Musings
The alignment of refinement in Boston
By Garrison Keillor
Published July 13, 2026
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One beautiful aspect of the digital age is its advancement of democracy.
Back in the newsprint age, you had William Safire, Maureen Dowd, George Will, Russell Baker, Molly Ivins, and if you wanted to tell them how dense and dim-witted they were, you had to put pen to paper and address the envelope and put a stamp on it and drop it in a mailbox and weeks later it might appear in Letters To The Editor, which nobody read anyway.
Now the big shots speak and the peasants get to post comments immediately and often the comments are the best part.
Check out an interview Chad Smith the CEO of the Boston Symphony gave WGBH not long ago after he got in hot water for dismissing the popular conductor Andris Nelsons because he was not in "alignment" with the BSO's need "to serve our communities more expansively and inclusively" in deciding "whose voices get to be heard, whose stories get to be told."
The BSO, he said, was at a "pivotal moment" and needed "broad alignment" to "address the issues" and Maestro Nelsons was not in alignment.
In his defense, I must say that it can't be easy to have the name Chad Smith. The man is about three syllables short of a full deck.
"Chad Smith" is a name for a third-grade teacher or a necktie salesman, not the CEO of the BSO pulling down a seven-figure salary.
The video shows the man looking stunned, face blank, speaking gently as if explaining to Uncle Bud why he is going into Memory Care, his eyes wandering as he searches for next phrase, and he keeps coming back to the word "alignment" repeatedly, and the WGBH interviewer is very polite, of course, but watching this performance as he kept aligning his alignment, it was a pleasure to read the comments ripping into the man.
"This pastiche of phrases like ‘systemic issues,' ‘serve Boston expansively and inclusively,' ‘whose voices,' ‘whose stories' is just refrigerator poetry."
"So many words saying so very little."
"Boston loves their musicians. No one goes to the symphony to see administration talk about their strategic plans."
"Is anyone convinced by this crap?"
"Get this guy out of here."
"His condescending tone and his highly curated ‘CEO speak' make him difficult to listen to. He acted secretly with the head of the board, gave no notice to the orchestra, and is now on a PR tour to save his job."
"This is what happens when we let glorified hedge fund managers take creative control of our cultural institutions. This dude doesn't care at all about the community, just his 7-figure paycheck. The artistic decisions should be made by the musicians and the conductor, not the board or any other paper pushers."
"A need for alignment? Why does this guy use the language of DEI and corporate layoffs to discuss the crown jewel of Boston's arts? This is a shortsighted executive who knows nothing about the sacred relationship that Boston has curated over decades, between orchestra, conductor and audience, rooted in deep mutual admiration, which Andres brought back into a golden age they have not had since Seiji Ozawa."
"Whose voices are heard, whose stories are told??? This is Woke Virtue Signalling."
"Get the boots out, it's rising rapidly."
"This is nothing but noise."
"This sounds like running backwards to me."
This is some excellent heckling that probably isn't heard in America's boardrooms, and it gives you faith in the wit and creative sarcasm of the American people.
Great phrases like "refrigerator poetry" and "woke virtue signalling" and the classic cry GET THIS GUY OUT OF HERE that was heard in the time of George III and James Buchanan and now ever more loudly with the Current Occupant, even though he has single-handedly raised the level of American satire to an all-time high.
Poor Chad Smith. He was hired to run the BSO and he left off the O. Look up the video of the WGBH interview and see if you can't find sympathy in your heart for the anesthetized man who keeps trying to find alignment. I think alignment is fine so long as it's designed to be mindful of the bottom line and combines cohesiveness and continuity and is both structural and strategic and prioritizes synchronicity and synergy, but in order to find new voices telling new stories, we have to be all on the same page to finally move forward, and if you can't sign on, then sit on it and spin.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "Cheerfulness". Buy it at a 38% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.