So Jay Severin has lost another radio gig. No one seems to care anymore. When he lost the tkk job, there were a
few comments. The talk 1200, narry
a mention. Probably has something
to do with Limbaugh on rko.
I guess we all should have seen it
coming. I wrote this when he lost
the job because of his I slept with the world spiel. I don’t think he did.
Irrelevant now, but here it is.
Predicting the future is not given
to many mortals. Oh some of us see
a bank of clouds and take the umbrella, but few rise to the level of Warren
Buffet. Yet, there is an event
that if one had been following it long enough should have been so easy to
prognosticate.
Jay Severin was a guilty pleasure
for many within his station’s range.
There were blogs dedicated to bashing him by people who could not stand
an afternoon without him. The
pleasure at his end must have been short lived. Indeed, at the finish, his audience probably consisted more
of his detractors than fans. Yet
what they despised him for, his hate speech was not the most salient feature of
his show. It was there, but it was
diminishing. He had even taken to
saying nice things about gays. He
had seemed to turn himself into the loving family man, albeit with the odd oat
sown of youth.
No, Jay had another quality that he
could never escape. One may
disagree on whether it was outright prevarication or Olympic Gold level
exaggeration, but it was big. Were
he a fisherman, the minnow that got away would have been turned into a trout,
the trout, a shark, and then a whale.
He made his adventures with interns
sound like he had serviced a harem larger than a Turkish Sultan and was done in
for his brag. Think about the
man. He has been caught out on
boast after boast. If he has not
been awarded degrees and honors he’s claimed, why does anyone believe he was
super stud? It was not what he did
but what he said he did that he is vanished.
Some of his foibles are well
known. Probably his most famous
is, ''But
since journalism began, and up until the time at least that I took my master's
degree at Boston University -- and may I add without being obnoxious, up till
and including the time that I received a Pulitzer Prize for my columns for
excellence in online journalism from the Columbia School of Journalism, the
highest possible award for writing on the Web -- right up to and including that
in 1998, you still had to practice journalism to be a journalist."
Jay’s comment was a reflection on the
state of journalism, oddly enough.
Globe reporter, Scott Lehigh did the legwork and found out that there is
no such prize and that our latter day Mencken had no Pulitzer on record. Jay had an explanation, ‘‘what I said
was, there is a prize that my editor told me is the equivalent of the Pulitzer
Prize for Web journalism."
The producer whom he said told him he had won wasn’t sure what award he
was talking about and they were sitewide anyway. To call a Jay connection nebulous is to be kind.
This is not to say a BU grad could not win
a Pulitzer, but Jay wasn’t degreed from that school on the south bank of the
Charles. Jay Severin admitted as
much in 2005 that "... it would appear I have
no degree" after the school denied knowledge of the award. Maybe he put the frame sans sheepskin
up on the wall and said, “Hmm, I wonder what’s missing?”
Oh, maybe his Harvard Law
School vellum? Yup, He had spent
time north of the River Chuck to pursue legal studies. This was reported in the Boston College
campus newspaper, the Heights.
When queried about this, Jay had no clue except that, well, he might
have gone to a few classes as part of the BU thingee. A bit of a stretch, but that’s the pattern.
Decades ago, Eddie Andelman
said of Jean Shepherd of Christmas Story fame, “He had a longer childhood than
Orphan Annie.” A dated reference
to many, but Severin has had a longer childhood than Jean Shepherd as it has
never ended. The Heights also reported, "As a young person, Severin was
arrested over 50 times while fighting for civil rights."
Again, maybe a stretch? After all, Martin Luther King in his
career was arrested only four times. Fifty times are a lot of collars and for
someone who sounds so self absorbed, it makes one wonder. Still, There may have been a
demonstration that went by Jay’s car while a ticket was being written and he
counts that as a pinch and inflated it a lot.
When most boomers were working summer
jobs, Woodstock happened. Kids who
were pumping gas while waiting to get back to BC or Northeastern heard of the
wild party in a New York sward and many would later claim to have been
there. It was a loaves and fishes
field. Give Jay credit, he’s one
of the few of his generation who does not claim to have been in attendance.
Maybe that’s because he had he had tasted
blood the year before during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. He claims to have been at the Battle of
Grant Park. The then 17 year old
was trawling record stores and had hardly heard of events, but no matter, he
would become fast friends with Abbie and Jerry and who is there to gainsay it
now. Who knows, it may be true, as
it appears he was at Abbie Hoffman’s Worcester memorial. That will always be the question about
Jay, is it Memorex?
So is it possible that Jay was the man-god
to all the aspiring female politicos?
Maybe, but like his claim to be more than the B-grade political
operative Scott Lehigh pegged him as, the evidence is slight.
Still, some of his narrative is
indisputable. Mother Jones in 1983
called him a competitor of his former employer, David Garth. Just to be able to keep the lights on
in a field as tough as political consulting is a feat.
In 1985, jay is part of a triumvirate that is working to get bush père ready for his run in1988. The new york magazine article pegs them as “the only people who ever left david garth's organization to establish a republican agency.” the problem is there is another severin in the threesome. The firm known as severin avilles associates, inc, included a kathleen cooney severin . She was not jay’s half sister. Using french in this paragraph already, another indo-european tongue is in order. Frau is the word we are looking for. So it was according to a 1993 new york times article about rudy giulani that mentioned their status as man and wife and tapped kathleen as firm president.
So how does one think the conversation at the dinner table went, “ya know dear, that new intern looks like she needs a bit of mentoring.” hmmm. Not too high on the likelihood scale that.
ah but a mere four years later, the new york times noted, jay would be strolling down the aisle with a new mrs. Severin, renee klock. He is now chairman of severin media less avilles. Though there is no definitive evidence from the wedding announcement, it is doubtful that the new wife had been a mentoree at the firm.
So there is a four year window where he might have had his romp. In all probability, it was likely to be only a couple of years when kathleen was out of the picture and renee arrived.
So was there that bevy of eager young operatives willing to give it up so that they could learn from the master on the campaign trail? This is what jay wanted his listeners to believe. That he cut a huge swath through maidenhood is open to question.
In 1985, jay is part of a triumvirate that is working to get bush père ready for his run in1988. The new york magazine article pegs them as “the only people who ever left david garth's organization to establish a republican agency.” the problem is there is another severin in the threesome. The firm known as severin avilles associates, inc, included a kathleen cooney severin . She was not jay’s half sister. Using french in this paragraph already, another indo-european tongue is in order. Frau is the word we are looking for. So it was according to a 1993 new york times article about rudy giulani that mentioned their status as man and wife and tapped kathleen as firm president.
So how does one think the conversation at the dinner table went, “ya know dear, that new intern looks like she needs a bit of mentoring.” hmmm. Not too high on the likelihood scale that.
ah but a mere four years later, the new york times noted, jay would be strolling down the aisle with a new mrs. Severin, renee klock. He is now chairman of severin media less avilles. Though there is no definitive evidence from the wedding announcement, it is doubtful that the new wife had been a mentoree at the firm.
So there is a four year window where he might have had his romp. In all probability, it was likely to be only a couple of years when kathleen was out of the picture and renee arrived.
So was there that bevy of eager young operatives willing to give it up so that they could learn from the master on the campaign trail? This is what jay wanted his listeners to believe. That he cut a huge swath through maidenhood is open to question.
With his ratings less than
mediocre, it is understandable that his employer’s corporate nose bled with
every check issued. In all
probability, if Jay had let slip that on certain occasions jaywalking was
understandable, they would have considered that evidence of moral turpitude if
they could have gotten away with it.
Of course if his audience had still been large, he could have said he
was the Boston Strangler without concern.
When he made his claim, there was
little in the way of an uprising among Boston womanhood. Who complained, if anyone, is not
known. TKK did not waste his
time. Severin had not realized how
the game had changed, and became a victim of his own hyperbole.
Jay is quickly descending into
unpersonhood. There is
fandom on facebook, but Charles Manson probably has a page. He hasn’t been mentioned in weeks. Boston almost still can’t get
over David Brudnoy, but Jay who?
Well, why not? When Julian
Assange burst on the scene, Mr. Sophistication referred to
“Wikitakealeak.” He really
couldn’t maintain the urbane veneer.
Severin won’t be missed and it’s a pity. Every town needs someone to love to hate.
