Boston News Site Awkwardly Jokes About Boehner’s Alleged Death Threats

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio defends the work of the GOP during a brief news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 31, 2014, as Congress prepares to leave for a five-week summer recess. The i... House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio defends the work of the GOP during a brief news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, July 31, 2014, as Congress prepares to leave for a five-week summer recess. The institutional split of a Republican-led House and Democratic-controlled Senate has added up to inaction, especially in a midterm election year with control of the Senate at stake. Lawmakers have struggled to compromise on a handful of bills to deal with the nation's pressing problems amid overwhelming partisanship. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) MORE LESS
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A Boston.com writer took advantage of the alleged death threats against House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to awkwardly mock the congressman’s drinking habits in an article published Tuesday.

Associate editor Victor Paul Alvarez asked “Would anyone have noticed?” if Michael Robert Hoyt, a former bartender at Boehner’s Ohio country club, had followed through on his alleged threats to poison the House speaker’s wine.

“Stories about Boehner’s drinking have circulated for years. His drinking inspired a blog called DrunkBoehner, and in 2010 he brought booze back to Washington,” Alvarez wrote.

But the piece has apparently been toned down since it first went live.

Politico reported that a sentence reading “Had [Boehner] been poisoned as planned, perhaps his pickled liver could have filtered out the toxins” has been scrubbed from the article.

An editor’s note at the bottom of the piece now reads “A previous version of this article made an unsubstantiated reference to the health of Speaker Boehner.”

The piece’s headline, which originally read “Would anyone have noticed bartender succeeded poisoning John Boehner?” has also since been changed, according to Politico.

A spokesperson for Boston.com provided the following statement from General Manager Corey Gottlieb to TPM:

Last night, an opinion piece was published on Boston.com that has since been adjusted to what is currently on the site. The original column made references to Speaker Boehner that were off-color and completely inappropriate. It reflected the opinions of one of our writers; what it did not reflect, by any standards, were the site’s collective values. Rather than remove any reference to it or pretend it didn’t happen, we are handling with transparency and self-awareness. We are sorry, and we will do better.

This post has been updated.

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Notable Replies

  1. Avatar for mantan mantan says:

    God, more media flibertyjibber. The Speaker was in no danger from who some are calling his possibly illegitimate son as the insane bartender first phoned local police to detail his assassination plans after the Speaker was “mean” to him. He was close enough to the Speaker’s family to know his wife’s email address unless that address was a public one…
    Joke on, cowed media, joke on…

  2. Avatar for imkmu3 imkmu3 says:

    That’s the NEW TPM!

  3. I guess that is what happens when you put out job applications and fill the voids. You get what you get and make the best of it. Something we are suffering through after the midterm elections.
    But I agree, the new tpm is losing what it once was.

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