Jan. 7–We honor all kinds of people, and why not? There is no shortage of good work being done.
There are Nobel Prizes for those who have done extraordinary work in the sciences, medicine, and economics, and Pulitzer Prizes for the worlds of journalism and literature. We have the Academy Awards, the Grammys, and All-America teams by the bushel. My mom once won Yard of the Month.
Today, though, we come to praise an underappreciated bunch: troublemakers, specifically Boston’s world-class troublemakers.
Boston has a rich history of troublemakers (think Tea Party).
Troublemakers are mostly born, not made; going against convention is in their genes. They can be uncompromising and can make getting anything done difficult. But they can also provide an invaluable public service.
They always make life more interesting. Regular visitors to this space know that troublemakers are welcome here.
In a city like ours, there is much talent. Here is one man’s very incomplete list, in no particular order.
–Shirley Kressel. Kressel, cofounder of the Alliance for Boston Neighborhoods, is the one person willing to attend every hour of every meeting on development in this town. Most of this stuff is so boring it makes your teeth hurt. She is a font of information on the arcane world of zoning and variances, and the bane of developers and the Boston Redevelopment Authority. Kressel, sometimes over the top, sometimes not, is a valuable cop on the beat.
–Jon Jacobson and Richard Grubman. Among Boston money managers, these are the guys most likely to throw a high hard one at an under-performing CEO’s head. Their Boston hedge fund, Highfields Capital Management, has taken on a long line of sick companies, including scandal-scarred Adelphia Communications and Reader’s Digest. Former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling once called Grubman a nasty name when he didn’t think the question about his company’s balance sheet was properly respectful. Skilling is long gone; Grubman and Jacobson are still pitching.
–Bill Galvin. What happens when the wise guy in the back of the class becomes the teacher? If you are our secretary of state, you just keep firing spitballs. But now they really pack a wallop. Galvin used to be famous for dropping dimes to reporters from the pay phones at the State House. Now he calls press conferences to take on the HMOs and the mutual fund industry. Who’s next?
–Ted Postol. The MIT missile authority took on the Pentagon and Raytheon Co. and showed that the claims for the Patriot missile in the first Gulf War were wildly exaggerated. For four years he has been campaigning to prove that the Pentagon’s proposed $60 billion antimissile defense system is fatally flawed and that MIT, among others, conspired to cover it up. Postol is obsessive and combative. But you do not want this man on your case because he never lets go.
–Herb Gleason. At 75, Gleason is long removed from his days as the city’s top lawyer under Mayor Kevin White. But he has never stopped caring about the city he loves. Whether the issue is a too-big development, an endangered little park, or neighborhood health centers, Gleason is the kind of passionate citizen no city has enough of.
–Dr. Arnold Relman and Dr. Marcia Angell. This medical couple, who both edited the New England Journal of Medicine, have been pounding the table for years about the dangers of mixing profits and medicine, whether it is the hospitals, the insurance, or the drug companies. Call them scolds, call them pompous, but they have the respect to make all sides listen.
Here’s to troublemakers everywhere. May they continue to afflict the comfortable.
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