Oh, That Mayor Martin J. Walsh!

An op-ed in the Boston Globe, Mar. 14, 2017, headlined, ” GOP health care bill would hurt Mass. middle class”, is by Martin J. Walsh and Kate Walsh. They are identified at the end of the piece: “Martin J. Walsh is the mayor of Boston. Kate Walsh is the president and CEO of Boston Medical Center.”

One might wonder how many Globe readers don’t know that Martin J. Walsh is the mayor of Boston? Well, maybe the op-ed will be read by Washington movers and shakers, some of whom may be so ill-informed that they don’t know who is mayor of Boston. Of course, most Bostonians, including the Globe, call him “Marty Walsh.” A quick search of the Globe found him identified as “Mayor Martin J. Walsh” 4,380 times, and as “Mayor Marty Walsh” 1,970 times. Consistency is not a priority on the Globe copy desk, if the Globe still has a copy desk. Readers are expected to assume that Kate Walsh is not related to Mayor Walsh, otherwise she’d be so identified. Maybe.