SOTC Crash Course...by Mayor Menino

How To Orchestrate A Winning State of the City Address (while keeping out all dissent and opposition) in Eight Easy Steps
-By The Honorable Thomas M. Menino, Mayor of Boston*


1 – Despite its inability to fit more than a thousand or so onlookers, hold the event inside the Great Hall; that way you can announce a 7:30pm start time and have the spot brimming with cheery loyalists by 6:45pm.

2 – Invite singing groups and their chaperones to occupy chairs, and fill all remaining seats with hero-looking guys in cool uniforms – even if some of them are Boston firefighters who appear as if they want to kick serious mayoral ass.

3 – Get a guy with a stuffy, aristocratic voice to keep saying things like “No standing” over the loudspeaker; then escort all scrambling “latecomers” to the fourth floor where they can watch on the monitors and out of earshot.

4 – Make sure that the high school student who gives the welcome speech calls you “wicked awesome,” and convince her peers outside and in the audience that support is the new protest.

5 – Sop up all the ceremonial applause that you can rile; don’t forget to shout out the military, your family, and politicians who you don’t necessarily admire (and vice-versa) but who would never heckle you in public.

6 – When remarking on touchy issues, put things in terms that are unlikely to get openly booed; for example – tell union workers that people will lose jobs unless they consent to a wage freeze.

7 – Get the crowd clapping up Barack Obama, and describe yourself as having a “partnership” with the popular president-elect.

8 – Most importantly: give a sincere, example-heavy speech to remind folks that no matter how bad some things might be, Boston is still one hell of a special place to live. That might even lighten up some dipshit reporters who never see the good in anything.

* - Actually a satire by Chris Faraone. Sorry if this footnote kills the funny, but some readers have been awfully critical lately of my moonlighting as a humorist. For the record, while I sometimes operate in legitimate reporting and/or investigative capacities, this is a joke.

READ: State of the City 2009 Speech [PDF]