Controversial Carr

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Howie Carr writes a column for The Boston Herald. This semester, he is scheduled to lead an Institute of Politics study group on "Political Satire in the 1980s."

His satire, though, is often indistinguishable from straight opinion and whatever it is, or claims to be, it is frequently laced with insensitive and offensive messages. Last Friday, his column in The Herald was simply laced with hate.

Carr's piece, entitled "S. End landmark and an unwanted future neighbor," was about a gay bar that is trying to move across the street from Foley's--apparently one of Carr's favorite "blue-collar" drinking spots. He begins his gay-bashing by noting that Chaps--the name of the proposed bar--may hold 1200 people while Foley's can hold only 100. "If this goes through," he writes, "they are going to have us outnumbered, in our own neighborhood, by at least a 10-1 margin." (Emphasis Carr's.)

He continues with a mean-spirited quasi-eulogy of the man who was Chaps half-owner: "Chaps is--or was--half-owned by a fellow named Mario M. Mattei. Two unsurprising facts about Mario: He lived on Appleton Street and AIDS killed him."

The pieces reaches its homophobic climax with this query: "Suppose a Chaps patron, reeling out the dark after 10 or 12 Brandy Alexanders, mistakes an off-duty cop coming out of Foley's for a junior high school student?"

The committee that asked Carr to lead the IOP study group should immediately revoke that invitation. There is no reason for this University to sponsor, in any way, this hatemonger. Much less allow him to teach. Hillary Coller '89   Mark Guma '87-88   Justine Harris '90   Pete Robertson '88   Lisa Schkolnick '88