The Voice of Logan competition, organized by the authority that runs Boston Logan International Airport, attracted nearly 6,000 applicants hoping to become the voice greeting travelers over its loudspeakers. Eight finalists were selected for the contest and the winner is scheduled to be announced later this week. The premise of the shenanigans is charmingly provincial.
Somewhere in Massachusetts lives a person whose vowels can make a weary traveler feel like they have arrived in Boston before they've even reached baggage claim—a Bostonian par excellence. But there is something more interesting going on here than a civic celebration of linguistic vandalism. In America's culture wars, identity has become a means of drawing battle lines.
Race, religion, sexuality, the contents of a school library, even the question of how hot Sydney Sweeney is and what, precisely, makes her so, can become occasions for deciding whose values should prevail and whose presence is an affront. Belonging is treated as a scarce commodity, as if admitting one more person to the club necessarily means showing someone else the door. Boston's contest turns this peculiar, oh-so-American arithmetic on its head.
It is, admittedly, a competition, with winners and losers, authentic accents and questionable impersonations. Yet the rivalry takes place within a larger affection—contestants compete to embody something their fellow Bostonians can recognize and take pride in, however differently they might look, worship, vote or pronounce the word chowder. The distinction is subtle, but important and refreshing in our seemingly permanent state of cultural warfare.
One kind of identity politics, the culture wars we keep dissecting, asks who must be kept out, while the other gives people something to belong to together. The delightful (finally, a bit of joy) irony is that Boston has managed to make a contest over who sounds most like an insider feel like a celebration of the whole city, even for those who couldn't sound less like one. Massport CEO Rich Davey described the ambition as finding one of the state's many "diverse, distinct, and deeply proud voices." One finalist, Roxbury resident Samantha Edwards, told GBH that Bostonians are "loving, we're diverse, and I represent all of that." There is the curious magic of the whole thing.
A shared identity can accommodate enormous differences among the people who claim it. Boston contains Democrats and Republicans, Catholics and atheists. Immigrants and families who have been there for generations.
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