Howie Carr thread week of Nov. 6, 2011

Deval, my man, is exactly that because he admirably demonstrates a favorite political theory: "The Uncle Ben Scenario."

I.E, The ideal Democrat candidate is an impressively large and strong cinnamnon-skin-toned African American, who can play the well-dressed, loyal, family retainer role for wealthy liberals. Deval is a warm, smiling, non-threatening Mr. Bojangles to the liberal Shirley Temples. You know, that warm and re-assuring, not-too-black dude on the box of the bland pre-cooked, and for all I know predigested, rice products?

Deval Patrick can be made up to play that role very well indeed. The trust funders feel good about voting for him because (a) it is unlikely that he will be stealing the stereo from their BMW, and (b) he proves that they are not racially biased in any way.

The fact that Deval and the even more remarkably Uncle-Ben-(gay) look-alike who lives in the WH are both incredibly idiotic people has absolutely nothing to do with it. They will do, just as you always thought Uncle Ben would, (a)what ever Massa say, and (b) be your magic friend who can take your troubles away.

Deval for President? Sure. In fact, it could be inevitable! Pass the rice.

Thu column ping

Hey Menino, why do the Occupiers get to skate by?
By Howie Carr | Thursday, November 17, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists

Why do squatters have more rights in the city of Boston than skaters?

I’m no great fan of skateboarders — they’re just another wing of the Time Out Generation as far as I tell. But a few neck-tattooed stoners in Copley Square don’t represent the threat to public order (not to mention everyone’s nostrils) that the rabble in Dewey Square do.

Those Occupy vagrants aren’t a movement, they’re a crime wave.

But as far as City Hall is concerned, there is nothing lower than a skateboarder. Except maybe a skateboarder smoking a cigarette.

Mayor Mumbles’ own personal city councilor, Rob “Mini Me” Consalvo, is leading the charge against the alleged scourge of the Back Bay.

“They should not be skating on statues or historical monuments,” he said. “We should not tolerate it.”

How’s that for a double standard? The skateboarders should call the ACLU, or maybe the National Lawyers Guild, if they’re not too busy getting temporary restraining orders against a so-far imaginary eviction from Dewey Square.

Now we hear that the city spent $4,300 to install anti-skateboarding traps in the sidewalk, and now they’re all gone. Less than five grand — that’s probably two shifts of detail cops at Dewey Square.

It’s too bad the skateboarders don’t have some filthy tents they could erect in Copley Square. Then they’d be immune from arrest. Then they’d be treated with respect.

Remember how Mumbles cracked down on Southie residents last winter for protecting their parking spaces with orange cones, broken chairs, etc. after snowstorms? City crews moved in and removed everything — even the empty oil drums. Winter’s coming again, and the riff-raff in Dewey Square is giving ideas to the folks over across the bridge in Ward 6.

“Can I use a tent to protect my parking space this winter?” a Southie guy named Patrick asked me last night. “I mean, we pay the excise taxes for the roads, and we dig out the spaces — we should have the same rights as the bums downtown. I figure if I have a tent in my space, nobody’ll touch it.”

The highlight of yesterday’s occupation came shortly after 11 a.m., when the police radio crackled with an alarm about one woman biting another in — where else? — a tent. Soon the EMTs were hauling the bitee on a stretcher out to an ambulance. The cops were questioning the perp, who suddenly began projectile vomiting toward the cops, who had to be thinking this:

No skateboarder ever puked on my shoes.

And have you ever seen a skateboarder taking a sponge bath in a restroom at South Station?

One of Mumbles’ City Hall minions was shocked about what the skateboarders did to the pegs in Copley Square.

“They were pried out.” Kind of like the only way the city is ever going to get rid of the drifters and grifters in Dewey Square.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1381593

Fri column ping
He’s boss of Dread Poets Society
By Howie Carr | Friday, November 18, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Columnists
Photo

And so farewell, Robert DeLuca, longtime poet laureate of the Mafia and now, apparently, poet laureate of the Witness Protection Program.

The former Rhode Island wiseguy may not have been formally inducted, as it were, into the nation’s largest crime family. But he and his new family have vanished. His house has been sold. When you call his cell phone, you’re told the party “is not accepting calls at this time.”

Odds are, DeLuca will surface sometime next year at a racketeering trial involving some of his old pals and a sanctuary for weary businessmen in North Providence known as the Cadillac Lounge.

But he leaves behind his not-inconsiderable body of work in the verse racket. While he was locked up in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in the 1990s, Bobby whiled away the time writing poetry. He had two major themes — the “rats” he hated, Whitey Bulger and Stevie Flemmi, and romantic sonnets to his now ex-wife, Kimi.

Not for nothing is Bobby known as the Gangster of Love. Here are the last four lines of a trifle to Kimi entitled “Let’s Get Fresh:”

“Then I say to you/ ‘You sure look cute/With nothing on/But your birthday suit.’”

Then there is DeLuca’s greatest epic, “Who’s Minding the Puppies?” a reference to the two French poodles, Nikki and Gigi, that Catherine Greig left behind when she took it on the lam with Whitey. It should be in all the anthologies. It’s a series of questions (rhetorical) about who’s in charge of organized crime now in South Boston.

“Who’s gonna clean the rifles?/ Who’s gonna put out the hits?/ Who’s gonna pull the trigger/Now that Stevie’s hit the pits?”

Bobby was always a hard-luck hood. He was forever splitting up thousand-dollar pots — with 10 other guys. Last time I talked to him, he was working in downtown Providence at a joint called The Sidebar.

He was last in the news because of his longtime feud with an ancient, toothless hood known as the Saint. Since telling a judge that he takes “40, 50” suppositories a day, The Saint is known as “Public Enema No. 1.” The Saint was recorded on a wire hiring two rats to kill DeLuca.

He told them, “Shoot him in the head and then tell him, ‘This is from the Saint.’”

It didn’t make any sense. Shouldn’t you tell the guy who’s going to be clipped who put out the contract on him before you actually clip him?

The rumor is, the poet himself may have been wearing a wire for months before he did the Houdini, ironic for a guy who always put the knock on everybody else for being rats. Which reminds us of another of Bobby’s Greatest Hits, “The Prince of Darkness.” It concerns gangster/FBI agent Zip Connolly, who is now doing a 40-year bit in Florida. In the avant-garde tradition, it’s written in Zip’s own voice:

“Grant me immunity and I won’t run and hide/ I’ll tell you the truth about the inside.”

You can’t make this stuff up.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1381886

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