to 29. As the years pass and those folks age, support for gay unions will become almost unanimous.

My guess is that the political fallout from a Supreme Court decision sanctioning same-sex marriage will be less like Roe v. Wade and more like Loving v. Virginia, the (beautifully named) 1967 court decision that said marriage couldn’t be denied to people of different races. Few protested that decision and, today, few would disagree. Indeed, if 40 years from now there are to be protests over gay marriage, they’ll likely happen only because the Supreme Court somehow keeps laws like DOMA in place.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on March 26, 2013.

Backward backstory

‘Oz’ indulges in the stereotype that women are malleable

It was all the wizard’s fault. The Wicked Witch of the West — the green-skinned, hook-nosed, flame-throwing nightmare of children everywhere — would never have been wicked but for a man. Poor, weak-willed woman: Others, not you, determine what you shall be.

Such is the message of “Oz the Great and Powerful,” a new movie that presents itself as the backstory to “The Wizard of Oz. The book and the 1939 movie recount the story of Dorothy’s confrontation with a wicked witch. The new film tells us how the wizard first made it to Oz and for good measure explains how the witch turned wicked.

We first meet her when the wizard meets her — Theodora is her name, a kind, perhaps naive beauty — and she instantly falls for the stranger. He, lusting but not in love, returns her attentions (this is a PG movie, so how far those attentions go is left to conjecture). Later, when her sister (who is already bad — no backstory provided) magically shows her the wizard wooing the good witch Glinda, the heartbroken Theodora flies off the handle, a course of action that soon has her flying a handle.

The film indulges in stereotypes. Good is beautiful; its opposite is ugly. Thus, as Theodora is corrupted, her physical appearance is horribly altered. But the most pernicious of stereotypes is that of the malleable woman, whose entire persona is defined not by herself, but by those around her and, most especially, by her relationship to a man who rejects her.

Granted, it’s a stereotype that dates back almost to the beginning of history. It played out in the Greek myths: Hera, Zeus’s wife, spent much of her time making mischief, or worse, as revenge for her husband’s unfaithfulness. Millennia later, Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction’’ boiled a bunny after Michael Douglas jilted her. And just this year saw a British cabinet member, Chris Huhne, brought down by his wife. Furious over an affair, she revealed she once conspired with him to escape a speeding charge (after her admission, both she and her now-ex got eight months in prison).

“Hell [hath no] fury, like a woman scorn’d” comes from a 1697 poem and indeed some women (such as the Scorned Women’s Society) celebrate it — payback for unfaithfulness or betrayal is thought a form of empowerment.

No question, in their relationships with each other, human beings do things to the ones they once loved (or even still love) that are vicious and cruel. It’s so common, in fact, that the first under suspicion for a murder are usually those closest to the victim. But it’s not mostly women committing these acts. Counter to the “scorned” cliché, men commit violence against their partners or lovers at least as often as women (and, although some dispute this, likely much more).

Still, I have a hard time seeing Theodora’s turn toward villainy as simply as a case of domestic abuse writ large. True, as the movie wears on she bears a particular animus toward the wizard. But her transformation is about more than settling scores. She becomes thoroughly and completely evil.

Philosophers and filmmakers both try to grapple with the nature of evil. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica thought it was caused by good — both by good’s absence and by accident. George Lucas spent three very unsatisfying movies trying to explain why Anakin Skywalker turned to the dark side. Personally, I think evil occurs when people stop feeling empathy, when their own sense of self becomes so profound that they no longer see others as their equals.

Still, that begs the question: What could turn a good person bad? Oz suggests that Theodora is so fragile that her very being can be changed for the slightest of reasons. It’s an old-fashioned take on a woman’s personal strength and her ability to roll with life’s punches. Rather than donning a pointed black hat, a truly modern Theodora would likely have just spent an afternoon reading “He’s Just Not That Into You.” And for that, the munchkins would have been grateful.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on March 24, 2013.

Boston's big city game

We'll take green, clean, wealthy and smart over 'metropolis' any day

"Pretty Cute Watching Boston Residents Play Daily Game Of ‘Big City’” runs the much-discussed headline in the satirical publication The Onion, a sharp jab with some uncomfortable truth. To be a “world class city” has been our aspiration for decades, a regular refrain from the Menino administration. We wish it were so, but worry it’s not. The Onion rubs it in: Boston’s “a live-action role-playing adventure in which Bostonians buzz about their daily routines in a delightful hubbub of excitement as if they lived in a major American metropolis.”

And what really is a major metropolis? In The Onion’s estimation, it’s places such as New York, Los Angeles, and (perhaps) Chicago. By some measures we stack up. When it comes to traffic jams, for example, we shine. LA is second worst in the nation, according to the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, while New York is fourth. But we’re next in line — fifth — and Chicago is seventh. So at least when it comes to the misery we inflict on our drivers, we’re comfortably in the top 10.

Then too, like other world-class cities, we have adorable quirks: weird foods, strange rules, and odd verbal ticks. Chicago has deep dish pizza, we have beans (in truth, it’s hard to find good versions in either city — it’s just what we’re known for). New York wants to nix big drinks; Boston bans Chick-fil-A and happy hours. In LA, highways are freeways and always bear the article “the.” In Boston things are “wicked,” although now mostly on TV and in movies.

But by other measures, we just don’t made the grade.

Take green space, for example. Real cities should be gray and dingy, filled with cars and nary a tree in sight. Not so Boston. With an estimated 7.6 acres of parkland for every 1,000 residents — as well as trees planted along almost every roadway — it’s an eco-crunchy paradise. That, of course, is its problem. Chicago, with just 4.2 acres, has got it right. So too do LA (6.2) and New York (4.5 — despite the vast Central Park in its midst).

Real cities should also be maelstroms of despair and anxiety, filled with poverty and unemployment. Yet with a startlingly low unemployment rate of 5.9 percent, Boston is getting close to the level economists think of as full employment (4.5 percent). Not so America’s big metropolises: New York (8.5 percent unemployed), Chicago (8.6 percent) and LA (9.3 percent) keep their residents hand-to-mouth. If Boston really wants to become world-class, it’s got to stop this nonsense about innovation districts, develop some outlandish new regulations, and come up with a city income tax.

You can see Boston’s shortcomings in its wealth and demographics. At over $62,000, Boston’s median household income is above that of New York, LA, and Chicago. And its population — with a median age of 31 — is younger too, a reflection of the students attracted to local colleges and universities as well as the perception that its more dynamic economy offers them greater opportunities. Not only that, but Boston is better educated — as a percentage of the population, more of us have high school, college, and advanced degrees. Again, Boston loses: Real cities should be older, stodgy and a little bit dumb.

In other respects, too, Boston doesn’t live up to big city standards. Major metropolises should be sick and unhealthy places. The American College of Sports Medicine ranks cities by a “fitness index” and, sure enough, New York (ranked 22), Chicago (28) and LA (38) are well down the list, reflecting the grit and toughness — which is to say, higher death rates and the like — that are the hallmarks of a true metropolis. Boston, meanwhile, ranks third. C’mon Boston: You’ve got to get people smoking more!

I could go on, but you get the idea. Indeed, a variety of surveys regularly rank us as one of the most desirable places to live in the nation. A recent Business Week analysis, for instance, put Boston fourth (just behind San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.). No wonder: Boston is green, clean, healthy, wealthy, smart, and employed. But what that means, of course, is that as a real city, we’re an utter failure.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on March 19, 2013.

Bosses should not be able to read emails

Employees at Harvard University are in an uproar because administrators searched through their e-mails. They’re right to be upset. But Harvard didn’t violate any laws by combing through their communications, nor did it break any promises it had made. In fact, what the university did is what almost all employers across America have the right to do. The real outrage isn’t what happened at Harvard. It’s that what happened at Harvard can happen anywhere.

If you write a letter to a friend while at work using a company pen and then mail it using a company-owned stamp, it’s still private. (You might be accused of abuse of company time or of stealing the stamp, but the letter itself remains confidential.) Not so with e-mails. Employers typically claim employees should expect no privacy whatsoever. It’s an absurd distinction.

The Harvard story has its origin in last year’s much-reported cheating scandal, one that led to the suspension of about 70 students. The allegations of cheating were themselves controversial. Stories about the investigation leaked out last fall and, after one supposedly confidential but innocuous e-mail was made available to the press, administrators combed through the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans, looking to see who passed on the e-mail. They didn’t ask permission and they didn’t let the deans know they were searching.

Nor did they have to. Harvard’s e-mail policy says, “Employees must have no expectation or right of privacy in anything they create, store, send, or receive on Harvard’s computers, networks or telecommunications systems.” The deans appear to be amazed by this. Welcome to the real world, deans.

Almost every employer can do what Harvard did. Check out your own employee handbook. A typical policy will include language that says something like, “The Company owns any communication sent via e-mail,” or “Management and other authorized staff have the right to access any material in your e-mail or on your computer at any time.” In truth, businesses don’t often exercise their power to read your e-mail. But they can.

And, as the Harvard mess makes clear, sometimes they do.

Communication is communication: a phone call is a Skype is a text is a letter is an e-mail. Yet some are private and some are not. And the fact that company property was involved in creating or transmitting an e-mail is a red herring, more incidental than anything else. In the real world, we don’t distinguish between business and private. At a computer communicating with clients, I might also write an e-mail to my wife on some personal matter. I don’t switch over to a different account to do so. (Indeed, even that wouldn’t help, since I likely would still be using my company’s Internet service, meaning the e-mail is still “theirs.”) Moreover, people who e-mail me don’t think about what account they are sending to. They just use the same one they always do. Yet, depending on which one they send to (a private one or a company one), their speech will be either confidential or not.

Some argue that this loss of privacy is one we should accept, something ushered in with the Internet age. But people increasingly don’t tolerate it from Facebook and other social networking sites, and they shouldn’t from their employers either.

Employers will argue that employees voluntarily consent to this loss of privacy when they take the job. That’s true, but it doesn’t have to be the case. An analogy can be found in landlord-tenant law: If you were to sign a lease that gave your landlord an unlimited right to search your apartment, your landlord still couldn’t search your apartment. That’s because states such as Massachusetts make such provisions illegal and unenforceable. A similar approach might apply to employee e-mail. The law might allow limited circumstances where employers could search e-mail — perhaps in cases of suspected illegality (which was, by the way, not the case with Harvard’s search), coupled with prior notice to the employee and a right to challenge any search.

Conditioning a job on a wholesale loss of privacy is wrong, a practice that hands too much power to employers. As some members of the ivory tower are starting to learn, it’s time to right that imbalance.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on March 17, 2013.

Snow Days

When closing schools, officials must err on the side of safety

Last Wednesday, Washington, D.C., shut down — federal workers told to stay home, schools closed — for a storm, trumpeted as the “Snowquester,” that turned out to be a light rain with a gentle breeze. North Korean despot Kim Jong Un, full of crazy bluster, must have been pleased to see that so little was required to humble the mighty American superpower.

The next day the same storm system showed up in New England and blew the region away, with destructive winds and a surprise, heavy snowfall starting Thursday night that blanketed streets and snarled Friday traffic. Yet Boston’s schools stayed open, giving us the incongruous sight of Mayor Tom Menino warning folks not to drive even as yellow buses were picking up their kids.

Officials and weather forecasters in both cities were roundly mocked. Next time, I suspect, we’ll see schools and businesses open in Washington undeterred by a raging blizzard while Boston will declare a state of emergency based on a five-day forecast. As they say about war, we’re always fighting the last battle.

The weather battle with real historical value, however, is now 35 years old: the epic Blizzard of 1978. That storm hit hardest on a Monday, making the evening commute a nightmare. Plows couldn’t remove snow quickly enough, and cars on major roads struggled to make it through the drifts. Some got stuck, and those behind them, with nowhere to go, got stuck as well, until entire highways were little more than parking lots. Then-Governor Michael Dukakis declared a state of emergency, shutting down the entire state for three days. But that declaration came too late for many: Nearly 100 people died, while another 4,500 were injured.

Much of the death and destruction from the 1978 storm could have been avoided if state officials had responded sooner. The blizzard was not unexpected; snow had begun falling on Sunday. Yet most went to work the following day as if things were normal. Since then, government officials have tended to err on the side of caution. The blizzard that hit the Bay State last month (“Nemo,” according to The Weather Channel) was a perfect example of that. Governor Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency before the storm hit. A striking reminder of just how much power a governor has, the order shut down commerce and prohibited drivers from the roads, a near-suspension of civil liberties. It was a drastic measure, and Patrick was, in a sense, lucky the storm did indeed arrive and that its might was largely as advertised. If Nemo had behaved differently, or if Patrick hadn’t reacted quickly to meteorologists’ projections, there would have been political hell to pay. Instead, he came across as a hero.

Menino wasn’t so lucky. With fears about the Washington Snowquester clearly over-hyped (not unlike fears of the sequester, it appears), officials along the Northeast coast watched the approaching storm with a jaundiced eye. On Thursday — the day the storm was supposed to hit Boston — there was a lot of wind and some messy precipitation but nothing of great consequence. But as evening approached, the warnings got more dire.

The mayor said he was receiving “conflicting forecasts during the night and morning.” If the information was “conflicting,” why choose to believe those who were discounting the storm instead of those who were increasingly worried? Perhaps, like many of us, City Hall has become distrustful of the ratings-driven “storm centers” that exaggerate every weather event. Or maybe officials didn’t want to suffer the same humiliation as those in Washington for their errant call.

The lesson of the ’78 blizzard is that it’s better to over-react. Granted, as much as meteorology has advanced in recent years, there is still much uncertainty about the science. That makes it tough for politicians who know a mistake either way will get them denounced. Thus, Menino challenger John Connolly almost immediately claimed he would have done differently. “We have to put the safety of our children, teachers, and school staff first,” he said. Politics notwithstanding, he’s probably right. It’s embarrassing when a heavy snow turns out to be just a mild rain. But better to suffer those consequences than put lives at risk.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe on March 12, 2013.

Connolly’s bland plan for Boston schools

Education is what drives City Councilor John Connolly’s run against Boston Mayor Tom Menino. It’s a worthy issue with three daunting challenges: proving Menino has failed, convincing folks that Connolly has a better plan, and — if the first two tasks can be managed — finding enough voters who care.

Connolly announced his run at the end of February and was delighted with the immediate response. Within 24 hours, 600 volunteers had registered on his website. He knows the odds are long — “the entire city is questioning my sanity,” he tells me — but he thinks the state of Boston’s schools is the mayor’s weak spot.

In the 1990s, Menino promised big improvements. “Judge me harshly,” he said back then, and Connolly does. “The schools are marginally better but not where they should be,” he says. Excluding the notable successes of the city’s exam schools, “it’s been an abject failure.” Connolly promises a dramatic transformation.

Connolly’s thesis — that the system isn’t much improved — is debatable. By a variety of measures (dropout rates, graduation rates, and test scores), Boston’s schools are in fact better. Moreover, Connolly’s personal experience suggests not all is disaster. His daughter attends the Trotter Elementary School in Dorchester, once a failing school. Connolly enthuses about the education she receives. Asked if Menino deserves credit, he demurs, mentioning 2010 state education reform as well as saying that Trotter is a rare exception. Yet a majority of parents in systemwide BPS surveys agree with the statement, “This school is a good place for my child to learn.”

Fundamentally, though, Connolly is right: Good isn’t great. Boston’s overall test scores, for instance, are still well below state averages. But how does one get from today’s results to some sort of educational nirvana?

Connolly ticks off five changes. First, he’d cut the central office budget, putting the saved money into classrooms. Second, he’d lengthen the school year. Next, he’d work harder to recruit and train talented principals. He’d also make sure every school had guidance counselors, social workers, and nurses. Finally, he’d devote more money to fixing up Boston’s “crumbling” school buildings.

It is, to be blunt, an uninspiring list. Connolly focuses on tried-and-true inputs (additional spending, longer days, better training, more staff, and nicer buildings) that haven’t been shown to much affect results. A better approach would be to set goals (90 percent of all students are proficient or better by 2017, for example). As well, Connolly’s proposals seem subject to the same critique that many make of Menino — they’re incremental. Big, daring ideas that might truly improve outcomes are missing. How about converting all schools to charter schools? Reforming the curriculum to a hybrid online/brick-and-mortar blend (as Rocketship Schools is doing in California)? Significantly expanding early childhood education? Or all of these and more?

Connolly certainly isn’t holding back because he’s trying to curry favor with the city’s teachers’ unions; he knows he won’t get it. “The school department is dysfunctional to its core,” he argues. If so, what is needed — and what might make this a bracing campaign — is a plan to remake the system altogether.

Even so, it’s not clear that education alone can carry Connolly to victory. The conventional wisdom is that more voters don’t care about education than do, and so as a close-to-single-issue candidate (“I care about other issues, but I’ll talk most about schools”) he will have a hard time prizing away those happy with Menino’s successes on everything from crime to street cleaning to residential resurgence. Indeed, some of Connolly’s proposals — such as spending more on school buildings — will inevitably mean spending less on capital projects (such as playgrounds and parks) dear to others.

Then too, education’s greatest appeal, one would think, would be to those who can’t afford private or parochial schools — which is to say, the city’s minority communities. Yet it’s those areas where Menino holds his strongest sway — his focus on neighborhood revitalization has won him plaudits and loyalty.

No question, Connolly is sincere on the issue; he’s a former teacher and education has been his passion since he was first elected in 2007. But turning this sincerity into victory requires something bolder and more persuasive than what he now offers up.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on March 10, 2013.

Hot wheels

For Danica Patrick, sex and skill sell; is it enough to save NASCAR?

The breaking news alert from Boston.com landed in my e-mail box: “Jimmie Johnson wins the Daytona 500.” Who cared about that? The real reason the alert was sent was in the next line: “Danica Patrick finishes eighth.”

Patrick has taken the racing world by storm. And she’s done so because she is, to be blunt, hot.

“Hot” as in swimsuit model, sex symbol, and teenage lust hot. And Patrick has been unafraid — indeed, she’s been eager — to exploit it. She’s posed for FHM, Playboy (naughty bits covered), and the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated. She’s been the focus of the smarmy GoDaddy ads that provoke outrage from conservatives and feminists alike. Search Google for her images and most feature her in some state of undress.

No question, it was her driving skills that got Patrick the pole position in the Daytona 500. But even as she’s been breaking barriers — will she finally put to rest the “woman driver” jibe? — she’s been seemingly indulging in the same stereotypes that for so long have bedeviled women. It’s a complicated mix — progressive and retrograde at the same time — made even more complicated by the sport itself: NASCAR.

NASCAR has its roots in Prohibition and moonshine. The “SC” stands for “stock car”: regular street cars that rumrunners would soup up to escape revenooers. Informal races among drivers were, in 1947, organized by driver Bill France into the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing — still a family-owned business. Over the years, NASCAR has changed a lot. Racing is now the second most-popular spectator sport in America. The money is much bigger, and those stock cars are no longer really stock (the old slogan, “Race on Sunday, sell on Monday” is hence far less true).

But in one way it hasn’t changed: It’s decidedly regional, with devotees mostly rural or Southern, older, white, and male. New Englanders, for instance, are largely oblivious to the sport. NASCAR has one racetrack in the region — in Loudon, N.H. — and makes a pitiful showing in the local media. It’s not only demographics that hurt racing. The sport is insanely dull. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste, but those from the Northeast — or other urbanized areas — don’t seem to be interested in making the effort.

NASCAR might not care about these cold shoulders, except that it’s hurting. The number of spectators peaked in 2007 and has since fallen by more than 20 percent. Some blame goes to the economic crisis, but the association is starting to figure out that a limited fan base, boredom, and speculation that races are fixed really might be problems. Horse racing — another moribund sport — found that excitement over a possible Triple Crown was one of the few occasions it could break out to a wider audience. NASCAR is looking for the same sort of excitement, and hopes it has found it in Danica Patrick.

Patrick appeals to a different demographic: women, of course, and younger folks as well. Her elevated profile in national magazines and advertising puts racing in the minds of many who never before paid it attention. The storyline of a woman in a man’s world has appeal too (although Patrick is hardly the first woman driver in NASCAR). Advancing its own interests by busting stereotypes seems to be a smart way for NASCAR to go.

But still, there is the “hot” thing. Why can’t Patrick appeal just based on her merits?

That itself seems a stereotype, the same one that says smart women are mousy with black rimmed glasses. Moreover, it’s not one we apply to men. Tom Brady excels at his sport, but quite clearly the degree of attention he receives lies also in his cleft chin and chiseled cheekbones.

Patrick’s public persona rejects the notion that women can be beautiful or talented but not both. Not only does sex sell, but Patrick’s success suggests sex and skill combined may sell even more. I’m not sure she’ll save NASCAR — watching cars go around and around and around really is tiresome — but I admire the effort.

This column originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe on March 3, 2013.