I never thought I’d write these words, but I’m a big enough man to admit it: I owe Wallace Matthews an apology.

Mind you, I still think he’s one of the worst writers on the planet. But I also thought he was one of the worst human beings on the planet. I stand corrected. He has been dwarfed in hideousness by Howie Carr, a “writer” for the Boston Herald.

Matthews is cranky and joyless and seems to take pleasure in raining on parades. But he has not, to the best of my knowledge, actually caused anyone harm–or really wished harm on others. Howie Carr, on the other hand, wants people to starve.

Carr is a reprehensible right-wing talk radio windbag on Boston’s WRKO (against his will, apparently). He lies somewhere in the Venn intersection of Bob Grant, Morton Downey Jr., and a playground bully, filling his shows with Code Word Bigotry and seething anti-gay invective.

He also writes columns for the Boston Herald. You’ve probably never read the Herald unless you’ve had to line a birdcage in the greater New England area. It’s basically an angrier, more overtly racist version of the NY Post, aimed squarely at the Tommy from Quinzee set.

In this latter capacity, he authored a piece that appeared in Sunday’s Herald, “Shed no tears as Boston Globe fat gets Pinched”. I was alerted to its poisonous existence by the justifiably angry tweeting of BP’s Will Carroll.

As you may know, there’s a very good chance the Boston Globe will close down very soon. I’m ambivalent about the future of newspapers myself. And I have to cop to a snotty tweet I tapped out on Monday about how no more Globe would (hopefully) mean no more Dan Shaughnessy.

But I think we can all agree that the shuttering of the Globe would be sad. Not only because it’s a storied daily with a long history, but because it would put a lot of people out of work–very few of whom are responsible for the paper’s financial woes. It would also leave Boston with only one newspaper: the reprehensible Herald.

So again, I think we can all agree that the Globe’s imminent closing is a very bad, very sad thing.

Wait, we can’t all agree with that? Apparently not, according to Carr. He’s dancing on a grave that hasn’t even been dug yet. Why? Because the Globe is a liberal newspaper, owned by the NY Times Corp., and therefore is worse than Hitler in his book.

Keep in mind as you read these excerpts that Carr writes for the Globe‘s rival paper, and that no newspapers are doing well right now. So his insane, petty, vindictive Schadenfreude makes about as much karmic sense as the head of GM crowing about Chrysler’s bankruptcy.

Continue reading You Failed the Trials for the Human Race: Howie Carr →