As someone who was active in the anti-forced-busing movement, I have neither regretted nor apologize for my opposition to court-ordered busing between two groups of people both suffering from bad education. To pit South Boston against Roxbury served neither community well. It took the focus off the product being delivered by the Boston Public Schools and focused it on race.
As I read Adam Reilly’s “Racial healing” article, I saw the same stereotyping that took place back in 1974, when Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. enforced the court order that nearly destroyed a whole generation of young people caught in the cross hairs of liberal revisionist history.
I am tired of seeing working-class families branded as racists because they wished their kids to be schooled near home.
I remember the 1983 mayoral election as an election between ideas on how to move forward in the post–Garrity Jr. age.
Yes, we’ve come a long way since Brown v. Board of Education, and since 1974 in Boston. However, neither Flynn nor King was viewed as symbols of warring community factions, as Reilly implies.
Boston, despite what some liberals believed, was never pushed over the edge, or even close to it, by racial antagonism. All that parents wanted in Roxbury or South Boston was a safe and viable public education for their children.
Flynn and King showed in 1983, and again in the pages of the Phoenix, that there is always more that unites us than divides us.
Sal Giarratani
Roslindale
Oil slick politics
Your article on Alaskan politics may have taken a bit of an aggressive tone for some. But let that not cover up the muck that the article covered. Here’s some food for thought — or for frying, if you have access to a drill on Alaska’s northern coast: nations, regions, and locales that thrive off of the exploitation of the Earth’s natural resources, as opposed to human intellect and ingenuity, tend to produce stinking, greasy political systems the world over. So why should we be any different?
One look at Middle Eastern oil “producers” and a resurgent oil- and gas-exporting Russia should be enough to make most of us cringe. I thank God that beautiful and invaluable Alaska is nothing like the rest of the nation’s Main Street when it comes to politics. Let’s hope this dichotomy holds up for Wall Street as well, or we’d be in for a long, long ride.
Eran Segev
Cambridge
I enjoyed your “Half-Baked Alaska” article. I hope Sarah Palin is going to get some additional scrutiny as well. I read a month or so ago that the documentation regarding the building/financing of her new house in Wasilla was fuzzy at best. Seeing the portion of the Matt Lauer interview in her kitchen makes me very curious.
Keep up the good work and keep looking!
Jon Alexander
Marblehead
Liberal agenda
Since the left is without a “message machine” of any consequence, in the spirit of balanced reporting, I look forward to the Phoenix list of America’s scariest liberals. Perhaps an entire section would be in order?
Mark McKallagat
Lawrence
Corrections
In our review of Quantum of Solace, we misspelled the name of Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko. We also stated that Casino Royale was released in 2007. In fact, it was released November 2006. We regret the errors.
