Remember Jane Swift? She was the likeable-enough political-mediocrity chosen as Governor Paul Cellucci’s running mate in order to produce a gender-friendly ticket. Of course, once Cellucci resigned to become US ambassador to Canada, it became painfully clear that Swift was in over her head. One of the most stinging cuts she had to endure before she hemorrhaged her way out of office was the pointed suggestion that she was highhandedly squandering taxpayer dollars when, as lieutenant governor, she used a state-police helicopter to bring her home to the Berkshires just before Thanksgiving. The fact that she had a sick child at home did not offer much relief from the criticism. And the fact that public officials living in the Western part of the state operate at geographically challenging distances from the Boston-centric media offered even less mitigation. The state ethics officials, however, did clear her of any wrongdoing.Flash forward to this week: the Boston Herald carries a front-page splash portraying Governor Deval Patrick as the second coming of whirly-bird Jane. As if on cue, the nattering nihilists of local talk radio pick up the Herald’s suggestion that Patrick is profligate. Thus does one cheap shot beget another.
To whatever degree Swift’s ride was defensible, it was, undeniably, personal. Patrick’s was all business. He was in the Western part of the state to meet with local officials. He also toured the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art (Mass Moca) in North Adams.
The implication of the Herald story was that it was bad enough that the governor used 20th-century transportation technology to solve a problem that has plagued busy and responsible people for hundreds of years before the 21st: how to make the best use of their time. But it was even worse that the governor was frivolously spending his time visiting a museum, an art museum, and a modern-art museum at that.
Someone should clue in the powers that be at the generally conservative, supposedly pro-business Herald that culture is an economic engine that generates more revenue than all of the professional sports teams in Massachusetts combined.
If the governor had visited a manufacturing facility that provided easily recognizable blue-collar jobs, would the story have been displayed so prominently? Probably. But the story would not have had the same sneering quality. A story like this is not just about porking Patrick; it is also about ridiculing values that do not stand up to know-nothing scrutiny.
“Politics is bad” is the text. “Art is even worse” is the subtext. No wonder that so much of the public has developed an instinctive distrust of the press.
In our book, a visit to a relatively new cultural institution such as Mass Moca would be — in and of itself — a worthy undertaking for any governor. But a visit to a transformative cultural institution that, since its founding in 1999, has added hundreds of new jobs to a depressed local economy, generated tens of millions of dollars in new tax revenues, and pumped tens of millions of dollars into Western Massachusetts is twice as worthy.
That makes the stink about Patrick’s helicopter ride twice as shameful.
