Antlers in the ring

Cool Moose head ramrod Bob Healey tossed his antlers into the ring last week, and it didn't take long for the mighty M. Charles Bakst to take up the same old hue and cry about how the East Bay iconoclast is too weird to be governor.

In his Sunday BeloJo column, Charlie ran down a litany of marks against Healey. Chief among them were how he has been known to imbibe French fries and coffee three times a day and how he doesn't intend to suck up to big-money interests to raise funds (which ultimately means Bob won't be able to put out a series of brain-deadening TV ads, the sine qua non of major political races). Then there was that old bugaboo -- the gubernatorial candidate's hair and beard.

Bakst's points would have been well taken if not for the tone of his article. Indeed, modern political campaigns are largely exercises in crass marketing techniques, and Bob doesn't fit into traditional marketing designs. In fact, he openly disdains them, because he knows (as we do, too) that the marketing of political candidates is largely bullshit.

But rather than applaud the guy for his intelligence, integrity, and thoughtfulness, Charlie blasts Bob for not trying hard enough to win. "I think Healey doesn't want to get elected at all, that if he did he'd find a way to be more presentable and mount a more conventional campaign and still not sell out. I don't think he's `cute,' and I don't think we should welcome his candidacy."

Spoken like a true captive of the narrow-minded local power structure. Things change, albeit very slowly, and because Healey won't rush to whore himself out in the accepted manner (get a haircut, kiss up to big-money assholes whom he'll then be indebted to), there is little likelihood that he can win the governorship.

It seems that Charlie truly believes we can somehow become clean while bathing ourselves in the same fetid waters that dirtied us in the first place. Clinton, who supposedly had the vision and will to rise above the whore games he had to play to make himself electable, tried that when he first took office, and what we got was a first-term, health-care-initiative disaster. Guess what you become when you play the whore game assiduously enough?

Healey's trying a new game and he is probably too far ahead of the curve. The people who really need to "find a way to be more presentable" are Vo Dilun voters. They need to look beyond worthless television commercials and media-packaged candidates and pay attention to the issues. Charlie, apparently, has given up on that ever happening.

Hit with his own hammer

Kudos to the BeloJo's ace State House reporter, Kathy "Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill" Gregg. Her one-day investigative blitzkrieg last week ended in esteemed adman David Duffy, of Duffy & Shanley, pulling the plug on the agency's Narragansett Indians account.

As much as we admire and respect Duffy, Gregg nailed him after his agency sent out press releases condemning Governor Almond's opposition to the Narragansetts' proposed casino in Providence.

This was a bit of a problem, considering that Duffy & Shanley also represent the state Economic Development Corporation, which, as the Almond administration's business arm, naturally must echo Bigfoot's position. While we don't expect Duffy to examine possible conflicts of interest as thoroughly as government officials should, Faster Pussycat's real scoop was in discovering that the Almond's staff had little clue that an agency ostensibly working for the state was regularly hammering its head honcho at the same time.

P&J can understand why no one at the EDC would have been aware of this. Indeed, officials there have a propensity for ignoring things, such as the requirements of the Clean Water Act in terms of Quonset Point and the fact that Providence may actually be missing from the EDC's official state map.

Kudos to Duffy for immediately pulling the plug, all the while not disturbing nap time at the State House. Nice to know someone is watching the store, if only from Fountain Street.

Krooked Kennedys

Just when we thought that state Representative Brian "Walking Eagle" Kennedy couldn't become more of a public laughingstock for his power-grabbing campaign to gut the state Department of Environmental Management, he turns his show into a family act.

P&J, of course, are referring to how Walking Eagle's brother, Kevin, was hit with two felony counts of illegal solid waste dumping last week. Coincidentally, this is precisely the type of enforcement power that Walking Eagle hopes to remove from the DEM.

Fortunately, to avoid any perception of retaliation against the small-minded Kennedy, the DEM had turned the investigation over to the state police, who'd made the bust. And now Walking Eagle's motives for his power-grabbing Klown Kommission are much clearer.

The truth is that Representative Kennedy could be ethically culpable here -- bozo Brian evidently brokered his brother's sale of the tainted land to an unsuspecting couple. Brian also reportedly reviewed the sale document, which conveniently failed to mention the 34 tons of shingles illegally buried on the property, with the buyers.

No doubt, this is an example of the keen oversight Walking Eagle and his fellow real-estate-community butt boys will bring to the DEM if they get their way.

On the bright side for Walking Eagle, if the charges against Kevin stick, at least his sibling will have passed muster for testifying against the DEM for the Klown Kommission. One of the prerequisites, after all, is that you must have been convicted of an environmental crime.

Well, maybe we should just mend fences with Kennedy and offer to buy him breakfast. How does shit on a shingle sound, Brian?

Sounds familiar

After your superior correspondents spent years avoiding the Ritalin police during our Wonder Years, it seems strange to be advertising for young clones of ourselves in the Urinal. Actually, Jorge barely caught Phillipe as he raced out the door on Sunday morning to confront him with the above come-on in Vo Dilun's paper of record.

After a short interrogation, P. whimpered a denial of impure thoughts, saying that he thought "Hyperactive Boys" was a band playing that afternoon at Lupo's. But a quick look at Phillipe's RuPaul-meets-Spanky-MacFarland get-up of lime-green satin short-shorts and fishnet knee socks (plus, he had a map of suburban Boston in his hand) led Jorge to discern that some young fidgeters were indeed about to be given P.'s computerized attention. As a result, Jorge quickly reigned his partner in.

Just think -- P&J have been fidgeting for years without being paid for it. What's the world coming to? Oh, who cares -- who's got the remote?

Punishment annals

A recent story the BeloJo chose to ignore concerns veteran peace activist Philip Berrigan, a former Catholic priest who is serving a two-year stretch at a federal penitentiary in Petersburg, Virginia, for damaging a Navy destroyer at the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Maine. (By the way, at Berrigan's arraignment in Maine, the judge referred to him as a "moral giant, the conscience of a generation.")

On February 16, after visiting Berrigan in prison, Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, another moral giant and recipient of the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize, staged a non-violent sit-in at the prison. Eventually, she was arrested by police and charged with trespassing. Jailed overnight, Maguire was freed the next day after a federal judge dismissed the criminal complaint against her at the request of prosecutors.

But this did not stop prison officials from punishing Berrigan, who was banned for a year from seeing any visitors, including his wife and three children. This sentence, in Phillipe & Jorge's estimation, was way over the line in terms of punitive revenge.

We spoke to Henry Shelton, a local compatriot of Berrigan's, and he says that he sent a letter to US Senator Jack Reed, asking him to petition the president on behalf of Berrigan and his family. We agree and also urge Jack (and how about Congressman Patrick Kennedy?) to look into this and to see if they can't encourage Clinton to end this outrage.

Comeback kids

It may be comforting to Vo Dilunduhs to note that the Biggest Little is not the only place where shameless politicians roam about on all fours. Out in California, our favorite Republican Congressman Kim continues to press his reelection effort, despite the discomfiting encumbrance of a prison ankle bracelet assigned to those on home confinement.

In Alabama, former governor Guy Hunt, after his fairy-tale pardon, sped immediately from prison to the Board of Elections, where he signed up to run again. And gearing up for 2000, former US senator Bob Packwood told the New York Times last week that he is considering a run for the Oregon state legislature. Good luck to all these fine public servants.

---

The P & J archive

---