{"id":1507,"date":"2008-08-04T18:07:21","date_gmt":"2008-08-04T22:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/MondoLizzie\/?p=1507"},"modified":"2008-08-04T18:07:21","modified_gmt":"2008-08-04T22:07:21","slug":"lizzie-is-what-we-sell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/lizzie-is-what-we-sell\/","title":{"rendered":"“Lizzie is what we sell”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excellent opinion article appeared today in the Fall River Herald<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Dion: If anyone profits from murder, it should be Fall River<\/p>\n

By Marc Munroe Dion<\/p>\n

A bad joke.<\/p>\n

How bad are things in Fall River?<\/p>\n

Lizzie Borden moved away and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dead!<\/p>\n

Alright, so Lizzie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still here, the only place she ever was and the only place she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll ever be. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got the houses, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got the history.<\/p>\n

Yeah, and it looks like some guy in Salem has the brains.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been begging Fall River to make a buck off the Bordens for nearly 15 years.<\/p>\n

Now, some guy in Salem, some guy with the initiative Fall River never had, is moving forward with a Lizzie Borden museum. The guy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 80 miles from here and HE knows how to make a buck off Lizzie. <\/p>\n

Which Fall River should have done maybe 50 years ago. In fact, Fall River should have a van, a rolling museum packed with real Lizzie artifacts. That van should hit every summerfest and music festival on the East Coast. <\/p>\n

The Lizzie Borden house downtown and Maplecroft in the city\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s North End are Lizzie Borden\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two residences. It is mystifying why both of them aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t owned by some kind of city trust, so they can be linked and marketed.<\/p>\n

All props to plans for downtown revitalization here in The Rive but, if all goes according to plan, our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153restaurant row\u00e2\u20ac\u009d will be a small scale imitation of Providence.<\/p>\n

Anything we do with Lizzie, on the other hand, cannot be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153imitation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It happened here. Lizzie Borden was accused of hatcheting both parents to death right up there near the temporary bus station, not too far from a laundromat and within walking distance of a Catholic church and a Dunkin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Donuts.<\/p>\n

And yet, Fall River does nothing. No annual \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hatchet Fest,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d no \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lizzie Borden Horror Movie Festival,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d no bright red footprints painted on the sidewalks to outline \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Lizzie Trail,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d not one, concerted effort to push the one, nationally known thing that happened in Fall River, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Instead we push our waterfront. We live on the East Coast. EVERY town has a waterfront. We pitch the Battleship, but how many people schedule an entire vacation around a war memorial? <\/p>\n

Restaurants? Newport is 15 minutes away. Providence is 15 minutes away. Fall River is supposed to compete with those towns for the restaurant crown? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like asking Durfee to play the Patriots.<\/p>\n

Our waterfront? Yeah, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nice but, if you were planning to spend your vacation on a waterfront in this area, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you think you might consider Newport or the Vineyard first?
\nWhy promote Lizzie?<\/p>\n

Does New York have Lizzie?<\/p>\n

No. Providence? No. Boston? No. Newport? No.<\/p>\n

New York has the Broadway stage, which the city promotes. Providence has a significant Italian-American culture, which the city promotes. Boston has Revolutionary War history, which the city promotes. Newport has mansions, which the city promotes.<\/p>\n

Fall River has Lizzie, which the city ignores.<\/p>\n

So here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we do.<\/p>\n

Get a hold of some money, grant money, whatever. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use that money to form a Lizzie Borden Tourism Committee. <\/p>\n

Take that money to New York City and hire a big, crude, culturally irresponsible advertising agency.<\/p>\n

Tell that agency to get Miley Cyrus to dress up as Lizzie Borden in a series of television commercials. Make sure the Lizzie in the commercial is wearing a short skirt. The real Lizzie Borden was as hot as winter in a Westport wood lot, but who cares?<\/p>\n

Tell them to come up with a slogan, preferably something tasteless and disrespectful.<\/p>\n

What\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that gonna cost? A few hundred grand? The city and various community-minded organizations have probably spent that much in the last 15 years on the Bounty, grant-financed tourism directors and other guaranteed-not-to-work stuff.<\/p>\n

Lizzie Borden is what we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got.<\/p>\n

Lizzie Borden is what we sell.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excellent opinion article appeared today in the Fall River Herald. Dion: If anyone profits from murder, it should be Fall River By Marc Munroe Dion A bad joke. How bad are things in Fall River? Lizzie Borden moved away and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dead! Alright, so Lizzie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still here, the only place she ever was and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,13,7,10,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-6-degrees-of-separation","category-book-and-media-reviews","category-borden-buzz","category-fall-river-news","category-lizzie-4-sale"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lizzieandrewborden.com\/mondolizzie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}