All of a sudden, even the bow-tied bumkissers of Morrissey Boulevard feel free to raise questions that had previously been ignored by the Politically Correct mainstream media. Like, does Deval have a big-time money problem? How is he making that $30,000-a-month payment on his mansion’s mortgage?
Hope and opportunity, that’s what Deval is all about. Now he’s hoping the controversy about his sleazy book deal goes away, so he’ll have an opportunity to cash that first $450,000 check (presumably minus a taste to his agent).
On Thursday, the governor refused to take calls on his radio show about the sweetheart deal. On Friday, he walked away from a reporter in Lowell who tried to ask him what percentage of the money will be going to “charity.”
Now it turns out in his pitch to publishers, he talked about the crowd of 10,000 he attracted to the Common last fall. Only it turns out it wasn’t him they were coming to see, it was Barack Obama. But this, too, is a familiar phenomenon in publishing: A genre becomes popular and obscure players cash in with memoirs. The Rolling Stones are always hot, so their drug supplier gets a book deal. People want to read about Whitey Bulger, so maybe they’re gullible enough to buy rehashed court testimony by Whitey’s tubby gravedigger.
In this context, you might say Deval is playing Kevin Weeks to Barack’s Whitey Bulger.
The difference, of course, is that, as governor, Deval will have a lot more opportunities for “bulk sales” than Kevin “Two” Weeks ever did. The Massachusetts Teachers Association should be good for 5,000 or so. The cop unions owe him at least 10,000 sales, after his craven cave-in this week on police details.
Howie's underestimating the book's potential popularity to a national black audience, but otherwise he's on point.
UPDATE: More from the AP, Barbara Anderson and Holly Robichaud.
