The Globe’s Mark Feeney alerts readers to the latest video teaser (or ‘snippet,’ as Mark calls it) for Ken Burns’s upcoming ‘The American Revolution’ documentary. The latest video focuses on the Battle of Bunker Hill. A previous video was released earlier this spring to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington & Concord. … Rick Atkinson, the historian, is featured in both videos. I loved his first book on the American Revolution (‘The British Are Coming”). But I’m going to wait to buy the second book in the trilogy (“The Fate of the Day”) until the price comes down a bit. The current $36.59 is a little steep even for this history buff. … Screen capture above via PBS.

Mookie Betts. Xander Bogaerts. And now Rafael Devers. Ben Lindbergh is right: the dismantling of the World Series–winning 2018 Red Sox is now complete. And Sox pundits are furious, from Bill Simmons to Dan Shaughnessy. … I’m only a bandwagon Sox fan. But even I know this isn’t exactly a Money Ball-style analytics move. Indeed, the Sox haven’t been playing true Money Ball for a long time. It’s more like hybrid-Money Ball, i.e. using analytics some of the time to build a team, throwing money at the problem other times, and then jettisoning a high-paid star for attitude problems not necessarily tied to stats (i.e. Devers). Lately, if anything, John Henry et gang’s hybrid-Money Ball has started to resemble Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs’s style of ownership, i.e. spending just enough on payrolls to appease fans, but not spending enough to produce a consistent championship-caliber team. …

… I got to thinking along these hybrid-Money Ball lines after receiving the following email from WW Reader: “No idea who Bryan Joiner is, but this is another good analysis of the Red Sox situation (that raises) a key question: how does a World Series Champion turn itself into the Moneyball Edition of the Oakland A’s?”

OK, maybe my Jeremy Jacobs comparison is unfair. Maybe all of this is tied to a necessary unraveling of the bloated 2018 payroll. But it still points to a hybrid-Money Ball pattern of up-and-down payroll spending, mixed with a growing private-equity mindset, as WW Reader points out.

Is Mayor Michelle Wu going to criticize the messenger this time around, like she did the other week when someone dared to raise issues that challenged her assumptions? Not likely. Because the latest bearer of bad news is the Boston NAACP, which is now criticizing the mayor’s White Stadium renovation plan/boondoggle, according to reports at MassLive, the BBJ and Universal Hub. … It’s sort of an awkward moment for the uber-progressive mayor. The Boston NAACP opposing one of her major policies? This is not supposed to happen. … Meanwhile, Josh Kraft is claiming the White Stadium costs continue to skyrocket, reports Contrarian Boston and the Herald. …

Unless she suddenly decides to ditch the White Stadium white elephant, it seems this issue isn’t going away between now and Nov. 4. Wu’s still going to win re-election, I assume. But she’s making it far more difficult than it should be. … Rendering of new White Stadium via city of Boston.

Update – 6.18.25 — The mayor is acknowledging Kraft’s new cost estimate comes from a city document, but it’s a worst-case-scenario estimate, etc. , report the Globe and Herald, which have slightly different spins on the story.

A few weeks ago, I slowly drove through Hudson’s quaint downtown rotary, passing protesters waving various anti-Trump signs. Even though I was sympathetic to their general cause, I scowled at the protesters and refused to wave back or honk my car horn in support. Why? Because I didn’t see one American flag. Not one. It upset me. … Fast-forward to yesterday’s ‘No Kings’ protest at the same quaint rotary: scores of anti-Trump protesters with American flags. Adults waving flags. Children waving flags. Flags painted on anti-Trump signs. Flags planted in the rotary gardens. It felt like a 4^th of July parade in small-town America. I enthusiastically waved back at the protesters and honked my car horn in support. These protesters had won my backing. …

Get the picture, future anti-Trump protest organizers? American flags in, keffiyehs out, as the Globe’s Carine Hajjar might put it. Stop alienating potential anti-Trump supporters by dragging in other left-wing causes that many people might find objectionable, if not offensive, as the New York Times recently reported (‘Protests Go Beyond Immigration to Include Array of Left-Wing Causes’). … A little patriotism goes a long way, folks. …. Photo by iStrfry , Marcus on Unsplash.

Update – A Hub Blog reader has reminded me about my Retake the Flag post a short while ago, featuring a Bill Maher rant on the subject. Check it out.

Update II — Universal Hub has photos of other local protests. And I see flags. ….

It’s so long ago, you might think there are no descendants left of those who fought at Bunker Hill in 1775, or at least those conscious of their ancestral connections. But they’re out there – and they’re rightly proud. WBUR’s Amanda Beland reports. … Fyi: My all-time favorite book about Bunker Hill is ‘Now We Are Enemies,’ by the late Thomas Fleming. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn more about the epic battle. Written 65 years ago, the  book is still widely available via used-book sales at Amazon and elsewhere.

Update – From the Globe: “Bostonians celebrate 250th anniversary of legendary Revolutionary War battle.”

Update II – 6.18.25. From NBC Boston: “‘They did it for their children’: Descendants honor soldiers in Battle of Bunker Hill.”

I loved the headline on Charlie Warzel’s piece at the Atlantic: ‘I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is (Again)’ … He’s referring to how Americans increasingly view news events through the distorted lens of their preferred media outlets and political prisms — and how the same process keeps repeating itself over and over again. The latest example: The L.A. protests (so-called if you lean left) or the L.A. riots (if you lean right) etc. … To me, our politics are getting like ‘Groundhog Day’ or ‘Edge of Tomorrow,’ in which the protagonists repeat the same day over and over, the same events over and over, the same dialogue over and over. … 

… But I agree with Warzel that the distortion is getting more surreal, extreme and out of hand on the right. As I mentioned the other day, only 0.0311 percent of the total land mass of Los Angeles has been hit by protests, or 0.00000221 of the total land mass of the U.S. But you wouldn’t know that if fully immersed in the media ecosystem of the right, where an alternative reality has portrayed L.A. as a city consumed by violence, looting, and foreign-led insurrection, all of which require a military if-they-spit-we-hit response. … Before anyone writes to me saying that the ‘left does it too,’ let me say that much of the progressive/far left does indeed live in its own distorted alternative reality, viewing themselves as heroic moral figures battling immoral villains, defenders of the oppressed against the oppressors, etc. But when was the last time the progressive left called out the U.S. Marines to enforce their version of reality?

Update – 6.21.25 — From Dan Kennedy: “Pew media study confirms that polarization is mainly a right-wing phenomenon.”

The Globe’s Hiawatha Bray rightly gives credit where credit is due, to wit: how President Trump’s tariffs may be helping at least a few manufacturers in Massachusetts, such as Avon’s AccuRounds. … But, unfortunately, don’t expect a big bump in new jobs because of tariffs. And certainly don’t expect a return to the glory days when one out of four jobs in Massachusetts were tied to manufacturing. Today, only one in 20 jobs are tied to manufacturing – and the downward trend continues. Over the past year alone, manufacturing employment has fallen by 2,000 workers in Massachusetts, according to state employment data. … That doesn’t mean there aren’t occasional spikes in manufacturing jobs, such as in 2013 when I was writing for the Globe about a “mini-renaissance’” in manufacturing in the state. But it always seems to be one step forward, two steps back when it comes to manufacturing jobs in Massachusetts. …

… Don’t get me wrong: The state needs manufacturing jobs. They help diversify the economy. They provide solid work for those who can’t get, or don’t want, college degrees. The state can and should do more to help the sector, largely in the form of training programs for increasingly sophisticated and attractive “advanced” manufacturing positions. But just don’t expect big gains in manufacturing employment. It’s not going to happen. I don’t agree with everything Steven Rattner says in his recent NYT column (“Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back”) but he’s right to say powerful market forces and trends are working against major U.S. gains in manufacturing employment in general.

 

I’m a little surprised this hasn’t been prominently mentioned of late (or at least I haven’t seen it mentioned) amid the military intervention in L.A., i.e., Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s infamous crushing of the Bonus Army protests in Washington D.C. in 1932, using U.S. calvary, infantry troops, tanks and tear gas against unarmed veterans. … Screen shot from PBS’s “The March of the Bonus Army.” … And from the Wikipedia entry on the Bonus Army:

“During the military operation, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, served as one of MacArthur’s junior aides. Believing it wrong for the Army’s highest-ranking officer to lead an action against fellow American war veterans, he strongly advised MacArthur against taking any public role: ‘I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down there,’ he said later. ‘I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff.’ Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower wrote the Army’s official incident report that endorsed MacArthur’s conduct.^”

Update — And, of course, remember the Kent State shootings, as a Hub Blog reader just pointed out. … Photo below via CNN/Kent State News Service.

There actually is a way to quantitatively measure how much President Trump has overreacted to the protests in L.A.  – and Hub Blog has figured out how. Here goes: There are about 2.25 acres per square city block, according to some estimates. So let’s just say the two sites in L.A. where the protests are occurring comprise a total of about 50 acres (and that’s being generous considering media descriptions of the sites). That’s 0.0311 percent of the total land mass of Los Angeles and 0.00000221 percent of the total land mass of the U.S. … These aren’t even pinpricks on maps. … Remember: These are protests on U.S. city blocks. They’re not the fields of Waterloo, Gettysburg or Flanders, for heaven’s sake. And the president is calling up the National Guard and U.S. Marines? …

Update — 6.13.25 — The WSJ’s Peggy Noonan laments all the historical norms the president is breaking.

Brad Stevens has a lot of off-season rebuilding to do with the Celts. And so does Bill Chisholm, the private-equity chief who’s slowly rebuilding the ownership team of the Celtics following his successful (for now) $6.1 billion bid to buy the franchise. The Globe’s Shirley Leung reports that a number of wealthy new co-owners are being wooed and brought onboard, including developer Bruce Beal Jr., Granite Communications CEO Rob Hale, and global steel magnate Aditya Mittal, among others. They’re all big Celts fans, apparently. … Current team co-owners have also been offered opportunities to stay. But so far, no mention of Steve Pagliuca remaining on the ownership team, Shirley writes. …