Double Trouble
Can someone get Tom Finneran a career counselor?
Dear Tom Finneran:
Congratulations. No, seriously, well done. You plead to the felony, lose your political career, and then bounce all the way back by putting together one of the lamest shows in the history of the electric radio device. (No kidding. Your morning burbling on WRKO makes Howie Carr in the evening sound like The Mercury Theatre on the Air.) Against all odds, you are not canceled after 15 minutes. And then, when it's revealed you want to lobby your old pals at the State House, you get your wrist slapped and give some vague assurances you might not do it. And then what happens? You do it! There's failing upward and there's failing upward, and then there's you, my friend, the Neil Armstrong of failing upward. I hadn't followed the original "scandal" regarding your lobbying closely because, frankly, I think talk radio has the ethics and aesthetics of a tack hammer. Still, I thought you'd learned a lesson. Then, lo and behold, I read that you've launched Finneran Global Strategies, which will lobby on behalf of (among other people) the Liquor Liability Joint Underwriting Association of Massachusetts. (Whew!) These are the fine folks who will see to it that, if at my bar, I serve my sockless friend another 27 martinis and, on the way home, he runs his SUV through a convent door, scattering nuns like ninepins, I will be covered against the cost of straightening any of them out again. (I pause to note here that, judging by its client list, Finneran Global Strategies is not yet by any means global. It is something less than continental.) And you've still got your radio show, too. This is some seriously fine country we live in, isn't it?
Charles P. Pierce
