Remember those old TV blackouts, when they wouldn’t broadcast sporting events in home markets if games weren’t sold out in advance at stadiums? Well, it was sort of back to the future Friday night, with the dramatic Red Sox–Tigers game streamed exclusively on Apple TV+ and blacked out for all those who don’t subscribe to the Apple service. Needless to say, I wasn’t a happy bandwagon fan. Others were upset as well. As Tom Carson lamented before the game: “I think MLB is doing a massive disservice to fans by having a game like this behind a paywall. At the least they shouldn’t allow games in September to be streaming only.” … I ended up listening to the game on the radio, yet another back to the future moment. It wasn’t bad. It also helped clarify in my mind: time to cut the cable cord. Why am I paying so much money a month only to have corporate American tell me I need to pay more for what I want? 

— What they’ve done to collegiate sports is awful: “Fenway sports agent sues client for breaking deal; client is a college freshman” (UH)

— At least he’s a billionaire with some local roots: “Who is Dean Metropoulos, the Patriots’ newest minority owner? Here are five things to know about him” (Globe)

— Yes, 90 days (though not time-lapsed): “WATCH: Building a Triple-Decker in 90 Days” (B&T)

— They need to investigate this. Something’s indeed fishy here: “Calls for transportation secretary to resign come after service plaza bid fails” (Herald)

— More CK fallout: “Renée Graham quits Globe editorial board over Charlie Kirk editorial but will remain as a columnist” (Dan Kennedy)

— This is so typical of an incumbent pol fresh off a big win: “With election victory assured, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu takes aim at the media” (Globe)

— You know we live in constitutionally tense times when something like this sets off alarms: “Hegseth Orders Top U.S. Military Officers to Washington for Mystery Meeting” (WSJ)

— They’re aiming to cripple Russia’s energy sector, not just pinprick it: “Ukraine’s Plan to Starve the Russian War Machine” (The Atlantic)

— The Chinese have more economic woes than people realize: “The New Buzzword That’s Scaring China” (NYT)

— I don’t like this whole gleaming-towers craze, but here’s the photos anyway: “Decades in the making, the South Station tower is ready for move-in. Take a look inside” (Globe)

There’s so much happening on the free-speech front that I figured I might as well throw them all into one basket. So here goes. … Re the Peabody teacher who has lost a job over Charlie Kirk online comments: wrong, wrong, wrong. And I don’t even know what was said. … My favorite headline summarizing what’s really going on? Via Ezra Klein at the Times: “Trump Is Building the Blue Scare.” And that’s what this current Conservative Cancel Culture (CCC) wave is ultimately about: demonizing the left to justify current and future crackdowns. I was going to compare current CCC actions to Woodrow Wilson’s infamous backing of the Sedition Act of 1918, but I like the Blue Scare better. … The Globe’s Carine Hajjar continues to impress. … And the Globe’s Joan Vennochi typically impresses, rounding up all the good and bad news of late. … Think I’ve forgotten about PCC (Progressive Cancel Culture)? Nope. And neither has Megan McArdle at the Post, Bret Stephens at the NYT and the WSJ’s editorial board, which, by the way, has been on righteous fire of late. … But right now the real threat is coming from the right. So we’ll end it with Andrew Sullivan’s recent post: “The Woke Right Comes of Age.” And it has.

I have a piece in the Warren Group’s Registry Review, New Hampshire’s real estate newspaper, about the city of Manchester’s push to rewrite its zoning rules to boost construction of new housing. But unlike in Cambridge, Mass. (and now Medford), Manchester isn’t shooting for the YIMBY moon with its zoning reforms. Its proposed changes are more modest – and thus probably more realistic in what might be achieved. Basically, city planners discovered via extensive surveys that residents didn’t really mind small-scale multifamily housing in their neighborhoods, such as two-unit duplexes or triple-deckers. But they did mind large multifamily apartment complexes in mostly single-family districts. So the final draft ordinance mostly reflected that sentiment – and, if approved, the city’s new rules would allow more “missing middle” duplexes (and occasionally triple-deckers and small four-unit apartment buildings) to be built in many (though not all) previously exclusive single-family districts. Larger and larger apartment buildings are to be allowed the closer one gets to the city’s core downtown commercial area. … The bottom line: city planners listened to residents and found they were slightly more open to reforms than one might think. The result will probably be hundreds, if not thousands, of new housing units in Manchester over coming years due to the common-sense zoning changes. ….

Compare that to the early-stage fights now breaking out in Cambridge over its landmark zoning-reform ordinance that allows four- to six-story multifamily housing buildings to be constructed as a right in all residential areas. It’s a policy almost guaranteed to generate controversy – and it risks a backlash that could harm future reform efforts. There’s also a part of me who wonders whether some newfound YIMBY zealots are looking for a fight.

 

Allison P. Farrell is going places if this Crimson opinion piece is any indication. The Harvard undergrad explains the difference between intellectual conservatism and confrontational showboat conservatism – and how it applies to the late Charlie Kirk. … I know, I know. The next William F. Buckley Jr. isn’t walking through that door, folks. But it’s a nice to dream.

He isn’t wrong to consider challenging U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, as the Globe reports. But Seth Moulton would be wrong if he decides to actually go for it, for all the reasons I thought it would be a mistake for Jake Auchincloss to challenge Ed Markey, i.e. he’d lose in a primary system favoring the incumbent progressive candidate, even if that incumbent progressive candidate will be 80 years old next year. … But will Moulton, a moderate liberal, nevertheless go for it? Well, he’s already shown he wants to move up the political ladder, and look how that ended. I.e., Moulton isn’t the type who lets a likely outcome get in the way of his ambitions.

Update — 9.26.25 – The Herald’s Peter Lucas agrees that Markey will be hard to beat. … Btw: Has anyone corned Ayanna Pressley yet about her intentions? Just wondering.

— They’re so two-faced, cravenly praising the president in public while blasting his policies in private: “Inside the Room Where CEOs Say What They Really Think of Trump’s Policies” (WSJ)

— Self-censorship may be running rampant these days, but Dan Kennedy praises those few who are forcefully speaking out: “Media commentators are struggling to deal honestly with Charlie Kirk’s words and deeds” (Media Nation)

— First Hasbro. Now this. The downtown office market slowly recovers: “KKR Inks 133K SF Lease at International Place” (B&T)

— Gulf of Tonkin Alert: “Draft Bill Would Authorize Trump to Wage Drug Trafficking War” (NYT)

— We’re talking hundreds of students leaving the system. Where are they going?: “Chelsea school enrollment drops as ICE cracks down on Mass.” (WBUR)

— Joan Vennochi has some sound advice for the latest businessman mulling a challenge to an incumbent pol: “‘It takes more than money’: Running for governor would be an uphill climb for Alan Leventhal.” (Globe)

— We need many more AI startups like this one if we’re going to be a major player in the field: “Mass. ‘superintelligence’ startup Lila Sciences speeds from stealth to ‘unicorn’.”( BBJ)

— Speaking of AI: “Who needs elections? Google AI declares winners in Somerville preliminary mayor’s race – a day before the election” (Universal Hub)

— About time: “Treasurer abandons appeal to keep pot boss off the job” (Herald)

— Hint: It’s about a winter sport. And the movie is now high up on my movies-to-watch list: “Robert Redford Made a Sports Movie Masterpiece—but It’s Not ‘The Natural’” (WSJ)

Maybe the Massachusetts Communities Act needs a little more time before it starts producing substantially more transit-oriented housing in Greater Boston. It’s been only four years since the act’s passage. Give it time. Be patient. It will eventually work, etc. etc. … And yet … yet it sure looks like it’s not working as planned and hoped – and even some of the act’s firmest YIMBY backers are starting to get discouraged by the act’s lack of results so far, as Commonwealth Beacon’s Jennifer Smith reports. The consensus among advocates at a recent YIMBY conference, as Smith writes, seemed to be that the state hasn’t been “muscular” enough in dealing with communities on housing, that the state has been too nice, that it’s time to “limit cities’ and towns’ ability to flout state mandates.” …

Hmmm. Can I, as a non-advocate, suggest something? How about trying the opposite? How about less stick, more carrots? How about state financial incentives and protections that address local concerns about added infrastructure costs and loss of historic character that accompany major new housing developments? How about the state paying to conduct town-by-town surveys to find out exactly what residents want (and don’t want) in terms of more housing? How about more emphasis on smaller-scale multifamily housing — such as duplexes and triple deckers, or even single-family homes on smaller lots — rather than pushing/allowing giant big-box apartment buildings that so many people despise? …

As the BBJ reports, something needs to be done. Greater Boston’s’ housing production is actually declining, not increasing, and we’re now dead last in some rankings when it comes to new housing starts.  We need new approaches. Relying exclusively on brute force isn’t the answer.

Or should it be more appropriately called the Republican Cancel Culture? After all, there are some principled conservatives left in this country who are rightly alarmed at some of the anti-free-speech rhetoric flowing out of the White House and DOJ these days. … Let’s see if they remain alarmed now that Jimmy Kimmel has been cancelled – a cancellation celebrated by President Trump. … But now the political right’s version of cancel culture, which is not to be confused with the political left’s long-established cancel culture, has come to the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, with two allegedly moderate Republicans calling for the firing of any government employee who appears to celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk, as the Herald reports in a story with a strangely off-subject headline. …

FYI: Historian Robert Conquest’s famous second law of power — “Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing” – isn’t quite applicable here. But it’s damn close when it comes to much of the right’s pathetic embrace of cancel culture.

Update – From Caroline Mel and Jonathan Haidt at Chronicle of Higher Education: “The solution to violence isn’t less speech – it’s better dialogue.”

Update II — From U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton: “Donald Trump and the Republican Party are hellbent on silencing any speech that hurts their feelings. This isn’t just cancel culture, it’s state censorship. And it has no place in our democracy.” … Moulton comments via Universal Hub, whose post is headlined: “Living in a country run by that little kid from the Twilight Zone.” … And UH has the old Twilight Zone video. … Bad man. … Bad man. …

Update III — The Globe’s Carine Hajjar, a conservative,  is admirably criticizing Pam Bondi as well.

It’s the smart move. U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss probably would have gotten mauled if he had challenged U.S. Sen. Ed Markey in the 2026 Dem primary election. This is Massachusetts. Progressives dominate the statewide  primary process here. Joe Kennedy III found that out the hard way in 2020. Nothing suggests that Auchincloss, a moderate liberal, would have fared any differently in 2026 – even with Markey turning a ripe 80 years old next year. It’s just the way it is in Massachusetts. And that’s why Auchincloss has decided to stay put in the U.S. House (assuming he wins reelection next year), as the Globe reports.. …

But what I find interesting is Auchincloss saying he’d rather focus more on his involvement with Majority Democrats, a new group of what sure sounds like young centrist Democrats who don’t want to call themselves centrist Democrats.* No matter how they define themselves, or refuse to define themselves, we can be pretty sure they’re obviously not like other young Dems who have embraced a 19^th Century movement and think it’s new. … We live in very strange times. …

Btw: The Globe’s Ideas Section this past week had an impressive package of what’s-next-for-Democrats pieces, such as these by David Sharfenberg and Robert Reich. As a centrist who’s more than a little frustrated with the far-left drift of the party, I obviously found these pieces by Yascha Mounk and Sabrina Joy Stevens most compelling. 

* Note: What is it with Auchincloss et gang and their almost impenetrable wonky language?

Update — Scott Van Voorhis has more on Auchincloss’s plans now that he’s ruled out a run against Markey — and they include pushing the idea for new cities. Yes, new ground-up cities. Scott explains.