Whitey Bulger, Part II

As a quick follow-up to my post yesterday on Whitey Bulger and the Bulger brothers more generally. The Boston Globe has an excellent editorial on what the arrest means to the larger city. If you're from Boston, I'd urge you to read it in full. The Globe urges Boston to move past the old racial and ethnic divisions, which they argue were plainly exposed by Whitey Bulger. This quote sums it up nicely:

Too many Bostonians of that era believed that their futures would never expand beyond the dimensions of their neighborhoods, that every block was a stake worth fighting for. A need to take care of one's own, and never to forget where you came from, became articles of faith in some neighborhoods. Politicians lived off them. And they were manipulated by Bulger and others, such as mob boss Gennaro Angiulo, to exploit the very people they were pretending to protect from rival gangs and outsiders.

The Globe closes with the following lines: "Hopefully, White Bulger will die in prison, far from a Boston that looks and feels nothing like the one he held hostage for so many decades. That will be Bulger's greatest punishment, and Boston's sweetest revenge."

Let's hope so.