My old hometown paper just ran a piece on Frank’s Nobel Prize.
The headline gives you the flavor of the whole thing: “Manchester
Family Proud of Newest Nobel Prize Winner.” Manchester NH has 100,000
people but every one of them knows it as a small town.
In the 1950s. the Manchester Union Leader was run by a right-wing nut* named William Loeb who gained some nationwide notoriety during the 1972 primaries.
My mother–a Rockefeller-type Republican from Massachusetts–refused to
allow “that filthy rag” in our house, which meant we had to look in a
neighbor’s copy to find out which movies were playing. She warned us never to talk to strangers because they might be Union
Leader reporters trying to dig up dirt about my dad. (My dad held various
unpaid offices in the NH Democratic Party and attracted some nasty
attacks from Mr. Loeb.)
In those days, I imagined reporters hung out at playgrounds all over the city, so they could ask unsuspecting children about
their fathers.
Times change. Mr. Loeb left the planet long ago, and the Union Leader,
though still right-wing, shows some admirable attempts at balance. Its
editorials strongly favor George Bush, but the paper’s star
political columnist John DiStaso played a major role in exposing Republican wrongdoing in the NH phone jamming scandal.
And now the paper has kind words to say about some Devines. I just wish my mother were here–she’d be smiling too.
* A front-page editorial titled “Kissinger the K*ke” comes to mind.