The Christian Science Monitor

Beantown pundit:
George Merry

	Monitor Massachusetts State House correspondent George Merry stands at his desk in the newsroom circa 1984. Staff / The Christian Science Monitor

Democratic nominee-to-be Sen. John Kerry is descended (on his mother's side) from two famous Boston Brahmin families – the Forbeses and the Winthrops. Kerry, who partly grew up in Boston, also started his political career in the Bay State. One of the people who covered those early years of Kerry's career was George Merry.

Also a native Bostonian, Merry joined The Christian Science Monitor in 1948 as a copy boy and covered state and local politics during an illustrious 45-year career with the paper. Besides Kerry, he covered and knew all the famous Bay State politicians, like the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, William Weld, and Michael Dukakis, as well as the not-so-famous ones. For more than three decades if you wanted to know anything, or everything, about Massachusetts politics, Merry was your man.

Recently Merry sat down with csmonitor.com writers Jim Bencivenga and Tom Regan to talk about the state's political history, and some of its more memorable political characters and moments.

(To listen to these audio files you'll need version 9 or greater of the RealPlayer — it's free for download. You can get it here. RealPlayer works with Windows 98 or greater and with MacOS X.)

•	"Honey Fitz" was one of Boston's most colorful politicians. One of the stories that frequently circulated about the mayor in those days, according to Merry, suggested you didn't want to be the last one at his dinner table.
•	The late speaker of the US House of Representatives, and famous Boston son, Thomas "Tip" O' Neill once said that all politics is local. Merry says nothing could be truer for those who want to make their way into politics in the Bay State.
•	While Ted Kennedy may be the best-known politician from Massachusetts, his career might never have gotten off the ground if not for an untimely remark by Edward McCormick, his opponent in his first senatorial campaign, in 1962.
•	Merry traces the political career of Democractic presidential nominee-to-be Sen. John Kerry.
•	Merry talks about his run-in with then Lt. Gov. Kerry, when a Merry column in the Monitor suggested that Massachusetts didn't need a lieutenant governor's office.