| Boston City
Councilor Albert Leo “Dapper” O’Neil was no particular friend of the
Bulgers, either Whitey or his brother Billy, then the president of the
Mass. State Senate. Dapper never attended Billy’s St. Patrick’s Day
breakfast in Southie – “who wants to go someplace where you can’t piss
for four hours?” he used to say of the crowded affair at the Bayside
Club. But when gangster Zip Connolly retired from the FBI in December
1990, Dapper felt he had to be there, with a citation for Zip from the
City Council. Of the Dap it could be truly said, he’d attend the opening
of an envelope. All the cops were there – feds, state, Boston,
prosecutors, etc. – and Dapper was a law ‘n’ order politician. When this
video was recorded, the Dap was 70, in his prime. After World War II, he
used his GI Bill benefits to attend Dr. Staley’s School of the Spoken
Word, where aspiring pols learned how to speak and generally conduct
themselves. Among Dr. Staley’s students: John F. Kennedy and James
Michael Curley. In these clips, you can see how well the Dap learned. In
the first one, particularly, his jokes are un-PC, but his timing is that
of a professional stand-up comic, which some of his critics claimed he
always was. |
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