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Hub Man Dead in New York Nuclear Holocaust, or Why Boston Will Never Get an Olympic Games

The arrests and indictments yesterday of senior officials of FIFA, the governing body of soccer, was the biggest news story in the world, even in the United States. Well, OK, in most of the United States. Just not here.

The FIFA bust was the lead front page story in today's New York Times. It was the same in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. By contrast, the arrests of leaders of the planet's most popular sport was 1. the lowest below the fold story in the Globe sports section and 2. Buried in the back pages of the Herald sports section. In our fair city, the biggest news of the day was either a dispute among lobstermen in the Bay of Fundy (Globe) or Boston Public Library misplacing book (Herald). The biggest sports story was of course a stone mediocre Red Sox team losing a game in May.

Boston is a much more cosmopolitan place than it was when I moved here in 1974. But the worldliness is just a veneer over centuries of perversely proud provincialism. If it happens west of Route 495 or east of the Harbor, we don't care about it, or at least our media don't. The working assumption of the Globe and Herald was that deep down Boston doesn't WANT to be a world-class city, because that would force us to interact with the world.

Wake us up when the FBI perp walks Roger Goodell. I admit that'd be good news, not just for Boston, but for all America.

posted by Michael Gee @ 7:25 AM