If you’re a fake or a lightweight, you will reveal
yourself on camera no matter how hard and skillfully you dissemble. Most people
who see you on the tube will become a little uneasy and will form a negative
opinion of you, if only at the subconscious level.
I subscribe to this theory, which is why I was not surprised
to see Marty Walsh do well in a recent online video of a conversation with
Boston Globe columnist Larry Harmon at a Jamaican restaurant in Dorchester,
Lorenz Island Cuisine. He's the opposite of fake. You can watch it
by clicking on:
Rep.
Walsh is locked in a tight race for Mayor of Boston with City Councilor John
Connolly. The best pollsters are going
sleepless, trying to figure out who’ll win, with less than a week to the
election.
In
the “My Dinner with Larry” interview,
Harmon cites data indicating that Walsh “polls much better among men than women,”
and asks Walsh why.
Walsh,
46, says he cannot give a good answer and is trying to even out the popularity
disparity. He speculates that not being
married, and not having any children, may have something to do with it. He adds that he loves and cares very much for
his girlfriend of eight years, Lorrie Higgins, and her daughter.
“Would
it kill you to marry her?” Harmon asks.
No,
it wouldn’t, Walsh says, but if he’d asked Lorrie to marry him at any point in
the last half year or so, she might have thought he was asking just to bolster
his appeal as a mayoral candidate, and he would never want her to have a doubt
like that.
One
would think that a male or female candidate, in the second decade of the 21st
Century, in a society devoted to personal freedom and personal expression, would
not have to give a second thought to his/her marital status.
One
might even think that Walsh could present his bachelor status as a positive thing,
as a sign, for example, of the serious approach he takes to holy matrimony. But he’s probably wise to play it affably low
key and trust people to take him as he is.
Wrongly,
I think, people tend to view married people more favorably, at least people
they don’t really know.
For
an hilarious take on this phenomenon, consider the scene in the 2006,
Boston-based movie “The Departed,” where George Ellerby, the character played
by Alec Baldwin, congratulates Colin Sullivan, the character played by Matt
Damon, on his pending marriage because “marriage is an important part of
getting ahead.” For anyone who loves
the way Baldwin can deliver an outrageous line, it’s an exquisite 30 seconds of
film. You can find it on YouTube at:
WALSH
FRONT-PAGE NEWS IN BIG APPLE: The New York Times ran an excellent story this week on
Marty Walsh’s recovery, now in its 18th year, from alcoholism; on
how he has helped other alcoholics stop drinking; and on how so many of the
people he’s helped are now working hard to get him elected mayor, (“In Recovery
From Addiction, Backing Candidate With Past,” 10/30/13). “…what is especially unusual about his
(Walsh’s) story is how his candidacy has motivated others in the wide universe
of recovery to shed their anonymity to support him,” the article notes. “Former
alcoholics and drug addicts are not typical voting blocs. Most do not want to be identified. Because of privacy issues, they are hard to
recruit…But those who have stepped forward for Mr. Walsh bring an evangelical
fervor to their mission. It is the least
they can do, some say, for a man who saved their lives.” The article may be found at:
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