Michael Graham on Whitey Bulger; Bachmann; and Same-Sex Kissing

Boston-based radio host Michael Graham was skeptical that formerly Boston-based gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, who eluded capture for 16 years, was so easily located in Southern California last week. “They announced on Monday they’re going to run PSAs…and boom! They get a tip from Iceland,” he said. “Because of that major Iceland-mob nexus that’s so popular.”
 
According to Graham, “everyone in Boston” is convinced some sort of scam is going on. “Whitey was ready to come in to get free medical care, or someone in the FBI was finally gone and out of the way,” Graham surmised. Although, given Bulger’s balding, bearded appearance, it’s not very surprising that nobody could find him because, Graham joked, “he was hiding on the island of misfit toys.”
 
While he does not believe the FBI is necessarily corrupt today, Graham suspects it was for much of the time Bulger was on the lam. “There are still people who know people who know people,” he said. “It’s Boston! Rod Blagojevich would be an amateur if he moved to Boston right now.”
 
Even more embarrassing to law enforcement officials is Bulger claiming he traveled freely not only back to Boston, but between the U.S. and Mexico, where he obtained illegal prescriptions. “So the top ten most wanted guy in America can cross the border without a problem,” Graham said. “But we’re searching the diapers of 95-year old women trying to fly back for their leukemia treatments in Michigan?”
 
The relationship between the 81-year old Bulger and his longtime girlfriend, who is 60, reminded Graham of another May-December romance. “I’m just thinking: an elderly gentleman with an odd hair decision married to a much younger woman who could put him in jail at anytime she wants,” Graham said. “Does that sound familiar, Mr. Imus?”
 
It’s a better question than, say, the one Chris Wallace posed to Michele Bachmann on Sunday, when he cited various factual errors she has made over the years and then asked, “Are you a flake?”
 
Neither Imus nor Graham thought Wallace’s question was malicious, and Graham, who used to run political campaigns, thinks Bachmann should have laughed, and responded, “Here are some of my flaky ideas: balancing the budget; not borrowing more money than we can spend; not going to Libya without a plan,” rather than snapping at Wallace.
 
What bothers people about that kind of query, in Graham’s view, is not the content but the double standard. “How many times does President Obama screw up before someone asks, ‘Are you dumb?’” he said, then pointed to some of Obama’s failures, like Obama-care, the Libya incursion, and the economic stimulus. “The fifth time you let the guy cook and everybody’s puking in the bathroom afterward, you have to ask, ‘Do you have any idea what you’re doing?’”
 
Graham wondered the same thing about proponents of gay marriage. While he does not oppose the measure, he thinks more attention should be given to the potential long-term effects on children being raised in same-sex marriage homes. Though he noted, “You’re not allowed to talk about that without being called a homophobe.”
 
Same-sex marriage is legal in his home state of Massachusetts—not because people voted for it, but because a bunch of judges decided it should be. “The definition of marriage doesn’t come from judges, doesn’t come from the bible—it comes from the society, the people who live there,” Graham said. As such, and as with other civil rights like women voting and ending slavery, he believes gay marriage should be put to a vote.
 
Not up for debate is the issue of gay kissing. “Watching two guys make out, every cell in my body freaks out,” Graham told Imus, who concurred. “Two women making out, however—that’s art, Mister. That is beautiful art protected by the First Amendment.”
 
-Julie Kanfer