The Bulger Trial

The good people of Boston have had more than their share of True Crime stories of late, from the marathon bombing to the murderous tight end to, of course, the Bulger trial. Having spent 25 years in Scrodtown before moving out to the country and painting my mailbox blue, I am most interested. I'm pretty sure most of the country doesn't really know what's going on in the courtroom, so let me fill you in. People who already know the story, or think they know it, might appreciate a quick review as well.Let me first state that the news media just love gangster nicknames. They can't say, or write, "James Bulger." They have a form of Tourette's such that they must always render it "James 'Whitey' Bulger." In fact his associates called him Jimmie. And I'm pretty much 100% certain that nobody ever addressed Stephen Flemmi as "Rifleman," but you'll never see his name in print or pronounced on air without that middle name.Anyway . . .In Bulger's day South Boston, which was and is indeed known as Southie, was an insular Irish enclave, virulently racist and paranoid about the maintenance of its ethnic homogeneity and dysfunctional folkways. When South Boston High was integrated by a court order, the people lined the streets to throw rocks at the school buses. Southie even had it's mini-Faubus in the person of city councillor Louise Day Hicks, who famously compared black people to a spreading stain on the fabric of the city.During Jimmie's murderous reign over Southie, his brother William...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs