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| The old mayor, a dapper lookin' dude. |
From now on, I’m going to be discussing the
contents of Crimetown episodes, and
specifically, spoiling the episodes. So, if you still aren’t following along, I’d
recommend catching up on the past episodes. They’re usually in 30 minute
chunks, and I highly recommend them!
Episode 3
starts out with a funny-but-sad story about how incompetent some of the workers
at the Providence zoo were. Namely, the guy who kept feeding the tortoise even
though it had been dead for three days. That was good times, or at least, as
good of times as a story about a dead turtle can be. But, it was a good,
immediate example of how cronyism worked in Providence before Buddy Cianci’s
election.
Of course,
as the episode details how he got elected to the mayor’s office, we quickly
realize that graft of one kind is just going to be exchanged for graft of
another kind. One of the mobsters, Jerry Tillinghast, flat out says that he
arranged for a couple thousand Cianci votes. Since the final margin of victory
was 709, it pretty much means the Mob delivered the election to him. The
podcast has audio from Cianci, and while he doesn’t admit that the votes were
delivered to him, he doesn’t deny it either.
The episode
doesn’t really get into who Cianci beat in the election, not even mentioning
his name, which Wikipedia tells me was Joseph A. Doorley Jr.
Interestingly, his entry has this nugget: “The [Civic] Center became a focus of
a corruption investigation in 1973. The director of the Center was convicted of
soliciting a $1,000 bribe from a concert promoter. The lead investigator for
this case was assistant attorney general Vincent Cianci, who used the case as a
platform to run for mayor against Doorley on an anti-corruption platform.”
Mike
Stanton, a Journal reporter who
provided a lot of the reporting backbone for the podcast, also has the
interesting piece on Cianci vs. Doorley. The podcast’s usage of audio –
both recordings from Cianci, and fresh interviews with Tillinghast and others –
is stellar though, and helps the vibrancy of the show.
So, Cianci
wins the election by 709 votes, and surprise! The cronyism of the Democratic
machine is replaced by the cronyism of the Mob. At least in the early days,
they have interviews from Cianci supporters and Tillinghast supporting the idea
that Cianci was legitimately working as hard as he could on behalf of the city.
But, that’s contrasted with the ethical compromises he had to make – the no-work
job for Tillinghast – and his own audio clips admitting that he had an enormous
ego.
The fourth
episode is seemingly ready to be dropped on Sunday, like the first three were.
My enthusiasm is still high, so hopefully y’all are still giving this show a
close listen.
I’ve written about podcasts here and there,
and this entry from 2014, after Serial finished, is still mostly valid. And hey, I
host a podcast! If you like pre-2000s video games, check out Your
Parents Basement.
Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then
purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other
project! To read all of Steve’s past Inexplicable Movie Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable TV Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable Video Game Reviews, click here! And for Inexplicable Book Reviews, go here!
