Boston SJ.comers: could you explain Howie Carr?

What's up with his obsessions with Ted Kennedy, goverment workers, gays and illegal immigrants?
Is he really the devout Catholic he tried to say he was while ripping Bill Maher today?
He's a conservative, but he seems to have a "fuck the police" attitude. He feels the same way about judges.
Why does he seem to think that Ted Kennedy has no credibility when talking about waterboarding or Robert Byrd has no credibility wehn talking about Michael Vick and dog fighting?

 

Nasty, nasty man. He's one of the few people I've read who will totally rip someone the day after they die. (Did it to a Lawrence politician many years ago, as I recall. The guy wasn't even cold yet.) But a certain segment of the populace eats this bile right up. His work on the Boston mob earned him some investigative chops/credibility, but the column and radio show are nothing but a cynical attempt to rile up pissed off conservatives.

 

Uh, the pasts of both Kennedy and Byrd make them easy targets. You do know what I'm talking about, right?

 

All for being anti-PC horseshit . . . but can't people like Carr do it with a tad more grace?

No.

 

Howie, with whom I worked for 20 years, was a very funny newspaper columnist who discovered there are megabucks in spewing psychotic propaganda on the radio to white male ribbon clerks tormented by their sexual inadequacies. So he took advantage of the market opportunity. As was inevitable, he became a believer in the stuff he began slinging as mere bullshit for the rubes.
As for being a devout Catholic, that's just ludicrous. Believe me, Carr is a nihilist. Too much cheerfulness in religion for him.

 

At one rime, he was one of the best political reporters/columnists I ever saw. He's been mailing in the newspaper work for over 20 years. The radio show is for idiots. His demographic is skewing older, and he's lucky that the same company owns his stattion that owns the sports-radio juggernaut that kicks his ass every day in evening drive.
Catholic? He's a swamp Yankee from Maine who went to Deerfield Academy and UNC.
Very proletarian background as you can see.

 

I have his book on the Bulger Brothers. His anger at them comes off of every page.

 

But why does the working man like him so much?

 

I've only read and heard Howie Carr since - as Fenian pointed out - he started mailing everything in and became a caricature. I don't see the appeal and I don't see an appeal. Does anyone know his ratings? I'm guessing his popularity is overblown. He could be easily be replaced by someone in both the paper and on radio and he wouldn't be missed in 3 months.

The same was true for Eddie Andleman when he left WEEI and the same would be true for Dan Shaughnessy at the Globe. All three supposed Boston institutions whose "popularity" has been vastly over-rated.

 

Yet, there was a massive fight between the two radio stations (WTKK and WRKO) for his services last year. Clearly, he's valuable to them. Can't explain it. But then again, I don't understand how millions of people fall for O'Reilly's "I'm looking out for you" shtick, either.

 

Yeah, but how does that destroy their credibility on the subjects in question?

 

That had more to do with the FM talker's utter desperation for anyone with a breath of ratings.