Accusing...

a Boston pundit of being a hypocrite is a little like accusing a vulture of carrion eating, graphic yet tedious & obvious.

And then we come to Joanie Vennochi's column today, in which she details with lip smacking relish all the political situations the democrats cannot exploit because a revolution is coming and there are "new rules".
Well, fair enough, she writes the same sumbitch every two years and usually at the end of September, it's her own special "democrats be scaaa-red" column as predictable as an unloved season.
However today's column does contain this...gruesome little gem:
Old rule: If there are questions about your role as police sergeant in a case involving a subordinate who strip searched a teenage girl, you probably can’t win a congressional primary.

"New rule: You can, if your opponent is former state Treasurer Joe Malone, and there are questions about how he handled the office as subordinates stripped the state treasury of millions. State Representative Jeff Perry is proof of that. His Democratic rival, Norfolk District Attorney Bill Keating, will be making a mistake if he believes that blight on Perry’s record is enough on its own to beat him in November."
With all due respect Joanie that isn't the point, what this incident reveals is Jeff Perry's instinct in a crisis, and that is lie, evade and cover up for a buddy no matter how wrong that buddy may be.
Whether or not Bill Keating can make political hay of this is secondary, somewhere in the Commonwealth a young woman is walking around with first hand knowledge of Jeff Perry's bumptious lack of judgement. If Joanie Vennochi cannot see a moral context to the situation regardless of it's political consequences or lack thereof, then I'd say that there something desperately wrong with Joanie's sense of right and wrong.
When it was Senator Marzilli running amok in downtown Lowell like a lusty he-ape chasing soccer moms, Joanie was full of righteous fury...but when Jeff Perry turns his back on a teenaged girl in need...suddenly Joanie's fall silent.
I hack on the local punditariat quite often but there is something about this one that really gets my goat, it goes to the core of what I think is wrong with the Joanie Vennochis, the Brian McGrorys and Scot Lehighs of this world.
The obtuse snarkery, the singular focus on purely political effects, obsession with personalities,the tendency to assume the permanency of conservative backlash politics, the lack of a moral context.
I could go on, and I have and will going forward.