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Three Things Jeff Bauman Teaches Us About Being Boston Strong

Jeff Bauman has gotten so much attention since the Boston Marathon bombings a year ago that I had resolved not to write about him here. I’m as inspired by his story as everyone else; I simply thought there was nothing I could say about the guy that hadn’t been already said.

Then I started reading his new book “Stronger.”

Mood music:

I’ve only read previews and excerpts thus far, but already I’m seeing something special.

About now you’re thinking I’m daft for only just now seeing something special. After all, the man’s durability of body and spirit has been evident since the day that bomb blew his knees off. We’ve seen picture after picture of him smiling in the hospital, throwing the first pitch at the start of a Red Sox game and appearing at the start of a Bruins playoff game.

But what I’ve read reveals raw feelings beneath the smile. In particular, he shows his discomfort as sports teams and politicians ask him to make appearances. He writes:

Did the Boston Bruins really want to do something nice for Jeff Bauman the human being? Or did they want him to be a prop? Something they could use to make a crowd of people cheer? Look at Jeff, isn’t he adorable? Look at Jeff, isn’t he brave? Look at Jeff, he’s a symbol. He’s a marketing tool.

Bauman also shares his relationship struggles before and after the bombings. He reveals the mood swings and commitment issues he thrust upon girlfriend Erin Hurley. Happily, the couple recently announced their engagement and that they are expecting a baby.

For me, there are three valuable lessons as I continue to read his story:

  • Don’t believe all the hype that surrounds you. Bauman knows he’s not the special snowflake the media and sports franchises portray him as. He’s essentially a regular guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and is doing the best he can with the fate he’s been handed. My experience as a writer is that people regularly put me on a pedestal for sharing my demons. I know I’m not special. Though, trust me, when people tell you you’re awesome often enough it’s easy to start believing it.
  • Smile, even when you don’t feel like it. We’ve seen all those pictures of Bauman smiling as he tries out his new prosthetic limbs. His writing reveals that on many days he didn’t feel like smiling. But he did anyway, and whether intended or not, that gives others the shot of inspiration needed to forge ahead in the face of adversity.
  • Make the best of bad situations. We all go through bad times. When we do, it’s hard to recognize the blessings hidden in them. Bauman knows his experience has made him stronger and that there are plenty of ways he can turn tragedy into something good. Reluctant as he may be some days, he has certainly made the best out of his situation.

Thanks for the inspiration, Jeff. And congratulations on the new book. I look forward to reading it in its entirety.

Stronger by Jeff Bauman

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Respectful Disagreement about the Valley Patriot

In recent months, I’ve taken the editor of one of my local newspapers to task over what I’ve seen as his overeagerness to make judgement calls.

I unfollowed Tom Duggan on Facebook at one point because I was so pissed off. Duggan and I have since had a conversation, and I want to make sure everyone understands this: I stand by my earlier criticisms. But it was in no way meant as a personal attack. In fact, I have much respect for Duggan and believe he gets it right most of the time.

Mood music:

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Let’s go back a bit in time for some context.

Duggan reached out to me after I wrote this post on the case of Erin Cox, a North Andover High senior who was punished for being at a drinking party police busted up a few weeks ago. I argued that Duggan rushed to judgement when he published an article saying Cox appeared in court on drinking charges, which turned out to be untrue.

A few months before that, I blasted him for what I saw as his overeagerness in reporting the death toll of the Boston Marathon bombings. As is usually the case in the madness of collecting breaking news, Duggan received information on the death toll that turned out to be inflated. He corrected his information as it came in. But I felt — and still do — that he was in too much of a hurry to get the news first and that he should have waited for better confirmation before blasting details all over Facebook.

In both stories, Duggan believes I took him out of context, that I unfairly painted him as a rogue editor making things up and inflating details for the hell of it. He said he had no problem with criticism as long as it was fair and not based on spliced-together bits designed to paint him in an untrue light.

So let’s clarify some things:

This isn’t about splicing details together in a manner that fits the point I want to make. It’s about my reaction to his work as it unfolded on social media.

Duggan has done a lot of good around these parts. I worked at the Eagle-Tribune for nearly five years and know that the paper was in need of real competition. I was happy to see the Valley Patriot emerge as a check on my former employer. I actually think it made the Eagle-Tribune a better paper.

Duggan has a lot of heart and a passion to get it right. My problem in recent months wasn’t that he spread lies. He didn’t. It was that he got too excitable in the face of breaking news and rushed out information that needed more verification.

As someone who has been on the receiving end of criticism many times in my career, I know it’s no fun. But I have to call it as I see it.

But understand this: When I criticize Duggan, I do so with respect for all he’s done for the community.

Hat with Press tag

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“Rolling Stone” Outrage and the Bandwagon Mentality

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence; nor is the law less stable than the fact. —John Adams, Summation, Rex v Wemms (1770)

I wasn’t planning a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the Rolling Stone cover story on Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev. Then I saw all the outrage and realized there was more to this than the magazine’s editorial motive.

This is a case study in how caught up people get in the bandwagon mentality.

Mood music:

Consider this: People are outraged over the magazine cover because they feel it portrays Tsarnaev as a teen heartthrob. But the picture has been floating around for months and The New York Times used in back in May. No one said boo at the time. The picture shows an innocent-looking kid who is anything but innocent, but it’s real.

Nevertheless, after a few people expressed anger over the Rolling Stone cover, people started tripping over each other to rage in a delirious rush to find a seat on the bandwagon. Some stores announced they wouldn’t carry this issue of the magazine because they were taking a stand against such sensationalistic madness. In my opinion, they’re just trying to capitalize on the anger and get some good brand PR.

New York Times Tsarnaev Front Page

Consider this: A few weeks back, amid a tidal wave of public joy over the Supreme Court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), The New Yorker displayed an issue cover that depicts Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie snuggling together in from of a TV displaying the justices. Most of the response was positive. People gushed about how this demonstrates how far we’ve come in accepting people for who they were, regardless of sexual orientation, race and so on.

But the cover takes liberties with the truth. Sesame Street has said that those characters are not gay. In fact, its puppets are without sexual orientation, period.

Go ahead and tell me you can’t possibly compare the two covers, that Sesame Street is a children’s show. The characters on Sesame Street are very real to children, and The New Yorker made two of the characters out to be something they’re not.

New York Bert and Ernie Cover

Personally, I wasn’t bothered by The New Yorker cover. To me, it was an artist merely expressing his emotions over the death of DOMA. I wasn’t bothered by the Rolling Stone cover, either. I thought the image with the headline and summary set the reader up for an important case study in how a seemingly good kid goes astray, espouses evil and becomes a monster.

Someone noted yesterday that terrorists crave the limelight and want to be on the cover of magazines. Perhaps that’s true. But we need to see their faces, too, so we know who our enemies are. That’s why evil people make the cover of news magazines all the time.

When there’s a bandwagon to jump on, however, the truth gets trampled underfoot. People latch on to memes on Facebook every day that have absolutely no basis in truth. The image and text capture the outrage they feel, so the facts become unimportant.

The outrage over the Rolling Stone cover is, to me, another example of that. With emotions still raw (mine included) over the Boston bombings, people want ways to vent their spleen. Seemingly offensive photos and magazine covers will do the trick every time. Maybe that’s not a bad thing; having outlets to express our pain is healthy and helps us move on.

Yet when we spend too much time on a bandwagon fueled by rage, we’re bound to choke on the exhaust.

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“Rolling Stone” Bomber Cover Sparks Outrage, But Why?

Before I deliver what will surely be an unpopular opinion, let me note the following: The Boston Marathon bombings happened on my home turf. That day, I was sickened by the video replays, scenes of people without limbs and word that one of the victims was an 8-year-old boy. I was as full of satisfaction as everyone else a few nights later, when one of the bombers was hunted down and captured.

Mood music:

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Several friends were at the marathon that day, and one family from our kids’ school community left the finish line a few minutes before the bombs exploded. Yeah, I was effected to the core.

Now I’m waking up to find a lot of outrage online because of the latest cover of Rolling Stone magazine, which features the face of Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the young monster who carried out the attack with his older brother. Much of the anger is over the way he looks: like a rock star or someone to be celebrated. One friend ran a picture of the cover next to another Rolling Stone cover featuring Jim Morrison to illustrate the point. Business Insider  hissed that the magazine portrayed Tsarnaev as a “dreamy heartthrob.”

Rolling Stone Cover

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Here’s mine: People are making a bigger deal of this than it deserves.

Though Rolling Stone is primarily known for its essays on celebrities, it also has a history of covering current events, including crime and war. Charles Manson once graced the cover with the headline, “The Incredible Story of the Most Dangerous Man Alive.” The articles almost always involve a lot of investigative reporting and detail, although there’s a political bias to the writing, as well.

Charles Manson Rolling Stone Cover

Tsarnaev does indeed look like a rock star on the cover. He’s got that long, black, curly hair and boyish face (he is, after all, still a kid, at least in my book). But the headline and summary make it clear that this is not an expos&eacute on a dreamy heartthrob: “The Bomber: How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed By His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster.”

It’s natural for us to want the bad guys to be denied their media spotlight. After all, many times the bad guys crave the coverage. But when a kid like this tries to kill a bunch of people, it’s important to ask why. How does a young person turn into a monster?

No matter what we learn and what we do to steer kids in the right direction, we can’t prevent all of them from turning violent. But we can still try, and in the Boston case, it’s useful to look at the family history that produced two murderers.

That he looks like a rock star on the magazine cover is unfortunate. If the magazine used the surveillance photos or a picture of a bloody, wounded Tsarnaev, we probably wouldn’t have the outrage.

But in the bigger picture, I think the outrage is pain misdirected.

The messenger is delivering an unpopular story, and when that happens our first instinct is to shoot the messenger.

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Williams-Sonoma’s Overreaction to Boston Bombings

I wish I could appreciate Williams-Sonoma’s decision to pull pressure cookers off the shelves in Massachusetts following the Boston Marathon bombings. It was done to show some respect for those who might be traumatized at the sight of a pressure cooker, which the bad guys used as their bombs.

But the move was foolish. It’s the typical knee-jerk reaction to fear that makes me wonder how the human race got this far.

Mood music:

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According to Dedham Patch, the store manager of Williams-Sonoma’s Natick store said, “It’s a temporary thing out of respect.

I’ve struggled with crippling fear and anxiety, especially after 9/11, and I can appreciate the sentiment. But bad people use all kinds of tools to conduct evil. These guys used pressure cookers and put them in backpacks. Pulling pressure cookers off the shelves is simply feeding the fear the bombers want us all to feel. I can’t help but wonder when someone will suggest pulling backpacks from shelves. That would be unfortunate, too. Kids need backpacks to cart all those heavy books to and from school.

Objects don’t murder people. People murder people. You’ve heard that line often enough to roll your eyes and groan. But it’s the truth.

We can’t rid the world of the tools murderers use, nor should we. Most people use pressure cookers, backpacks, knives, automobiles and firearms responsibly.

People kill people every day with cars. Does that mean we pull all the cars off the road?

Williams-Sonoma overreacted to the bombings, just as we tend to overreact to other national tragedies.

Here’s a thought: Instead of banning and packing away everything, why don’t we try harder to identify people who are in danger of turning down a violent path and help them turn the other way?

We can’t save every soul, of course. But I’d rather put my efforts there than on removing every potentially scary object from view.

Williams-Sonoma

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Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s Age Can’t Shield Him From Justice

After the elation everyone felt Friday night when the second suspected Boston Marathon bomber was captured after a bloody manhunt, the mood dropped again.

Some fellow parents lamented the fact that a 19-year-old kid could do what Dzhokar Tsarnaev is accused of doing. They pictured him curled up in a ball in that backyard boat in Watertown, scared beyond all comprehension. Tsarnaev
is someone’s child, someone pointed out.

Here’s why I’m less sympathetic.

Mood music:

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I was a real punk at 19. I had little to no respect for my elders. I had a violent temper and broke things on an almost daily basis. I drank, I smoked, I lied. I drove recklessly. I held people in contempt if they didn’t share my so-called values. You could say I was a time bomb. Sooner or later, I could have done something that would have landed me in jail. As it turned out, I chose to turn that destructive energy on myself instead.

I’m not a special case. I know a lot of people who were like that at 19. Some of them are no longer among us. Those who are have built beautiful families, careers and lives.

I never seriously plotted to hurt anyone. I sure as hell would never have dropped a bomb at someone’s feet and have run. Most of the young punks I knew wouldn’t have done so, either.

If the charges are proven true, Dzhokar Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan had something in them that most of us lack: the will and desire to take innocent lives.

I do feel badly for Dzhokar on one point: He was probably under the influence of and led astray by his older brother. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that a kid did things he wouldn’t have done unless pushed by an older sibling he revered and wanted to please at all costs. I wanted to please my older brother, too. But he was a better role model and, had he lived to adulthood, I’d have been better for it.

Dzhokar killed and maimed people. It’s harder to feel sympathy for him than for your typical 19 year old.

Maybe he’ll turn his life around and do some serious soul-scouring. He may earn forgiveness along the way and find ways to help people. If convicted, he’ll have to tend to those things from prison. When you hurt people the way he is accused of doing, you lose all rights to freedom.

That may be cold, but it’s how I feel.

suspect 4

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When People Don’t Like A Discussion, They Call It Drama

Since I write a lot about how we talk to each other in this blog and my professional one, I hear the word drama a lot. It’s almost always used to describe something people don’t want to discuss. It’s a one-word arsenal meant to shoot down anyone you disagree with. I get shot at a lot. And I’m perfectly fine with it.

Yesterday I publicly took a local newsman to task for relishing his coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings a little too much. He was on Facebook, telling us about how he had the best information and the best inside sources at the hospitals and in law enforcement. He ripped politicians who didn’t come right out and call this a terrorist attack. He kept track of the death count like a scorekeeper at a ballgame, going on about how the media was reporting three deaths but his tally was four.

He boasted that his info was the best, better than Fox, better than the Eagle-Tribune, a local newspaper he competes with fiercely. He carried on exactly as he has in the past, and that’s why I wrote this post a few weeks ago. When all you can do is toot your horn during your reporting, you become part of the problem in media today.

The reaction to my criticism was swift. Some agreed with me, while others defended him. The defenders accused me of creating drama, as if covering a national tragedy like a ballgame wasn’t drama itself. One person said I was engaging in a “form of adult bullying.” Another told me I needed to “get laid.”

As my 9 year old likes to say: “Whatever.”

Facebook is a place where everyone loves to express their outrage and pride with memes and sayings that are not fact-checked. That’s drama, too.

If I smell something that stinks, I’m going to say something about it. As a writer, that’s what I do. If it offends you, unfriend me or unsubscribe from my posts.

Better yet, do something about the drama you create.

kirk yelling at kahn

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Hearts Bigger Than Boston or Any Bomb

Whenever we experience the kind of evil we saw in Boston yesterday, pictures emerge to restore some hope in the human race: EMTs, police, firefighters and many bystanders leaping to action, giving victims medical care and getting survivors to safety.

As a lifelong Bay Stater who tends to be prideful of my Boston roots, those scenes warmed my heart. But I don’t want to be selfish. What we saw wasn’t merely a Boston thing. It was something you’ll see anywhere in the world when bad things happen.

We sure as hell saw it in NYC on and after 9/11. We saw it after the horrific earthquake in Haiti. We saw it after the London bombings in 2005.

Though evil is everywhere, so is goodness. Evil can never be strong enough to beat the good at the core of most people. No matter who we are &dmash; a businessperson preoccupied with the next sale, the driver stuck in traffic and losing their temper, the addict enslaved by the addiction, anyone — we have the ability to cast aside our demons and leap to action when someone is in danger.

That’s why evil will never win. It can kill a lot of people and damage a lot of property. It can make us do a lot of stupid things in life. It can break our hearts.

But it can’t destroy our hearts.

Helpers in Boston