My interest here is piqued by how he has managed to make himself the story. Given the original thrust that he wrote about how he cares about the story and not any team (and tried to imply some kind of nobility and superiority to this), but then the story becomes him being the story... I mean, that's some seriously impressive pomo Andy Kaufman art shit.
There are two things that Dan Shaughnessy is legitimately good at:
1. Writing
2. Making himself part of the story
The guy should teach a master's class on subject number two, because he is really, really good at it. Since he started his column back in the 80s/90s, it has always been about him. Always. He can not write an opinion piece without inserting himself into the topic. And I know that sounds weird and maybe even a bit obvious, but CHB has a unique ability to be dragged into a situation. Bob Ryan has been at the Globe since the late 60s and I can only think of one situation where he was at the center of a media storm (the dust-up over Jason Kidd's wife a few years back). Michael Holley, Gerry Callahan, Steve Buckley (though he tried very hard to be Shank Lite, it just never went anywhere), Leigh Montville, Jackie MacMullen, Chris Gasper haven't been the eye of any hurricanes.
John Tomase once was (because he's a moron and ran with really bad info), Will McDonough used to get into these things all the time but people loved it because he was "Southie TOUGH", Borges does it but he's so marginalized now, no one cares. Felger and Massarotti couldn''t do it in print because they weren't as talented writers as Shank.
The only person who could even approach Shaughnessy is Peter Gammons, but he's a part of the story for the opposite reason. People genuinely love and respect that guy. If you want to do a Simmonsesque pop culture metaphor: Shaughnessy is Vader and Gammons is Obi-Wan. I think Shaughnessy and Gammons went to the same school or grew up in the same home town or something to that effect, they both started at the Globe, made their bones off the Red Sox, etc.
Whatever. I think that the bottom line is this Dan Shaughnessy isn't some sort of Svengali who has all these deep-seeded psychological sports issues that a bunch of us are playing arm chair psychologist about. He's a dude that can write well and knows how to work the system, it's really that simple. It's so obvious, he writes what he wrote on Thursday and on Friday he follows up with (in Kliq's words) "dismissed the two biggest Boston sports victories of the last six months". That's some Hulk Hogan/NWO, Ric Flair/Four Horseman virtuoso wrestling work right there.
You almost have to admire it.