D
D. R. Tucker
Guest
I could be way off, but I get the sense that if Howie Carr doesn’t decide to drop his lawsuit and return to WRKO soon, the tide of public opinion could turn against him.
While I do believe that many of Carr’s fans share his opinion of Entercom, a fair number of those fans may ultimately conclude that Carr is “walking in grass that’s too tall,” and that it would be wiser for him to concede defeat, return to work and run out the contractual clock until 2012.
Carr could actually become a victim of the class warfare that has dominated Massachusetts for decades. Carr’s show appeals to working- and middle-class Bay Staters who are assaulted by taxes and fees as they work endless hours to make ends meet. With every new revelation about how much money Carr stands to make regardless of where he ultimately ends up, how many of those listeners will conclude that Carr is just a right-leaning version of the Bay State “media elite”?
This isn’t something I want to see happen, but I do fear that folks will grow increasingly tired of this legal fight—and take their frustration out on Carr, not Entercom. The Boston Herald’s message boards have a number of postings from folks asserting that, had anyone else been in this situation, Carr would have immediately denounced the person as a figure unwilling to live up to his or her contractual duties.
Some (not all) of Carr’s defenders have argued that the negative rulings he’s received from the Bay State courts are indicative of extreme political bias on the part of the judges involved—and indeed, one of the judges made clear his disdain for Carr’s Herald columns. The problem, of course, is that the judge in question is apparently a Cellucci appointee, not a Dukakis hack. Uh-oh.
Are all Massachusetts judges witless? No—but you must believe that they all are as a prerequisite for believing that Carr is a victim of judicial malfeasance, as opposed to bad legal advice. I’m as much of a Carr fan as the next conservative, but it seems clear that Carr should have kept silent until September 20, 2007 and then accepted Greater Media’s deal. What Entercom didn’t know would not have hurt them, or Carr.
This legal dispute is happening at the worst possible time for those of us obsessed with politics. I’d love to hear Carr weigh in on the Mike Huckabee phenomenon, the controversy over Barack Obama’s affiliation with controversial singer Donnie McClurkin, and the rising crime rate in Boston. The idea of Carr being in court instead of being behind the microphone during the course of the ’08 election is not pleasant, to say the least.
I hope Carr decides to do the right thing and return to ‘RKO soon. Carr doesn’t have to do it for Jason Wolfe, or Julie Kahn, or David Field, or even himself. He just has to do it for the people.
While I do believe that many of Carr’s fans share his opinion of Entercom, a fair number of those fans may ultimately conclude that Carr is “walking in grass that’s too tall,” and that it would be wiser for him to concede defeat, return to work and run out the contractual clock until 2012.
Carr could actually become a victim of the class warfare that has dominated Massachusetts for decades. Carr’s show appeals to working- and middle-class Bay Staters who are assaulted by taxes and fees as they work endless hours to make ends meet. With every new revelation about how much money Carr stands to make regardless of where he ultimately ends up, how many of those listeners will conclude that Carr is just a right-leaning version of the Bay State “media elite”?
This isn’t something I want to see happen, but I do fear that folks will grow increasingly tired of this legal fight—and take their frustration out on Carr, not Entercom. The Boston Herald’s message boards have a number of postings from folks asserting that, had anyone else been in this situation, Carr would have immediately denounced the person as a figure unwilling to live up to his or her contractual duties.
Some (not all) of Carr’s defenders have argued that the negative rulings he’s received from the Bay State courts are indicative of extreme political bias on the part of the judges involved—and indeed, one of the judges made clear his disdain for Carr’s Herald columns. The problem, of course, is that the judge in question is apparently a Cellucci appointee, not a Dukakis hack. Uh-oh.
Are all Massachusetts judges witless? No—but you must believe that they all are as a prerequisite for believing that Carr is a victim of judicial malfeasance, as opposed to bad legal advice. I’m as much of a Carr fan as the next conservative, but it seems clear that Carr should have kept silent until September 20, 2007 and then accepted Greater Media’s deal. What Entercom didn’t know would not have hurt them, or Carr.
This legal dispute is happening at the worst possible time for those of us obsessed with politics. I’d love to hear Carr weigh in on the Mike Huckabee phenomenon, the controversy over Barack Obama’s affiliation with controversial singer Donnie McClurkin, and the rising crime rate in Boston. The idea of Carr being in court instead of being behind the microphone during the course of the ’08 election is not pleasant, to say the least.
I hope Carr decides to do the right thing and return to ‘RKO soon. Carr doesn’t have to do it for Jason Wolfe, or Julie Kahn, or David Field, or even himself. He just has to do it for the people.
