FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2019 The Boston Globe Opinion A
Inbox
Sweeping 1980s probe
of Boston corruption
was hardly ‘low-level’
Letters to the Editor, The Boston Globe, 1 Exchange Pl, Ste
201, Boston, MA 02109-2132; [email protected]I find myself compelled to correct Shirley Leung’s charac-
terization, in Wednesday’s Business section, of the 1980s
federal investigation into fraud and corruption in Boston
government as leading to “the indictment or conviction of
more than a dozen low-level political operatives” (“Lessons
from another City Hall under siege”).
I was a federal prosecutor during that investigation and
oversaw several aspects of it. By 1986, dozens of employees
in Kevin White’s administration had been indicted and
convicted, including: the city’s budget director; a senior an-
alyst in the Budget Department; the commissioner of the
Inspectional Services Department and the chief plans ex-
aminer in that department; the former parks commission-
er; the deputy commissioner of the Real Property Depart-
ment; the mayor’s political operatives in Dorchester and
South Boston; and a significant number of building and
health inspectors.
Also indicted and convicted were more than a dozen de-
velopers, builders, and architects who had acceded to the
illegal demands of city officials and failed to testify truthful-
ly about them.
In my view, the result was nothing short of an important
culture shift, where shakedowns and fraud were no longer
viewed as simply business as usual in the city. One architect
convicted of perjury explained to me that if he had realized
that the investigation was “serious,” he would have told the
truth, but he thought that it would all go away as it had in
the past and that if he told the truth he would never be able
to do business in the city again.
It seems like it’s due time to get “serious” once again. My
advice to City Hall workers is simply this: Tell the truth
when you are testifying before the grand jury.
ROBERTCORDY
North ReadingThe writer is a retired Supreme Judicial Court justice.Before Renée Graham faints over the “insidious culture
that corrupts higher education” (“At colleges, cash rules ev-
erything,” Opinion, Sept. 11), she had better take a look at
the founding fathers of many American universities, with
names like Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Stanford, Carnegie, and
Mellon, to name just a very few. They were land specula-
tors,stockmarketmanipulators,andrapaciouscapitalists
of the most ruthless kind, and they are as American as ap-
ple pie or Donald Trump. They are embedded in our DNA,
just like the “one-and-done” basketball players at Duke Uni-
versity (a tobacco fortune) who sign with the NBA and Nike
after a brief college fling, or the gambling corruption fos-
tered by the NCAA and Las Vegas.
“Endowment” has always been the name of the game.
American colleges and universities are the envy of the
world, and as the old saying goes, “the only trouble with
tainted money is t’aint enough of it.”
Outrage at the Epstein scandal may be warranted, but
hypocrisy is not: Nothing is new.
SOL GITTLEMAN
LexingtonThe writer is a professor emeritus of Tufts University,
and was provost there from 1981 to 2002.AddEpsteinscandaltoalongtally
ofhowmoneycorruptshigheredWe are alarmed by the Sept. 7 front-page article “Overuse
injuries plague young, one-sport athletes.” The article
quotes specialists who “caution against weight lifting and
resistance training until a child’s growth plates are closed,
typically around age 13 or 14.” As the sport specialization
debate continues, we should not overlook the critical im-
portance of preparing young athletes for sports.
Misinformed concerns associated with youth strength
training should be replaced with scientific evidence indicat-
ing that technique-driven strength training, beginning dur-
ing the primary school years, will prepare the developing
musculoskeletal system for safe and successful physical ac-
tivity. It is a myth that progressive strength training neces-
sarily harms the developing growth plates, or that young
people should wait until age 13 to lift weights in a well-su-
pervised program.
While participation in multiple sports should be encour-
aged, modern-day children are ill-prepared for sports, plac-
ing them at risk for injury. Furthermore, no long-term data
exist on quality of life and health outcomes on sport spe-
cialization, leaving us with little research to make definitive
statements regarding sport specialization and health in
children. What we do know, with a plethora of evidence, is
that strength training in children is safe, effective, and
should be encouraged for all children.
AVERY FAIGENBAUM
Ewing, N.J.
DR. LYLE J. MICHELI
DR. ANDREA STRACCIOLINI
BostonFaigenbaum is a professor of health and exercise science
at The College of New Jersey, and Micheli (director emeri-
tus) and Stracciolini are in the Division of Sports Medicine
at Boston Children’s Hospital.Scaringyoungpeopleawayfrom
strengthtrainingsendswrongmessageIn 2019 so far, there have been six deaths in the United
States connected to vaping, as compared with more than
10,000 gun-related deaths. That can only mean one thing:
Expect immediate legislation restricting vaping.
BRIAN POMODORO
PembrokeVaping:thepublichealthissue
ofthemomentBy Diane Hessan and Josh Bernoff‘F
ake news” is a term, popularized by our own presi-
dent, that calls into question everything we read
and hear from the media. Although it sometimes is
used to signify bias, there is a surge in news that is
outright fabricated — and it’s having an enormous
effect on the culture of America. It is surely coming from Russia,
but also from right here in our country.In 2016 ,CraigSilvermanofBuzzfeedcompared (^20) fakenews
stories from the presidential election with 20 real news pieces
across 19 major media outlets. The fake stories spread faster on
Facebook.
Will the inability to tell real from fake make a difference in who
gets elected in 2020?
Most members of Diane Hessan’s panel of 500 voters think they
know how to test for truth among the vast array of articles, videos,
and posts they consume. But when asked to give examples of what
influences them, Christina, a well-informed Republican from
Pennsylvania, sent this tweet from @NYTimesOpEd, which in-
cluded a photo of Hillary Clinton:
Christina said this was evidence that “the Democratic Party has
lost its way.”
Except that it’s fake. @NYTimesOpEd is actually the “Neo York
Times Op Ed,” a parody account. Christina was appalled to learn
this. “How would I even know?” she asked. “I mean, it scares me
that I didn’t figure this out.” She said that dozens of her friends
were passing the tweet around as if it were legit.
The problem is getting worse, and it’s not just Republicans get-
ting fooled. One of our liberal friends furiously defended herself
for posting a screen capture of a supposed Trump tweet denigrat-
ing community college: “Maybe call it the 13th grade, that’s more
like it. Community college makes it sound like it’s real college and
it’s not. It’s only for dummys.” When told it had never actually ap-
peared on Trump’s feed, she said, “Maybe he deleted it. And any-
way, it sounds like the sort of thing he would say.”
And, ironically, confusion even happens in reverse: Many
Americans thought it was fake news — or at least an article from
satire site The Onion — that President Trump wanted to host Tali-
ban leaders at Camp David this past week.
Why care about parody accounts and fakery? Democratic Party
leader Tom Perez has already fooled a room full of security ana-
lysts with a “deepfake” video that appeared to be him but was cre-
ated synthetically to match someone else’s words. It took only one
hour — and a budget of zero — for artificial intelligence expert
Christopher S. Penn to generate a heap of authentic-seeming fake
Trump tweets such as: “I am pleased to announce our new alliance
with North Korea. Kim Jong Un and I are great friends. He’s doing
a fantastic job for his country. I look forward to a future of great
cooperationand commercebetweentheUnited StatesandNorth
Korea!” You can go to sites like Zeoob and generate tweets that
look completely authentic, blue checkmark and all, such as this
fake tweet, which we created in less than a minute:
What is under attack here is nothing less than the idea of objec-
tive truth. In the past, we believed that, for the most part, the now
much-abused “mainstream media” and other institutions and
sources of information — like scientific consensus and the office of
the president – stood behind facts you could count on. That trust is
eroding. People are substituting their own ideas of the truth, which
is whatever reinforces their own prejudices.
This is essential, because once the idea of objective truth is
gone, the electorate devolves into a collection of ignorant, easily
duped clans.
Here’s what to do to make sure this is not you.
First, become familiar with fact-checking sites like Snopes and
Politifact. Be suspicious of what you read, especially if it reinforces
your own ideas too strongly or seems extreme. If fact-checkers say
its fake, read their justification and judge for yourself.
Second, expand your media diet. If you are a fan of Fox News,
check out CNN. When it comes to opinion pieces and editorials,
balance The Boston Globe’s perspective with The Wall Street Jour-
nal’s. Even if you don’t buy the other side’s arguments, become fa-
miliar with what they are. There is a tradition in American politics
of identifying solutions that generate mainstream bipartisan sup-
port – like background checks for guns. But you won’t even know
what the other side is actually saying unless you take a peek.
Third, if it’s funny, don’t just share it as the truth. In fact, Nie-
manLab found that people are often fooled into believing articles
on parody sites like The Onion or The Babylon Bee. While parody
is protected speech under the First Amendment, you shouldn’t
confuse it with reality.
Fourth, support legislation to hold social media sites like
Facebook and Twitter accountable for spreading lies. These
organizations host conspiracy theorists: Mark Zuckerberg has
stated that Holocaust deniers aren’t violating Facebook policy.
And finally, let’s rebuild our children’s ability to be skeptical of
what they read. They’re even more willing than adults to believe
what they want to believe online. Our schools should be teaching
Internet literacy, and as parents, we should too. Keep your kids safe
from lies, just as you’d keep them safe from violence.
We are in a new era, where it seems that all of the information in
the world is at our fingertips. It’s time to fortify our skills in dealing
with the consequences, and to get better at knowing what is real
and what is just plain malarkey.
Josh Bernoff is the author or coauthor of six books on business
strategy and social media. Follow him on Twitter @jbernoff. He
blogs daily at Bernoff.com. Diane Hessan is an entrepreneur,
author, and chair of C Space. She has been in conversation with
500 voters across the political spectrum weekly since December
2016. Follow her on Twitter @DianeHessan.
Fake news, real consequences
I
t’s a tale of two mediocrities: The
twin tenures of Donald Trump and
Boris Johnson. And it’s hard to judge
who has offered a more astonishing
affront to national norms in recent
days, Trump, with his aborted plan to invite
the Taliban (!) to Camp David (!) for peace
talks, or Johnson, with his imperial
suspension of Parliament for a crucial five
weeks in the run-up to the latest Brexit
deadline.
Say this for Johnson’s come-from-behind
case as chief incompetent: In a mere month
and a half, he has managed to accumulate a
string of blunders, setbacks, and defeats the
likes of which took Trump a year or more to
tally.
And yet, what a summer of buffoonery
Trump has visited upon the United States,
from racist sniping at “the Squad” to
disparaging a major American city to
browbeating his own Fed chairman to
engaging in a one-sided schoolboy feud with
the prime minister of Denmark to
apparently altering the map of Hurricane
Dorian’s projected course in support of his
erroneous warning that it threatened
Alabama.
Even in this anti-institutional era, the
declining trajectories of both “leaders”
highlight this truth: Shabby demagogues
who dismiss complex international
arrangements as the work of idiots, claim
that knotty problems are easily solved, and
ride tinny populism to power, ultimately
face a brutal reckoning with reality.
Start with Trump. From Iran to China to
North Korea, his foreign policy is a
kaleidoscope of chaos. Meanwhile, America
has gone from leader to outlier on climate
change. Domestically, his so-called much-
better, much-cheaper health care promise
has been rendered ridiculous. A freshet of
red ink has replaced his promised deficitreduction and debt repayment.
But then again, look at Johnson. His
highhanded moves have lost the
Conservatives their functional majority and
his government the services of his brother
Jo. In his own equivalent of (not so)
Sharpie-gate, the British premier is now
fending off suggestions he lied to the queen
to secure her support for proroguing
Parliament.
Although Parliament has instructed him
to seek another Brexit delay unless he can
strike an acceptable departure agreement
with the European Union, England’s enfant
terrible has declared he won’t abide by their
wishes. That is, by the law. Instead, having
once assured Britain that it could leave the
European Union with little or no pain,
Johnson poses as ready to countenance a
no-deal Brexit — a crash-out his own
government says could wreak havoc on
the UK.
That, however, looks like a bluff from a
politician who has bumbled his way into a
tight corner. Bluster aside, his real choices
reduce to these: Strike an acceptable divorce
agreement or abandon his no-delay stance.
Orresign.
“Boris Johnson is Trumpesque in his un-
predictability and bluster, [but] I don’t
know how he blusters his way through this,”
Baroness Angela Smith, the Labor Party
leader in the House of Lords, tells me via e-
mail.
More good news: The Labor Party
appears to be resolving its own ambivalence
about Brexit, and positioning itself
increasingly firmly on the remain side.
“The position is that there should now be
a referendum between a credible Brexit
option — that is, whatever deal has been
negotiated, so that we are talking about the
reality of what it means rather than the
abstract — and remain,” writes Smith.“Most Labor people go on to be clear that in
such a referendum we would support
remain.” Further, says Smith, any general
election held before a resolution of Brexit
would likely become a de facto referendum
on the matter.
So it’s increasingly likely that the final
decision on Brexit will be taken out of
Johnson’s hands, either by his fellow
parliamentarians or by the British people
themselves. And in the fairly near future.
We’ll have to wait longer for American
voters to stay Donald Trump’s hand. But if
current polling is any indication, that
moment increasingly seems scheduled to
arrive in November of 2020 — which is not
a moment too soon.Scot Lehigh can be reached at
[email protected]. Follow him on Twitter
@GlobeScotLehigh.SCOTLEHIGHReality snares bumbling duo
Trump and Johnson
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