One of the nicer things about living in Mass is that the Globe knows its audience and doesn’t pander to the right in anything like the same degree that the NYT, its owner, is infamous for. But that may be changing. I get the Globe newsletter emailed to me – it’s one of 5 papers I go through every day – and this idiocy was one of their lead pieces.
Obama paid late parking tickets
Racked up penalties while at Harvard
What?!
Two weeks before the US senator from Illinois launched his presidential campaign, he paid parking tickets he received while attending Harvard Law School, officials said yesterday.Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, according to the city’s Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department.
Of those tickets, he paid only two while he was a student and paid them late, said Susan Clippinger, the office’s director.
This is a major story you highlight in your newsletter??!! PARKING TICKETS???!!!
They don’t even have the excuse that they were forced to respond to charges made by right-wing bloggers or something. They went looking.
In January, about when the Globe began asking local officials about Obama’s time at Harvard, including any violations of local laws, someone representing the senator called the parking office to inquire about the decades-old tickets.
I would pass this by as a light-hearted “human interest” piece had they not gone to the trouble of billing it in their newsletter as if it was serious reporting.
If this what we have to look forward to, even from liberal papers that ought to know better, it’s going to be a loooong, dirty campaign.
They specifically went after “any violations of local laws”. Why? Who told them to? And why did they even bother to print this penny-ante tripe? What’s next?
Flash!
Obama proven to have forgotten to separate his recyclable trash!
Roommate says, “He just stuck it all in one bag and left it in the hall. I had to dump it myself.”
Jeesh.
Have we really sunk this low? And more importantly, did they do it because he’s black? or because he’s a candidate for president? or both? Are they looking into Hillary’s time in Mass to see if she was ever cited for littering? Or into Edwards’ deep, dark past to see if he ever ran a stoplight in Revere?
If we start this way, where are we going to end?
Update: Digby noticed this, too. (I might have known she would.)
I hope the Globe puts at least one more reporter full time on this parking ticket story. Who knows where it might lead? He might have been late with his rent more than a time or two. Or perhaps, he had a history of under-tipping in Cambridge coffee shops. (Who can believe he didn’t after this parking ticket scandal?)
All these stories shine the light in the dark corners of the life of a privileged ivy leaguer who couldn’t even be bothered to move his car so the hard working men who clean his streets could properly do his job. It shows the typical liberal contempt for the average American who doesn’t get to go to Harvard. How many bus drivers and meter maids are in Iraq today, defending this country so “taxachusetts liberals” like Obama can spit in their faces?
Arranology 
Is it the Bushies or the Clintons? Bill Clinton signed a law that allowed folk to be prosecuted for everything, while Bush is enforcing it.
Although Bush and his ilk could be nitpicking, I think it’s the Clintons running scared. Bill is all over NYC lecturing on bread, while raising funds to the above middle-class groups in NYC, newly residentialed…
Whoever it is, their true colors are showing, and the race card is baiting folk who are learning the truth once and for all.
If there’s some coherent point you’re trying to make, it escapes me.