A long-suffering Boston Globe reader e-mails:

Not to get all serious about such a lightweight story, but what I (as a longtime, long-suffering Boston Globe reader) love about this piece is that it’s a failed attempt to get Romney in race-oriented hot water, as a follow-up to the manufactured “Tar Baby” controversy from last week – in which Romney used the phrase accurately and got spanked because others use it inaccurately. You can tell that reporter Frank Phillips’ effort was extremely weak this time around because he couldn’t even get anybody from the civil rights biz to criticize Romney for the “Northern Aggression” crack. MSM standard operating procedure is to call up the usual suspects until somebody says, “That’s awful! He must apologize immediately!” That way, the headline can read, “Civil rights leaders assail Romney over remark.”