Whenever I hear the word “decorum” the first thing I think of is Donald Trump.
— Dan Shaughnessy (@Dan_Shaughnessy) November 16, 2018
■ Count me out on Curt Schilling. I have held my nose and voted for the Big Blowhard in recent years (11-2 in postseason, ridiculous walk/strikeout ratio), and he was up to 52.3 percent (75 percent required) last year, but I shall invoke the “character” clause this year. Schill has transitioned from a mere nuisance to an actual menace to society. His tweet supporting the lynching of journalists was the last straw for this voter. Curt later claimed he was joking. Swell.Shank's fellow members of the media, on civil political discourse. I guess he's cool with that.
In my book Undocumented, I included a section on newspaper delivery. I criticized the way workers were classified as independent contractors, meaning that they could receive less than minimum wage and be excluded from workers’ compensation and unemployment benefits. I pointed out that they work 365 days a year, starting between one and four in the morning, could not miss a day of work unless they arranged for their own replacement, and had to drive hundreds of miles a week, paying for their own gas and car maintenance. Finally, I noticed that regardless of the severity of a snow emergency or whether the streets had even been plowed, workers were required to show up for their routes. “It’s a job,” I wrote, “made for an undocumented immigrant.” Indeed, in the Boston area and elsewhere in the United States, immigrants make up a large portion of the newspaper delivery labor force.Over the years the Boston Globe has piously lectured us about the importance of unions and the fair treatment of employees, only to have us witness the exact opposite treatment when it concerns their own employees. They deserve every word of criticism they're getting for this debacle, and I'm loving every damn millisecond of it.
I never imagined that a few years later I would be sitting in a room with a half dozen newspaper delivery workers who were demanding a return to the conditions I had described—because the new Boston Globe delivery company, ACI Media Group of Long Beach California, had significantly worsened their working situation. In Lynn, Massachusetts, workers found significant labor and community support for their demands as members of the Lynn Worker Center, the North Shore Labor Council, the New Lynn Coalition, IUE-CWA Local 201, the Lynn City Council and the Lynn School Committee vowed to support their struggle.
Do we really have to go to Tampa/St. Pete? Can’t we just forgo the formalities and let the Red Sox advance to the American League Championship Series on sheer style, dominance, karma, and duende?I abandoned any further response to Shank's shameless, massively contradictory column once I found this absolute gem in the comments section:
The Duck Dynasty/ZZ Top/Fidel Castro Red Sox look unbeatable at this hour. They bested the fatigued Rays, 7-4, at Fenway Park again on Saturday night and will send 12-1 Clay Buchholz to the mound to finish the series Monday.
The Sox look like the best team in baseball. No team won more regular-season games (97), and the Sox have played even better in the first two games of the playoffs. They won the opener, 12-2, with every man in the lineup registering at least one hit and one run. It was more of the same Saturday night (eight of nine starters got hits) as the John Farrell All-Stars bolted to a 5-1 lead, then cruised. David Ortiz hit two monstrous home runs. In games started by Matt Moore and David Price, the Sox have 19 runs and 25 hits.
FiveIslandsWord, brother...
10/06/2013 09:45 AM
It does feel like abuse, picking up the globe and reading another one of these tiresome Shaughnessy columns filled with snarky comments declaring premature victory over an opposing team. What Dan, no calling the Rays frauds like you did the Texans last winter in the playoffs?
Of course the great Dan-o is always so right ... except when he is so wrong. Like when he went on TV with "Miss Heidi" (by the way Dan has she taken out a restraining order yet?) to pronounce the Sox were a lock for the 2011 playoffs in a middle of a rain delay in Baltimore. Or when he spent a week in California, in 2009, antagonizing the Angels by asking every player on that team the reasons why they had never been able to beat the Sox in the post season, and then proclaiming certain victory for the Sox in the Globe. Of course the Red Sox went on to be swept 3-0 by the Angels. Or enduring a week of Shaughnessy saying, before the 2010 AFC Divisional playoffs, that the Pats were a lock because Brady never loses playoff games in Foxborough and the Jets were exposed when the Patriots steamrolled them earlier in the year; and then seeing the Pats lose 28-21.
I place the time period when Dan-o started writing these columns around 2005, after Carl Everett "Shaughnessyed" Shaughnessy by called him a "curly haired boyfriend" of another writer. Too bad Carl didn't stuff him in a locker for all of enternity so we wouldn't have to endure the subsequent decade of Shaughnessy columns.
Through the years, when real-world issues have visited the Sports Department, there have been some bad stories. Some of them strained the limits of believability. Others were simply sad.It gets better:
Harry Agganis and Reggie Lewis died while they were in their 20s. Len Bias killed himself via cocaine intoxication before he played a game for the Celtics. The Patriots lost a Super Bowl, then revealed an in-house drug scandal. Tony Conigliaro had his career cut short by a beanball, then suffered a stroke and died at the age of 45. Rocky Marciano died in a plane crash. Ted Williams’s head was separated from his body and cryogenically frozen in the hours after his death.
More than a few of our professional athletes have landed on the police blotter. Players who were cheered at Fenway, Foxboro, and the Garden turned out to be gun-toters, wife beaters, drunks, drug abusers, thieves, and deadbeat dads.
But there has never been anything like this.
Please. No need piling on the franchise here. Hernandez’s associates and alleged actions are not the Patriots’ fault. But at a time when “Patriot Way” has become a sickening parody of its own mythical origins, New England’s front office needs to stop with the self-congratulation.So, what does Shank do later on in the column? He piles on, of course!
The Hernandez saga brings up questions about the collective judgment of a conservative franchise that typically does exhaustive research before making the smallest decisions. How did the Patriots arrive at the conclusion that Hernandez was worthy of a $40 million contract extension, which included a $12.5 million signing bonus? Where were the background checks and red flags? What about Belichick’s deep roots with Hernandez’s college coach at Florida, Urban Meyer?I know that there are a few things worse than being a raving, disingenuous hypocrite; right now, I can't think of them...
NEW YORK — Boo.It's unintentionally funny for him to acknowledge booing as not rational, then have him lecture us on who should be booed and who should not. You'd also think that a Boston Globe columnist who's infamous for writing the occasional nasty column about local athletes ought to have a level of awareness when he writes an ironic column such as this one.
This is not about Boo Radley, Boo Weekley, Honey Boo Boo, Boo Williams, Boo Ellis, Halloween, or Yogi Bear’s partner in picnic basket thievery.
This is about the noise fans make when they are displeased. This is about the nightly referendum at professional sports contests.
Whom do you cheer? Whom do you boo? And why?
This week, Jonathan Papelbon became the latest former Boston sports star to feel the wrath of fans who once worshipped at his size-13 feet. Pap returned to Fenway with the Philadelphia Phillies and was roughed up by Hub fans when he came out of the bullpen to face the Red Sox in the ninth.
Emotionally, this makes sense. I guess.
Being a fan is an emotional experience. It does not require reason or common sense. Cheering and jeering is all about laundry, right? Booing is on the fans’ Bill of Rights.
Still, booing Papelbon seems too dumb for words. It’s sort of like booing Johnny Damon when he came to town with the Yankees or booing Adam Vinatieri when he lines up for a field goal while wearing a Colts uniform.
Never a doubt the Bruins were better teamThe word 'never' would apply to the columnist himself, wouldn't it? Once again, note the passive tone of 'Enough silly talk about the Bruins blowing another 3-0 series lead' and 'lot of hysteria about 2010 and the B’s collapse against the Flyers with Rask in net, as though he didn't have a damn thing to do with any of it:
Enough.
Enough of John Tortorella and his annoying press conferences. Enough of the goal-challenged Rangers pretending they had a chance against the Bruins. Enough of the antics of Derek Dorsett. Enough silly talk about the Bruins blowing another 3-0 series lead.
The B’s Saturday night put the Rangers and their fans out of their misery with a 3-1 Game 5, series-clinching victory over the New Yorkers. The Bruins advance to play the Penguins in the conference finals, starting next week at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. It’ll be Black & Gold vs. Black & Gold. Sidney Crosby is the only thing standing between the Bruins and another trip to the Stanley Cup Final.
It’s nice to have the Rangers in the rearview mirror. New York was merely an annoyance in Round 2. There was never a moment when the Rangers looked like the better team. They deserved to be swept, and were spared that indignity only because Tuukka Rask slipped on the ice at Madison Square Garden in Game 4. This led to a lot of hysteria about 2010 and the B’s collapse against the Flyers with Rask in net.
But they will be reminded that three years ago — with Tuukka between the pipes — they blew a 3-0 series lead against the Flyers.Do these sentences sound like someone who supposedly never had a doubt about the Bruins winning this series? To me, it sounds like a columnist who at best takes his readers for fools and knaves, at worst openly lies to them.
They will be reminded that they seem to have a big problem closing out playoff series.
They will be reminded that they gave away Game 4 in Madison Square Garden. Big time.
...
Or they’ll have to come back to New York and there will be thousand more reminders that Rask was between the pipes in 2010 when the Bruins blew a 3-0 lead against the Flyers.
Ode to the Celtics.This is one of his better efforts in recent memory, aside from the following disingenuous paragraph:
Paul Pierce played with Antoine Walker, who played with Rick Fox, who played with Larry Bird, who played with Dave Cowens, who played with John Havlicek, who played with Bob Cousy.
This is one of the things I love about the Celtics. There are only five guys separating Truth from the Cooz.
Friday night is the 67th home opener for our local NBA franchise.
But this current Celtics group has given us little to challenge. Wyc Grousbeck, Steve Pagliuca & Associates are fans, but they aren’t calling plays from the bench. They deliver a pretty good product. They haven’t insulted or pandered to their fans. We were skeptical about them in the early days, but as owners go, they have ranked surprisingly low on the buffoonery scale.Robert Kraft has owned the New England Patriots since 1994. They have won numerous division titles since that time, have appeared in six Super Bowls in that time span and won three of them. Has Robert Kraft given 'us' little to challenge? Yes. Has that prevented Shank from taking all sorts of shots at Kraft? No bleepin' way - I can't link to all the examples.
MIAMI — Does it really have to be like this?KG's reaction, or lack thereof, isn't exactly a secret - was Shank expecting KG to send flowers and a box of chocolates?
Ray Allen didn’t like losing his starting job in Boston (to Avery Bradley - ed.). Ray didn’t like Rajon Rondo. He didn’t feel appreciated by the Celtics.
So Ray made a deal with the hoop devil. He signed with the Miami Heat.
And now Kevin Garnett gives him the Sicilian “you’re dead to me’’ attitude.
Allen’s role as a reserve with the Heat is somewhat amusing to Celtics fans who trash him for leaving because he was no longer a starter in Boston. Still, it’s understandable why he would go to Miami: it’s a shot at another ring, he’ll always be open, and the weather is significantly better than it was in his last four basketball outposts: Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Storrs, Conn.There's a wee bit more to the story than Shank lets onto, which may be understandable, given that this is Shank's first column on the subject.
But the takeaway moment of opening night was the Big Chill from Garnett. It was a cold moment, almost Red Sox-ian.Has anyone figured out why Shank needs to insert a Red Sox reference into nearly all of his columns?
And it made you wonder . . . why does it always end badly in Boston?You know something? I wonder about that myself. You might want to ask Nomar Garciaparra about that. Or Manny Ramirez, or Theo Epstein, or Pedro Martinez, or Curt Schilling, or Roger Clemens, or...
Yesterday Boston blow hole Dan Shaughnessy stayed awake long enough throw all bloggers into a large group and rip us to shreds in one big generalized slam. His is article about Kansas City Chiefs fans cheering when Matt Cassel got injured he let loose with this bias comment:Awful Announcing:
What Dan Shaughnessy has done here is create a hierarchy of people who scare old guard sportswriters that depend on vague generalities, stereotypes, and blanket statements as crutches.Kirk Minihane, WEEI:
Shaughnessy doesn't hate the Internet, he hates change. He'd give anything for it to be 1986 all over again, a world in which newspapers were king and no one else had a platform to question, a world in which the readers could do nothing but write a letter to the editor as a form of protest or opinion. He can't believe someone can sit in their house or at some Starbucks and basically come to the same conclusion as he does on a topic and have a forum to express that thought. He's been a sports critic, really, in his life as a columnist -- and, when's he focused, a terrific one -- and he can't comprehend that he has to share some of the stage with the commoners. He thinks he knows more than you do about sports because he's sat in a press box for 30 years, because he's talked to players before and after games. I've covered games in press boxes and watched them on TV, and guess what? There's almost no difference. You know just as much as some of them do, and now there's a place to express that. One day some people realized this, and it drives guys like Shaughnessy crazy. It's called insecurity. And, yeah, some bloggers are lousy and petty and out of touch, and some newspaper columnists are great and thoughful and even avoid "Animal House" references at all costs, but that's not really the point.Seems these guys know Shank like we do - writing, in part, just to generate controversy.
I don't believe Shaughnessy truly thinks blogging and fantasy football is the reason fans cheered when Cassel went down. He' s too smart for that nonsense to be rooted in reality. That rant probably was written months ago, he was just looking for a reason to squeeze it in somewhere.
