Good journalism and bad in Spotlight & Truth

I recently saw two movies about this era's major events in journalism, one triumphant and one catastrophic.

In Spotlight, the Boston Globe uncovers the Boston Catholic Archdiocese's clergy sex abuse scandal. First there are two priests convicted of child rape. Then an activist claims there are 13 priests the Archdiocese knows to have abused children, stunning the Globe reporters. A psychologist specializing in the field estimates that 6% of Catholic priests abuse children, which the Globe calculates to be 90 Boston area priests. Later reports would show the number of accused to be even higher.

The Spotlight team's method is brilliantly simple. They find patterns in public directories of priests that easily identify abusers being shuffled among churches. A church lawyer reluctantly confirms a list of 70 priests and asks "What took you so long?" A victims' attorney speaks compellingly: "It it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one."

Mark Ruffalo's understated performance as a lead reporter carries the movie. His acting is very effective and results in an authentic character. And hats off to Michael Keaton who in this stage in his career is playing respected roles in serious movies.

Truth is about CBS's horrendous journalistic failure in reporting on George W. Bush's questionable record in

the Texas Air National Guard. CBS staff obtained documents from a truly shady source and rushed a story to air without fully vetting the documents. Bloggers immediately called the documents into question, but CBS repeatedly defended them. CBS ultimately retracted the story, and after an investigation, all involved, including Dan Rather (portrayed excellently by Robert Redford), are ousted.

It was really awful journalism. It was a big mistake to run the story in the first place without authenticating the documents. But to dig their heals in against all evidence was a catastrophic error that destroyed a news team, ruined the reputation of a respected news anchor, and hastened the decline to television journalism. And worse, it knocked the legs out from under the real story of Bush's questionable National Guard record.

These movies are about organizational failure as much as they are about reporting. People will do bad things in any organization, but it takes more than that for systematic failure. An individual in an organization, be it CBS News or the Boston Archdiocese, can behave badly. But when the organization steps in to do everything but properly remedy the situation, catastrophe can follow.

Billy Joel biography

I remember as a big Billy Joel fan 25 years ago, I would hear many people tell me they only like his "old stuff". Funny, now that he largely quit songwriting in 1993, all of his songs are his old stuff. I don't know what would have happened if he continued creating new music. It seems common for an artist to heave a period of golden creativity early in their career that they never recapture as they put out mediocre music later. But Billy Joel was still creating hit music when he quit, so maybe the songs he never wrote would have been good ones.  But also, he had created a vast catalog by the time he stopped making new music: Twelve studio albums that easily fill the greatest hits collections his record company continues to release.

His post-songwriting years are nothing to write home about. By all accounts he is a hardcore alcoholic. He's had a string of relationships with women his daughter's age--he's married two of them. Wife #4 just gave birth to daughter, making Joel a new father at 66. He builds boats and motorcycles, respectable enough hobbies.

At 66 he perform's regularly, rebuilding the fortune many times over that he lost through bad management before his final album. He's not the kid he once was dancing all over the stage. His voice has dropped a bit and he doesn't get up from the piano often. But he will always be a powerful performer. Even as a senior citizen, it is special to see a performer sing and play the lead instrument through a concert. There is a great wholeness to seeing him lead the show like that.

I think Fred Schruers was going to be the coauthor of Joel's autobiography, and this biography is what resulted after Joel pulled out as author. It draws from, among many sources, extensive interviews the author conducted with Joel, and provides layers of detail and insight probably not available before.

Mike Dukakis wants your turkey carcass

Massachusetts's quirky former governor wants your turkey carcass. Happy Thanksgiving!

Five years of Knocking on the Ceiling

I started this blog in November 2010. I think it was originally shaping up to be a venue for my thinking about the tension between skepticism and spirituality. And it was that to some degree. But I actually wrote quite a lot outside this blog in a private journal about that topic. I don't know if it got me anywhere. I didn't find anything compelling in my thoughts for an atheist and skeptic to hang his hat on, spiritually speaking.

The best progress I made on my quest toward a skeptic's spirituality was through John Shelby Spong's Jesus for the Non-Religious, which I blogged about in 2013. Without having to believe anything supernatural, Spong brought Jesus into my life. No, it isn't a simple as the secular liberal's basic recognition that Jesus taught a couple good moral lessons. It is deeper. Spong's Jesus is powerful: Historically, we can verify barely a handful of facts about Jesus's life; but we know that he moved people in ways they could only describe with the religious language of the time.

Another big step for me was Chris Stedman's Faitheist. That book didn't advance me spiritually, but it taught me a lot about how to exist as an atheist in a fairly religious society. Stedman said what needed to be said: Atheists and theists can get along and even work together.

This has also evolved to be a general blog where I post what I want to post. I've reviewed movies and books and commented on the news. I suppose I like have an outlet when I feel the need to say something to the world. Apart from Chris Stedman tweeting my review of Faitheism, I don't have evidence that anyone is reading this. That's ok. One of the main reasons I blog to is keep my writing muscles from atrophying when I am not writing much at work. 

I've had other blogs that I let go dormant for one reason or another. But this one has endured and I raise my teacup to five years of Knocking on the Ceiling.

Ancillary Justice

I happened to see that  Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice had won multiple major awards. I had been looking for some good science fiction to read, so I gave it a shot. This post includes spoilers.

There is a lot to like about Ancillary justice. Leckie describes the pieces of her world masterfully. From the dreary ice planet, to the city-like space station, to a newly annexed planet--her descriptions feel real. The system of social stratification of Leckie's world is not unlike our own, with its "houses" or varying power and prestige. It is like our world's House of Bush, House of Kennedy, House of Windsor, House of Vanderbilt, House of Castro. And it is fun how tea is central to social interaction among members of the higher houses. It helps renew my fondness for tea.

The mechanics of how Breq, the main character, came to be are fascinating. She was the artificial intelligence of a ship and its ancillaries (human bodies whose mind and will the AI has taken over to serve as, well, slaves). Breq is what remains of the AI when the ship and all but one of the ancillaries are destroyed. She is essentially a simple human.

With that said, I didn't enjoy the book as much as I had hoped. I think I just didn't like the story. With such masterful writing, the novel comes together as a tale of a weird conflict between two segments of civilization's supreme leader. It doesn't make much sense to me and it isn't very interesting.

This the first book of a trilogy, and I assumed it would hook me and I would have to read parts two and three. But one is enough.

The shit decade

The first decade of this century was awful for this country:

• It began with the 2000 presidential election's drawn out vote counting, recounting, and court resolution. This cut a blunt partisan divide and cast a shadow over the ultimate winner. The razor-thin margin revealed weaknesses in our election mechanics overlooked in normally more decisive election victories.
• Then the 9/11 terror attacks hit America hard and traumatized the country. But our response made it worse. The government now conducts more intensive surveillance on its people then I'd ever have thought possible. And...
• ...we got ourselves into a truly stupid war in Iraq that made the region more of a threat then when we started there; killed, wounded, and mentally damaged many soldiers; and cost a incredible amount of money.
• The financial crisis and the Great Recession sucked the wealth out of our communities, leaving millions of homeowners underwater and the highest unemployment in a generation.

The decade closed with some better events. We elected our first black president. The economy stabilized, thought we haven't returned to pre-recession prosperity. And then we saw Iraq descend into such chaos that we speculate that it isn't any better than it was under Saddam.

It was a shit decade, and we are still rolling around in some of that shit.

Why is The Martian a funny movie?

Why the hell is The Martian funny?

An astronaut is stranded on Mars with an uncertain chance of being rescued. Yet Matt Damon is spewing cute one-liners throughout. He had the audience in my theater laughing the whole way through, except for three or four of the most intense scenes. The comedy and cuteness didn't fit for me and it degraded my movie experience.

I feel like good dramatic movies naturally have a some humor in them. But it doesn't have to be cute and isolated from the overall feel of the movie. It can be dark and deep. For example, Tom Hanks  is so hopelessly lonely in Cast Away that he makes an imaginary friend out of a volleyball. That is funny, but sad. It is humor that flows from the protagonist's isolation that is central to the story. Jack Nicholson's "Here's Johnny!" is funny, but also deranged, fitting for a character steadily losing his mind.

But The Martian's humor feels disconnected. His chummy ragging on his crew mates feels authentic, like it is part of the strong camaraderie among shipmates. But the other shit is just shit and it doesn't belong. Without it, the movie could have been great.

The Right Time for Salem Witch Tourism

I've had the chance to visit Salem, Massachusetts during different seasons. It isn't the same city in October as it is in May or even November.

October is awfully fun in Salem. A month-long Halloween festival happens, culminating in a sort of northeastern Mardi Gras on Halloween night. It is worth being there even just to see the amazing costumes people come up with. There are street performers, live music, amusement rides, ghost tours, and costume balls. And for a stress- and traffic-free experience, you can easily get to Salem by train or ferry.

Now there is actually a lot more to Salem that the Halloween stuff. Just a sampling non-witch attractions that draw visitors to Salem in the spring and summer.:

• Peabody Essex Museum: A 1.8 million-object art and culture museum said to be the oldest continuously operating museum in the country. Despite its age, it hosts funky and innovative exhibits like live birds playing guitars (literally) and giant self-propelled beach creatures.
• Salem Maritime National Historic Site: The National Park Service's waterfront "national park" that captures the Salem of the 1700s, the epoch in which international maritime trade made Salem one of the largest and wealthiest American cities. It includes a full size replica trade vessel, the Friendship of Salem.
• Pioneer Village: A living history museum that recreates the village of Salem's original 17th Century settlers.
• Bakers Island Light: Public access to this early American light house began only this year (2015).
• Artists' Row: An alleyway of creative entrepreneurs displaying locally made artistic items for sale. 
• The House of the Seven Gables: The impressively preserved 1668 colonial mansion for which National Hawthorne's 1851 novel is named.
• McIntire Historic District: A neighborhood of early American homes. A handful the buildings are owned and preserved by non-profits, but most are occupied by modern day Salem residents.
• The city's unique network of parks: Highlights include Salem Willows (originally a 19th Century amusement park), Forest River (a wooded waterfront recreational area), and historic Salem Common.

And if you are interested in the actual history of the Salem Witch Trials, come in the dead of winter and visit the Witch Trials Memorial. In the cold and quiet, when no costumed tourists are around, you can reflect on what is, lest we forget, a historic atrocity. The memorial was built by the Salem Awards Foundation, which honors the 1692 victims by fighting for social justice and human rights today.

And the fact is, the events of the Salem Witch Trails mostly occurred in the neighboring town of Danvers, which honors the victims with a respectful, though rarely visited, memorial of its own. Also in Danvers you can visit the homestead of victim Rebecca Nurse. This property has a more real connection to the Witch Trials than any in Salem, even the Witch House itself, which is an important and well-preserved colonial home that is really only very loosely associated with the trials.

Throughout all this, Salem is also a normal city in metropolitan Boston where regular people live, work, play, and learn. Ten thousand students study at Salem State University in south Salem. And a vibrant Dominican immigrant community resides in the southeastern edge of downtown. Life goes on November 1st in the public schools, Salem Hospital, the courthouse, and the businesses and restaurants. 

Book Binge

So I think I just finished a reading binge. Not an unhealthy binge. I did it in my leisure time. Only other leisure activities were interrupted. I blog here about most books I read, but not all. I didn't feel hugely moved by Michel Faber's Book of Strange New Things, compared especially to his other novels. But I probably could still blog about it.

I am waiting for the final installment of Kunstler's World Made by Hand series. And I know there are other books out there I would enjoy, but the trouble is finding them. I guess Amazon can help by making recommendations based on what I look at or buy.

Purity

Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Purity, is fresh in my mind. Because his breakout novel was great and his followup was good, I will read anything he publishes.

Spoiler: Purity aka Pip is a recent college graduate laden with $130,000 in student loans and self doubt. She is very close with her troubled mother, who has never revealed the identity of Purity's dad. But the mother's identify is far more interesting than the father's. The mother changed her identity when Purity was born to escape her family and her billion dollar inheritance.

That is the secret that the novel very cleverly dances around. Pip doesn't believe her mentally ill roommate's claim that the Germans sharing their Oakland squatter house are spies. How beautifully implausible. No less plausible is it for Pip to move into her father's house when neither father nor daughter know that they are family, unless you consider an Eastern German bred Julian Assange type's twisted hope that Pip's father with seduce her.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt is the best novel I've read in recent years. I am grateful she wrote a book as powerful as her breakout, The Secret History--a book that turned me upside down.

There is something The Goldfinch has that Purity lacks. What is it? What makes the difference between a good novel and a great one? I feel like Franzen reaches for greatness, but only Tartt achieves it.

Is it because Andreas's suicide in Purity feel contrived, but every word of The Goldfinches feels true? I would suggest that Franzen fails at writing from a 23-year old girl's perspective. But heck, DONNA Tartt's masterpieces are written from the point of view of young men.

Yeah, I love The Goldfinch.

The Breaks

I'd been eagerly anticipating new novels lately from Jonathan Franzen, Paul Russell, and James Howard Kunstler. While waiting, my itch for some lit lead me to look back through Richard Price's catalog. The internet says he is most known for Clockers and The Wire, but I know him best from the awfully good novel a professor gave all her students as an end of semester gift.

That novel, Lush Life, starts with what to me is very cliche--a novel about a struggling writer living in New York City--yet paints a rich masterpiece of a great city in flux and the souls bumbling through it.

The Breaks, on the other hand, is about Peter Keller and his quarter life crisis. He's a lower middle class Jew from the Bronx who just graduated from an upstate college (first in his family), but fails to get into the law school of his choice and moves back home. He scores sky high on his second attempt at the entrance exam, but by then he's lost his legal aspirations and drifts for a year through dead end jobs.

Peter on a whim moves back to his upstate college town and through friendship with the English Department Chair, lands a job teaching Freshman Comp. He is completely unprepared to teach, but through his resourcefulness, intelligence, and knack for performing to a crowd, is fairly successful. The Chair welcomes him to continue teaching next semester and enroll as a graduate student if he wishes.

He begins dating Kim Fonseca, a single mother 5 years his senior. To his surprise, he gets on fairly well with Anthony, the 5 year old son. The trouble is that the abusive husband she is separated from is Tony Fonseca, an eccentric professor and failed writer in Peter's own English Department. Peter is scared shitless that Tony will find out and harm him, but they become friends and Tony assures him he has no problem with the relationship. But Tony is a sour character that burns a hole through the pages as Peter tries to find some footing in the world. Long story short, Kim returns to Tony despite the likelihood of continued abuse. Peter breaks the fucker's collarbone, but that does not stop Kim from resuming her marriage to him.

As the novel closes, Peter remains somewhat aimless. He is intent on fleeing to New York City to try acting and comedy, but the Chair seems to have convinced him to at least finish his semester of teaching. I don't know where that leaves him. Can he remain in his college town with Kim and Tony together again? He certainly took a respectable stand against Tony's abuse, and that is worth something. Maybe Tony and Kim will flee, leaving Peter to grow roots in the town. The damn book should have an epilogue.

Now I am on to the new Franzen novel.

Station Eleven

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel tells the tale of a traveling symphony roaming Michigan's post-apocalyptic remnants.

The cause of society's collapse feels frighteningly plausible. A new flu virus spreads rapidly across the globe and kills the infected within days. It is too fast--the world doesn't even begin to try to contain it before it is too late.

The virus wipes out ninety-nine-point-something percent of humanity like a neutron bomb. When the population dies off, so go the threads of civilization: government, trade, transportation, communication, and utility infrastructure. Only scattered settlements remain for the traveling symphony to visit, and they are vulnerable to takeover by post-apocalyptic cult leaders. 

The main surviving characters each live lives that a reader might find interesting. Kirsten, a member of the traveling symphony, has repressed her memories of being a child surviving the first year after the virus. Jeevan has settled in Virginia with a new wife and child, and feels fulfilled as his town's medic. Clark, facing old age without the benefits of pre-virus medicine, is the respected curator of the Museum of Civilization he set up in the lounge of the airport he has lived in for 20 years after his flight was diverted to it during the virus. The characters are tied together by the stage and screen star who died of an unrelated heart attack the night the virus hit the United States. His second wife's graphic novel adds an odd thread to the plot, influencing the religion of a dangerous prophet who threatens the lives of the symphony members.

Sure, I enjoyed the cleverly crafted story. But I think in the genre, I like James Howard Kunstler and Pat Frank's post-apocalyptic story lines better.

Moving beyond apocalyptic literature, both Jonathan Franzen and Paul Russell have new novels coming out soon and I am excited.

The New Jim Crow

Michelle Alexander asserts this in The New Jim Crow:

Politicians have exploited a tremendous political opportunity after the end of Jim Crow. Poor and working class Southern whites felt threatened by the gains of African Americans through the Civil Rights Movement. They had been told that blacks were below them, but now they were legally equal and competing for the same jobs. Overt racism now out of the question, the Reagan Administration initiated the War on Drugs that effectively targeted blacks. It was colorblind on its face, but white voters understood that it would keep blacks down. This policy, continued and strengthened by presidents of both parties, has devastated the black community, with a very high proportion of black makes in jail, on parole, or on probation, despite the fact that whites use drugs as much or more than blacks. All this has real power to hold blacks back economically, especially considering that drug convicts are ineligible for federal college loans and for many jobs.

I think I am sold. I was already skeptical of the drug war and this is a very compelling case for its harm. As for solving it, I suppose it would be difficult to undue policies that leaders have found tremendously politically valuable. But one easy thing is that unlike many big problems, a solution does not require huge expense. The government can save money by rolling back the drug war.

I do find one piece of the author's approach troubling. She argues that racism often hides behind colorblindness. A leader may be for law and order, when it is actually code language to whites that we will keep blacks in jail. I worry that we are getting to a place where it is becoming  acceptable to accuse someone of racism without evidence. I certainly agree that people can do tricky things to support an effectively racist policy while attempting full deniability. But you are inevitably going to give people the power to destroy innocent people if we can brand people racist without evidence. If a politician claims to support law and order, perhaps the question to ask is whether they support a system of law and order that jails a much higher rate of blacks for drug crimes when their rate of drug use is actually lower than whites.

I also have to admit I didn't read this whole book. It is well written, but not exactly a page turner. I found a Bill Moyer's interview with the author more accessible. She seems to be especially eloquent live and in person.

Good news

The University of Phoenix's enrollment has fallen by half. LINK

Our Kids

Robert Putnam's Our Kids is a must read.

It asserts that there is a widening opportunity gap between rich and poor kids. He begins with his own mid-century high school graduating class, noting how rich and poor kids all seemed to have a good shot at making something of themselves.

What happened? To selectively summarize: Mid-century prosperity and its abundance of manufacturing jobs made for a strong culture of opportunity for kids growing up in stable households in economically diverse communities.

The shit hit the fan when manufacturing employment declined. Women don't want to be married to a man who can't provide decent income, so marriage rates declined and divorce rates rose among the poor. Well off women tend to put off having kids until they start their career. Poorer woman want a fulfilling career as much as wealthier women, but seeing no opportunity for a good career, they have children young. This first happened in the black community, but it is prevalent among poor whites now too.

The country segregated the hell out of itself economically. Cities, once a place where rich and poor lived on the same block, became concentrations of poverty as people with means moved to the suburbs. Urban crime rose and the quality of city schools declined.

Poor children now often grow up surrounded only by other poor people. The result of this is that they lack strong role models. They don't know people who have succeeded academically and professionally. The end up ignorant of how to get ahead in the world. That seems to be the most awful part of this. A poor kid won't have a rich uncle with business connections to share or a savvy next door neighbor to to recognize when a bright poor kid just needs a little support and advocacy at school. The author recalls that such resources were available to poor kids in his hometown decades ago.

The book is a robust mix of data, personal stories, and the author's own life. It is very readable and quite compelling.

I didn't find many of his recommended solutions very memorable. I literally can't remember any of them except one: We need to take responsibility for all children. If any of our kids are failing and falling behind, it is a failure for all of us.

Brian Williams drama

It is interesting to see Brian Williams in trouble for lying about his Iraq experience. The big three network news anchors--Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, and Dan Rather--all held their posts from the earlier 1980s until 2004 or 2005. But only Brokaw's exit was a planned one. Peter Jennings died and Dan Rather was fired. Tom Brokaw retired willingly and handed the anchor desk over to Brian Williams, who had been groomed for the position for several years. So it is odd to see Williams get himself into a mess like this. It is almost like President Nixon, with unnecessary insecurity, committing unneeded crimes, since he would go on to be reelected in an historic landslide.

I actually am a viewer of NBC Nightly News. Well, more of a listener, actually. I sometimes listen to the 20-minute audio podcast of the show. I find it to be a quick and clear rundown of the day's national and international news. But of the three current network anchors, my preference is for CBS's Scott Pelley. I like how he is plain and boring, rather than folksy and flashy. Also, CBS seems to still be somewhat serious about journalism, with aging but respectable 60 Minutes. CBS News seems to me to be almost PBS-NPR quality.

So I don't know what happens to Brian Williams if he loses his job. He is wired to be a news anchor.

University of Phoenix Stadium

This is the weirdest case of corporate naming rights of a stadium that I can think of. Sure, I understand that the University of Phoenix Stadium is the home field of the Arizona Cardinals, and its name it really just an advertisement for a massive for-profit college.

But doesn't it symbolize that something is off in higher education? A college has a football stadium that bears its name, but it doesn't have a football team. What's up with that?

TV Binge

I've been watching so much TV lately that I worry this might mark the beginning of my downfall. There is just so much fucking amazing TV on TV that I couldn't get away from it.

I watched all 5 and a half seasons of the Good Wife in a very short period of time. The show makes me appreciate Chicago as the big, beautiful, but dirty and rough and tumble place that it is. Some of the shots of the skyline and the historic towers are stunning. Sadly, though, the show is shot in New York and sometimes it is obvious. In one park scene you could see clearly marked NYC recycling receptacles. In another outdoor scene, you could actually see the Radio City Music Hall sign.

I watched Amazon's original series Transparent and...Wow! The show progresses like a deep and carefully crafted novel that illuminates everything it touches. Yes, it is about a man transitioning to female. But I think most of all it is about a sad and emotionally broken family. There is a scene where Jeffrey Tambor as Maura declares to her transgender support group that her kids are "so selfish". That statement proves true as her adult children nearly drown in their extreme self-absorption. It reminds me of the novel The Corrections where all the adult children are a mess while the matriarch is becoming a surprisingly balanced human being. And Jeffrey Tambor--I never would have expected him to play a role so well. It has to be one of the best acting performances I've ever seen.

Mozart in the Jungle, another original series from Amazon, is also very well done. I enjoyed Alpha House too, and I think John Goodman is underrated. But I know I really want to see House of Cards, but I just don't have Netflix.

I also watched Amazon's pilot for Man in the High Castle. It is based on novel about a 1960s America after losing World War II to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The continent is partitioned so that Germany controls east of the Rockies and Japan west. Hitler is dying and it looks like whoever succeeds him will go to war to take the western states from Japan. The scenery is amazing. Nazi New York and Japanese San Francisco are dreary but eerily beautiful places.

So that's what has taken up quite a lot of my time lately. I don't think it is a total brain fry, since the shows are very high quality.

Should Boston host the 2024 Summer Olympics?

The USOC recently selected Boston as the US’s candidate city to host for the 2024 summer olympics. I’m hearing a lot of spirited discussion about whether this massive endeavor will be good for Boston. Nate Scott’s commentary in USA today comes down squarely against Boston and lists specific reasons this position.  I find myself excited about the possibility of olympics in Boston, but I understand the concerns of skeptics. I think the financing is the biggest hurdle, so I would like to see a sound plan for paying for the games. And I think that it is awful to build venues or housing that will be abandoned after two weeks. Boston needs to build things that will serve the city after the games.

But I am writing this post because I take exception to much of Nate Scott’s case against the Boston olympics. I’ll go point by point, with Nate Scott in bold.

There is no infrastructure in place. “Boston is a geographically small city that’s already over developed.”  

Yes, Boston is geographically small, but that is because of how Eastern Massachusetts is a large metropolitan area cut up fairly arbitrarily into separate cities and towns. From what I hear so far, the Boston olympics is really the Metro Boston Olympics, with games taking place in not just Boston, but Camridge, Somerville, and even perhaps distant Foxboro where the New England Patriots play.

Furthermore, Boston isn’t over developed. The Boston area has a lot of centrally located, but vacant or underutilized land that it is only beginning to be built out. The ocean of surface parking in the South Boston Waterfront, adjacent to the financial district, is undergoing a build out. Other areas include Dorchester’s closed Bayside Exposition Center, Cambridge’s Northpoint development (former rail yard) and Somerville’s Assembly Square (former industrial). These are not small, scattered building sites, but major swaths of empty land where entire new neighborhoods are slowly being constructed.

I would also like to point out that Boston lost about 30% of its population after World War II. Although the city is growing again, it has a long way to go before surpassing its 1950 population.


Transportation will be a nightmare
 
Boston is not a normal American city. It is one of the exclusive group of US cities where you can get around happily without a car (such as NYC, Chicago, DC, San Francisco). It is compact and walkable, and served by an extensive public transportation network consisting of a real subway system (sorry Atlanta), several trolley lines, a Bus Rapid Transit System, countless bus routes, multiple water ferries, and a vast commuter rail network.

Let me say something about just the commuter rail. The system is truly vast, with 12 lines--or 14 if you count lines that split into smaller branches. So consider a tourist spending a week in Boston, one who happens to be interested in visiting some of the historic places outside the city. The tourist can visit Concord (American Revolution), Lowell (Industrial Revolution), Plymouth (Pilgrims), and Salem (witches) without setting foot in an automobile.

Boston is also on the Northeast Corridor, the Amtrak route that people actually ride. It connects Boston by electrified, higher speed train to Providence, NYC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC. Additional Amtrak routes from Boston lead north to scenic Maine and west to Chicago.

Nate Scott’s commentary includes an image of the old elevated Central Artery highway that ran through downtown Boston before the Big Dig demolished it and replaced it with an underground tunnel. Although the Big Dig was completed late and over budget, and it certainly didn’t solve all of the city’s traffic problems, it did result in a massive upgrade and modernization of Boston’s road network.

“Storrow Drive is the single most terrifying road in North America.” 


I can’t argue with this.

Public transit won’t be a lot better. “I once got on a Green Line train out to Boston College on a Thursday night and got to my stop sometime early Sunday morning. We all made little shelters in different parts of the car and rationed food.”

The Green Line trolleys are not always fast and efficient, especially where they run above ground. But they are part of an extensive public transit network that most American cities can only dream of.

There’s no main stadium.

I share NS’s concern with this. I don’t want to see a major stadium publicly financed. And it will be stupid to build a stadium that is used only for 3 weeks.

…because now the New England Revolution won’t get a new stadium for 9 years 

This could be interesting. The owner of the New England Patriots is interested in building a Major League Soccer stadium in Boston. An idea is out there to build it bigger in order to serve as an olympic stadium, and then shrink it down to a smaller permanent soccer stadium. This might mean Boston wouldn’t get a soccer stadium as soon as it might otherwise have. But I think this is a fairly creative idea if it can be pulled off.

Their proposal says that colleges could build some of the infrastructure. “Awesome. Let’s have the private colleges build sports complexes and probably drive tuition up for the kids there. Good stuff.”

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I think the exorbitant and growing cost of tuition is one of our society’s biggest problems. However, with that said, Boston’s many colleges provide an advantage for its olympic bid. Many schools have major athletic facilities that can be used as is for olympic events. Others might build new venues regardless of whether Boston hosts the olympics. I hope none of the colleges build anything wasteful for the games. However, I am just speculating here: If an existing venue or one they were building anyway can bring in some olympic revenue to a school, that is money that supports the school without coming from students’ pockets.

The former Bayside Expo site in Dorchester has been mentioned as a potential location for the athlete’s village. It is a big site consisting of a closed down convention center and quite a lot of parking. The University of Massachusetts Boston recently bought the property with the intention of expanding its campus there. Umass Boston is a major public university with over 15,000 students. Today it is exclusively a commuter school with no student housing, but it intends to build some dorms. If planned well, athlete housing at this site could serve as Umass Boston student housing after the games. One of Atlanta’s successes with the olympics was repurposing Olympic Village housing as permanent residence halls for the Georgia Institute of Technology.

There aren’t enough hotels.

This is probably true. I can’t imagine Boston has enough hotel rooms for such a massive event. But I think part of the pitch for Boston is that the city is full of college residence halls that are vacant during the summer and can house olympic visitors.

They’re already protesting.

Naturally.

Boston might be the most civically engaged place in the country, going back to Pilgrims fleeing their homeland and colonists protesting actions of the English King. Bostonians speak their mind. I’m not exaggerating when I say that you can’t cut down a tree in Boston without a protest.

That is how Boston is. It likes to debate. Five out of the last 6 Massachusetts governors were Republican in what might be the country's most Democratic state. I seriously think the state just likes to ensure that there will be political debate. And Boston continues to wedge itself into national politics with recent reforms that went national, such as Romneycare and marriage equality, and a steady stream of presidential candidates. Just since JFK, the losing candidacies of Ted Kennedy, Mike Dukakis, John Kerry, and Mitt Romney.


There will be heated debate about the prospect of a Boston olympics. If Boston is selected to host, this debate might lead to a better, more soundly planned, and more innovate olympics.  But also consider that the IOC doesn’t care about whether citizens want the olympics. The IOC has no way to know if citizens of Beijing supported hosting the 2008 summer olympics, since opposing the will of the government is illegal in China. And I hear rumblings that another thing that gives Boston’s bid an edge in the eyes of the IOC is how it became a police state in the days following the Boston Marathon Bombing, shutting the whole city down in order to find the alleged bombers. That might look good to the IOC when they wonder which city can handle terrorism at a major sports event. But I don’t think the IOC has much use for democracy.

In closing, I just think Boston is a special place. Some American cities never recovered from the deindustrialization, racial tensions, white flight, urban renewal, and suburbanization of the 20th Century. Yet Boston suffered through all those challenges and stands tall today as a thriving 21st century city. If Boston can carefully plan a smartly financed olympics that doesn't leave abandoned venues in its wake, I think it could be a successful host in 2024.