William Michael "Billy" Bulger (born February 2, 1934) is a retired American Democratic Party politician, lawyer, and educator from South Boston, Massachusetts, whose eighteen year tenure as President of the Massachusetts Senate is the longest in history, and who was also president of the University of Massachusetts. He was forced to resign from the latter post after he refused to testify in a 2003 Congressional hearing about communications he had had with his then-fugitive brother, James "Whitey" Bulger, Jr., a Boston crime boss.
The TV series Brotherhood (2006) was inspired by the relationship of William "Billy" Bulger and his brother, James "Whitey" Bulger, Jr., a notorious criminal who has been on the F.B.I.'s Most Wanted List for 10 years.
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Bulger's cultivated image as a quaint, old-fashioned Irish pol in the manner of former Boston Mayor James M. Curley (who appeared fictionalized in 'John Ford's movie of Edwin O'Connor's 1956 novel The Last Hurrah (1958)) was celebrated in a 1992 profile by Morley Safer of CBS's 60 Minutes (1968).