Massachusetts drivers, former Harvard president top Jon Keller's list of Boston's 2024 turkeys
The opinions expressed below are Jon Keller's, not those of WBZ, CBS News or Paramount Global.
BOSTON - We're no stranger to turkeys here in Massachusetts. Wild ones roam our streets, and dumb ones fill our headlines.
So here are the Boston area turkeys for Thanksgiving 2024.
College protests
The war in Gaza, a humanitarian disaster, and a worthy focus of public protest.
But when demonstrations in Boston and elsewhere turned ugly, glorified terror and pressed incoherent demands, it backfired.
"Violent protest is not protected," noted President Biden, no fan of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
The end result was arguably the most counterproductive protests in recent memory, and the election of a president who says "let Israel finish the job."
Claudine Gay
"At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews constitute bullying and harassment, yes or no?" then-Harvard President Claudine Gay was asked at a congressional hearing.
"It can be, depending on the context," was her stony reply. Needless to say, that didn't go over well - Gay was gone weeks later.
And when it came to botching the response to war-related antisemitism on campus, Harvard took the cake. Gay's response was a spectacular flop, and recently-subpoenaed emails show she and other Harvard brass refused to use the word "violent" to describe the violent Hamas attack on Israel, because it "sounded like assigning blame."
Oh no! Not that!
Massachusetts drivers
Drivers around Massachusetts are infamously bad. We're a region of road turkeys, you might say. But just how bad are we?
State figures show we're racking up nearly 100,000 violations per month, a record pace. And that's just the ones the cops catch.
So here's a word to the not-so-wise - Storrow Drive is not suited to host the Indy 500.
Boston election officials
Voters cheered the arrival of ballots at a Boston polling place on election night. But why did they run out in the first place?
City election officials knew there would be high demand.
But when complaints about shortages began surfacing, Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin said, "They were not answering the phone. They were not responding to their own employees who were reaching out to them, they were not responding to us, they were not responding to individual citizens. This is unacceptable conduct."
Uh-oh. Looks like some turkey's goose is about to be cooked.