Dapper is Dead
Now everyone will be going, “awww … God rest his soul” - typical. In Boston, I used to work at a place where I transcribed news programs. You read that right. Every night I was not only force fed news, I had to spit it back out. I had to transcribe Dapper O’Neil’s words many, many times. From today’s Boston Globe obit:
Flamboyantly conservative, Mr. O’Neil was defined more by the enemies he made than his political views. At various times, he railed against feminists, gays, and immigrants. He made a career out of his opposition to school desegregation, affirmative action, and other government initiatives he considered social engineering.
He was the only one of 13 city councilors to vote against a local ban on assault weapons and the city’s human rights ordinance, which prohibited discrimination against gay men and lesbians.
In the process, Mr. O’Neil seemed to delight in his ability to enrage liberals, who considered him insensitive at best and a bigot at worst. But his stands on issues served to solidify his conservative political base.
In the 1970s, he lambasted “hippies” from a bullhorn on the back of a pickup truck circling Boston Common. In 1990, after viewing nude photographs at the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, he said, “This country’s going down the drain. And while there’s guys like me in it, I’ll put a stop to some of this.”
During the 1992 Dorchester Day Parade, he was captured on a home video exclaiming, “I thought I was in Saigon for Chrissakes,” while he passed through a Southeast Asian part of the city.
Dapper once cut a single called, “The Irish Belly Dancer.” I went into Cheap-O Records in Cambridge and asked for it, and the clerk looked at me as if I were asking for a recording of a Nuremburg rally.
Did you ever find it?!
No, but I didn’t look real hard. Circa 1980, there was a dive in East Cambridge, the G & G, that had a song called, “Everybody is an Asshole to Somebody, Some Place” on the juke box. I’d really like to find that little gem.