Shots In The Dark

The Yankees have won six straight, but more meaningful, in a way, was the fact that Jason Giambi was one-for-four with a single last night.

Let me explain.

Giambi is the first baseman the Yankees signed as a free agent for a whopping amount of money—something like $120 million over eight years. He was, at the time, a slugger who hit for average and power. I liked the fact that he had a great eye; Giambi had the best sense of the strike zone of any Yankee since Don Mattingly, and he really made pitchers work. That seemed in keeping with the great Yankee teams of the late '90s.

Then it all fell apart. Giambi missed almost all of last season with mysterious illnesses. Over the off-season, it was revealed that he'd admitted steroid use to a San Francisco grand jury.

Strangely, Giambi was vilified in the New York papers. I say strangely because, to look at Giambi, it shouldn't have been a surprise that he was juiced; the man's body had transformed from his mid- to his late-twenties. The Yankees must have been aware that steroids were a serious possibility.

But more important, Giambi was hardly the only player to take steroids. Hello, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Bobby Bonds? None of them have suffered anything near the level of abuse directed at Giambi—which makes me think that Giambi's real crime was admitting it. Now when Giambi plays in opposing stadiums, opposing fans chant, "Ster-roids! Ster-roids!" (Particularly in Fenway Park, which amuses me; as if no Red Sox player ever took steroids...)

The thing about Giambi is, by all accounts, he's a very decent guy. He's really tried to come back from this debacle with patience, a good attitude, and a lot of hard work. So far, it's not working. He's struggling at the plate, barely swinging, and striking out a ton whether he swings or not. He's clearly having mental problems, and it's painful to watch, in the same way that second baseman Chuck Knoblauch's throwing problems were.

Last night he was 0-for-3 until an 8th-inning single, and as he rounded first base, you could feel his relief through the television screen.

Jason Giambi is trying to make up for his mistakes. Everyone with a heart—and an awareness that in his place, we might have committed the same sin—should be hoping he succeeds.

Two days ago, Rush Limbaugh came to Larry Summers' defense. (I didn't post Limbaugh's words, as his site is subscriber-only.) But in discussing a Harvard play dramatizing Abu Ghraib, Limbaugh said something to the effect of, Larry Summers should play the part of one of the tortured prisoners, given what he's been through.

Today arch-conservative columnist Pat Buchanan weighs in on Summers' behalf with a column titled, "Summers Sinned Against Liberal Orthodoxy."

Here's the creepiest paragraph: "The reaction to Summers reveals something else: a fear in the heart of the establishment of where a debate the subject he pried open might lead. For is Summers is right, and gender does explain the difference in the test scores of women and men in math, what other differences might genetics explain?"

What exactly is Buchanan trying to suggest? What "other differences" does he have in mind?

One of the unfortunate aspects of the Summers' episode is how his conservative defenders have leveled scorn and derision directed against the Harvard faculty.

I continue to think that Summers would do well by standing up and defending them. (Bill Kirby should have, but never mind.)

Imagine these lines contained in, say, a Commencement mea culpa: "My own misstatements have prompted some who agreed with me to attack the faculty of this magnificent institution. Although part of me appreciates the support, I can not endorse these criticisms. Much as the faculty and I have disagreed on some issues—disagreements which will, I believe, prove constructive in the long run—make no mistake: this is the finest, most demanding, most accomplished collection of scholars in the world. The suggestion that they are dogmatic or politically correct or hysterical is unfair and untrue. Along with the students, the alumni, and all the other people who constitute this Harvard community, they are what makes Harvard the world's greatest university. And to anyone outside the university who may have the impression that I believe otherwise—I will not quietly stand by and allow that impression to go unchallenged."

Cue standing ovation.

President Summers, it's all yours. Run with it.

Some 6,000 men and women have sent a petition to Congress asking for its help increasing opportunities for women in science. The move was inspired in large part by the controversy over Larry Summers' remarks.

At first blush, this is a dumb idea. Congress may have some role enforcing Title IX protections. But should the federal government really be throwing money at this particular problem?

Universities need to defend their autonomy from the federal government, and asking for greater Congressional involvement in matters of gender is, sooner or later, asking for trouble.

Also, this petition does have a mau-mauing the flak-catchers aspect. One of the organizers is the president and founder of MentorNet, "an advocacy group that helps women enter science and engineering fields." You have to wonder if MentorNet and groups like it wouldn't expect a funding windfall if Congress did get involved.

Perhaps that's too cynical, but one does grow suspicious of such pleas for federal help.

A terrific piece by Stanley Fish in the Chronicle of Higher Education examines the differences and similarities in the Churchill/Summers brouhahas.

Key quote: "There is really not much to say about Summers except that he's a public-relations disaster, a walking time bomb likely to detonate at any moment, especially if his handlers let him out of their sight. One can say something about what issues the Summers brouhaha does not raise. It does not raise issues of free speech or academic freedom."

Fish's essay is well worth reading.

Harvard has dropped its plan to train Chinese government officials to prepare them for dealing with journalists at the 2008 summer Oympic games.

Apparently the alumni of the Nieman Fellows protested too much.

I'm not sure that Nieman director Bob Giles hasn't caved too soon. Yes, the training program was a bit of departure from the Nieman mission, which is basically to give journalists enough money to sit around and not do much for a year. (Thus ensuring that Harvard has many good and high-ranking friends in the media.)

But while it may seem odd for the Foundation to take on the challenge of training flacks for China, someone has to do it. And introducing Chinese officials to the traditions of American journalism can't be an entirely bad thing, right?

The real problem is that Harvard is hardly the place to teach transparency with the press. Its press people and those in Beijing have more in common than the Harvard folks would like to think.

The Nieman Foundation should train Harvard's press relations people first, then China's.

He's stepping down from teaching his famous class, Ec 10, and the Crimson says he's one of the top three candidates to take over the Fed when Alan Greenspan retires....

Feldstein is certainly qualified, his politics are conservative, and he has served as an informal adviser to President Bush.

Asked if he'd like the job, Feldstein issues a pretty weak non-denial denial: “I like teaching. I don’t see any reason to stop anytime in the foreseeable future."

The only possible downside: He's on the board of embattled AIG. But as long as he's not complicit in that company's troubles, I doubt that'd be an issue.

With help from a $100,000 grant from Larry Summers, the Harvard Foundation Minority Portraiture Project has unveiled paintings of "six minority honorees, including two women," as the Crimson puts it.

This is a small but symbolically important move. Harvard's campus really is filled with pictures of old white men—the faculty room has something like 40 of them, and about three pictures of women.

Given Harvard's history, that's inevitable. But it does send a signal, and it certainly doesn't reflect the composition of the university today—not, at least, the student body.

Summers made the right decision to fund the project. Now if he'd only hire some minorities to work for him.

I've noted before the curious similarities between Larry Summers and John Bolton: how they deal with subordinates, their attitudes towards the '60s.

Now the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has moved Bolton's nomination to the Senate floor without a recommendation.

Which is not quite the same as saying that they lack confidence in Bolton...but it's pretty darn close.

Is the reaction to Summers, Bolton, et al, a sign that the time is past when the bullying leadership style can be effective in even a semi-transparent organization?

Another question: Even if Bolton passes the Senate, how effective can he be when he so clearly lacks the support of much of the government?

Greg Gutfeld just flamed me on the Huffington Post.

Rather than starting a pissing match there, I'll say only this here:

1) David Mamet is a hero of mine. So what?

2) If this is the best the editor of Maxim UK can do, his magazine is in serious trouble.

A couple weeks ago, I voiced my opinion that Floyd Abrams' best days as a First Amendment advocate were behind him. All right, there may have been a couple ad hominem remarks thrown in, based on my own unpleasant experience with Mr. Abrams.

Now, somewhat more articulately, Jack Shafer on Slate makes a similar argument. While arguing on behalf of Time reporter Matt Cooper, Abrams "appeared green and confused to even the legal laity in the courtroom audience," Shafer says....

...and someone asked her something really gross?

So there was she, giving a talk at the LBJ Library at UT-Austin, and the q-and-a period rolled around—Ann had been casting aspersions on gay marriage—and this happened:

<<"You say that you believe in the sanctity of marriage," said Ajai Raj, an English sophomore. "How do you feel about marriages where the man does nothing but fuck his wife up the ass?">>

Mr. Raj explains himself here.

I know I should be outraged about this, but this remark is just so over the top, there's something wonderfully subversive about it, in a scatological, South Park-kind of way.

Besides, Raj's explanation shows more intelligence than one might at first credit him.

"Standing in line awaiting my turn," he writes, "I watched her send a moderate Republican, who had questioned the sheer incendiary magnitude of her rhetoric, walk away in tears when she tore him apart for daring to question her."

So then Raj asked his question.

"The crowd," Raj says, "fell silent."

I'll bet.

"Did I give a shit?" he continues. "No. If I had a message, it's that the whole thing was a joke—hell, our whole political scene today is a fucking joke."

Raj then exited, making some "masturbatory gestures" on the way.

Raj may be crude, but he's got a point. The Democrats are pathetic, the Republicans are run by people who think all the species of the world disembarked from a wooden boat, our soldiers are dying almost daily in a war that was based on a mistake—oops!—and the weird thing is, no one seems to care very much.

I can understand Mr. Raj's frustration.

The funny/sad thing is, as Raj was leaving, campus police slammed him against a door, locked him in handcuffs, and dragged him off.

"I tried to ask them what for," Raj says. "Last time I checked, saying 'fuck her in the ass' at a college isn't a crime."

You know, for a closer, you just can't top that....

I cross-post.

Wrote a couple things for the Huffington Post this morning, which you should be able to find here.

That site is getting better, but a lot of it is pompous, boring, and depressing. Come on, guys, lighten up! It's a blog, not your platform to save the world.

Also, you can tell those folks are novice posters; they don't really seem to understand the concept of the hyper-link. Actually, this deficit strikes me as telling symbolism. The point of a hyper-link is to reference some other authority, something that, Lilliputian-like, you are referencing, and occasionally trying to topple.

Problem is, a lot of the celebrities aren't used to deferring to anyone else. Why would they hyper-link—i.e., cite a higher authority—when they're used to everyone else deferring to them?

Also, I'm not quite sure who Greg Gutfeld is, but Greg—when your mother told you that you're funny, she was only being nice.

Apparently I'm not the only one thinking that the United Airlines default has huge implications for Social Security reform. Here's Norm Ornstein writing on the Huffington Post: "The United default on its pensions has huge implications for Social Security reform."

Ornstein goes on to argue, "Every American with a corporate pension plan will wonder if his or her plan is next on the chopping block. The backup pension plan safety net-- the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation-- will soon teeter under the weight of its assumption of these pension obligations. The whole issue of retirement security will explode-- and Social Security will only be a piece of shrapnel in the explosion."

This has the potential to be an enormous issue in the next presidential campaign. And if George Bush didn't realize it when he picked up the paper this morning—oh, wait, the president doesn't read the paper—Social Security privatization is DOA.

It's too bad, in a way; Bush deserves credit for raising such a politically volatile issue, and a serious discussion of how to fix Social Security would be a good thing.

Maybe there's a silver lining; maybe with privatization off the table—always a goal more related to ideology than sound economics—Washington can have an honest discussion of how to shore up Social Security.

So sue me, I'm an optimist....

The Columbia faculty senate has voted against a proposal to bring ROTC back to campus.

Good for Columbia.

It may be unpopular now, with the war in Iraq and military recruiting failing to make its quotas, to say that it's wrong for the military to discriminate against gays. But it is wrong, and universities, part of whose mission is to promote enlightenment, should stand up and say so.

Incidentally, Columbia president Lee Bollinger—the runner-up to Larry Summers in Harvard's presidential race—voted against ROTC, despite the possibility of angering the Bush administration. Good for Bollinger.

Larry Summers has stopped appearing at meetings of the General Education committee of the curricular review at Harvard.

Writing in the Crimson, William Marra suggests that this withdrawal is a consequence of the no-confidence vote; he calls it "the first significant transfer of power" from Summers to the faculty since that vote was taken.

I'm not so sure. Given the chaotic state of the review, doesn't this move have a jumping-off-a-sinking-ship quality?

Summers needs to give a show of ceding some power back to the faculty. But this move also distances him from an academic effort that, under his leadership, has gone badly wrong. Now, if it craters further, he can simply blame the faculty. "See what happens when I'm not around?" he can say, in so many words.

For the faculty, this may be a classic case of being careful what you wish for. They wanted Summers gone from the review; now he is. The pressure is on them to salvage what Summers has so far botched, or they will lose the spin game.

The United Airlines situation is worse than I'd realized; the airline has successfully petitioned a federal judge to be relieved of its pension obligations for the next several years. They'll be taken over by the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

This is a disaster for workers, some of whom will see their pensions drop by as much as fifty percent. It's also an alarming precedent. Expect the other troubled airlines to follow in United's path. And will General Motors, still churning out those environmental-nightmare SUVs that no one wants anymore, and burdened with the largest pension obligations of any American corporation, soon be driving down the same road?

Here's one inevitable consequence: There is no way that Americans are going to buy into the privatization of Social Security when their private pensions are, simply, vanishing.

Alex Beam reports in the Globe (scroll to the bottom of his column) that David McClintick may be working on a book about the Harvard-HIID scandal. That would be interesting...although I think that at this point, a book on the Harvard-AIDS scandal would be even better.

Pop quiz: What university president do these two scandals have in common?

Which is—honestly—not to imply that Larry Summers is inherently to blame. Just to point out that this man has got to be the most powerful magnet for controversy in the world of higher education....

Arianna's blog has now been live for two days, and I have to say, it's downright weird. Totally male-dominated, for one thing. And possibly not coincidentally, there's an awful lot of self-importance flying around. Joe Scarborough on "Sudan Suffering in Silence"? Or congressman John Conyers on "Creating Justifications to Go to War"? No thanks. Rob Reiner on "Where Have You Gone, Woodward and Berstein"? I'd sooner repeatedly jab myself in the throat with a ballpoint pen.

Here's something I wonder: How many of these blog entries are actually ghost-written? I have a hunch that Arianna might have inadvertently pioneered a web breakthrough: the ghost-blogger. Because I seriously doubt that Senator Jon Corzine, et al, are logging on to the web and writing a little entry for the Huffington Post....

Well, let's hope that these guys lighten up a little and stop taking themselves so seriously. Because right now, they are bloviating like mad, with no sign of slowing down.

"Chinese Officials to Get Press-Relations Training" at Harvard, according to this story in the New York Times.

That's kind of like getting lessons in diplomacy from John Bolton.

Since dealing with Harvard's press people is pretty much like dealing with a Communist state, the Chinese might as well stay home....

Apologies for the silence so far today. Due to some inexplicable problem with Verizon, my phone went dead this morning, and took my DSL line along with it...
Eight hours without land line, Internet access, and e-mail: serious withdrawal.

"Pope Has Gained Insight To Address Abuse, Aides Say"
—New York Times, April 23, 2005

"Vatican Is Said to Force Jesuit Off Magazine"
—New York Times, May 7, 2005

Well, that didn't take long. Apparently the new pope isn't so enamored of insight after all....

Last week's New York Observer contained its annual write-up of the White House Correspondents Dinners after-party, thrown by Bloomberg media (not the mayor) across the street from the Washington Hilton.

Reporter Rebecca Dana encountered Harvard president Larry Summers late in the evening. Her portrayal of that encounter is so remarkable, I'm just going to quote the relevant paragraph here:

<<In the middle of the dance floor, embattled Harvard president Lawrence Summers stood by himself. Asked about his display of party stamina, Mr. Summers declared, "I’m a hip guy." He had endured financial troubles and family conundrums, he noted—"I’ve been through some real shit in my life"—and he could survive a bunch of "whiny" professors.>>

I was stunned to read this description, which seemed so improbable—would Summers really refer to the faculty as "whiny"?—that I called Dana to confirm the quotes. She did confirm them, and I believe her. She sounded like an entirely careful, cautious and thorough reporter.

I'm amazed that Summers could make a remark this impolitic after just having endured the worst professional crisis of his life for making impolitic remarks.

On second thought, I'm not really so amazed. This is probably how Summers honestly feels about the faculty (when he's not making apologies that he apparently doesn't believe). "Whiny" connotates obnoxious, immature, spoiled, juvenile, and un-serious. And Summers' leadership style would reinforce the idea that that's what he thinks of the Harvard professoriat—or at least those who voted that they lack confidence in him.

I tried to contact Summers' spokesman, John Longbrake, to see if he would confirm, deny or otherwise comment upon these remarks. But there is no listing in the Harvard directory or on the Harvard website for Longbrake. (Does he work at Harvard?)

Mr. Longbrake, if you're reading this...Click the "contact" button on the webpage to e-mail me. I'd be glad to run any response.

"In my cover story two weeks ago...."

—From the same article

" If you agree with John Dewey (and Jürgen Habermas) that democracy depends on a series of institutional arrangements that enable the public to form its own values and judgments on a variety of questions--and I do...."

—The lede from Eric Alterman's column in this week's Nation.

Apparently I'm not the only person to have a miserable experience flying United. Andrew Sullivan describes his United flight from Washington to LA as "one of the worst I can remember." He adds, "No wonder they're going bankrupt."

I e-mailed my post on United (see below) to the company via its website. Can't wait to see if they respond.

Meantime, here's another sign of a company which treats its customers badly. To get to the link on the United website where you can e-mail customer service requires, I think, six clicks. By which point, most people who are less anal than I will have given up....

They do now, thanks to a new law passed by Republicans in Congress which allows the slaughter of wild mustangs on public lands. Now the Bureau of Land Management has sold 1,000 horses into private hands and has 950 more on the verge of being sold. Some of them are being killed for their meat....

I've been working on a story about Republicans and the environment for a new environmental lifestyle magazine called Plenty, and I have to say, the picture of what the GOP is doing to the environment is absolutely horrific. And I'm no ideologue on this issue....

Tina Brown is leaving her TV show to work on a Princess Di book, and everyone's being all snarky about it. I think that's a mistake. Yes, Tina wasn't the most natural on-air host. (To my mind, that's to her credit.) And yes, sometimes the show suffered from a certain incestuous quality. Enough Harvey Weinstein....

But on the other hand, Topic A was always smart, and the show featured guests talking about subjects you couldn't see anywhere else on television. And I'm not just saying that because Brown had me on talking about Harvard Rules. Tina Brown was interested in serious subjects and did her best to make them palatable to a widespread audience. That she failed says more about the culture than about her.

There's an element of today's media culture which is much more interested in tearing down people who take a chance than in supporting them. Like people in any other industry, media practitioners tear down their peers as a way of building themselves up—only when they do it, it's public and, some of the time, pretends to be objective.

To my mind, this is one of the least attractive qualities of the American media—and particularly its Manhattan-based epicenter.

Harvard financial whiz David Scudder is leaving the Harvard Management Company to help set up a private investment firm.

Scudder joined HMC to work with now-departed Jack Meyer, the person who, probably more than any other, made Harvard the financial powerhouse it is.

When he left a few months back, Meyer put out that he wanted to work somewhere there wasn't quite so much press attention. But there were lots of rumors that this wasn't the real reason....

There's a very important story shaping up here. Globe? Crimson? Anyone?

I keep hearing bits and pieces about how much decisions at Harvard are now being driven by anxiety over fundraising, and more specifically, what I'll call the "Summers Effect"—which is to say, the extent to which Larry Summers' troubles will hurt Harvard's fundraising.

Back when I was finishing Harvard Rules, there were whispers that Harvard was on the verge of announcing its latest capital campaign, which several people mentioned might be in the $10 billion range.

You don't hear that figure anymore, and you only hear talk of the campaign being in the "quiet phase"—early fundraising so that when you announce the campaign, you can create the appearance of momentum by stating that you've already raised x dollars.

This campaign's quiet phase has been going on for a while now, and I suspect that because of the Summers Effect, it will last a while longer yet.

Here's something else I hear: That Summers is determined to increase the number of truly large gifts Harvard raises—sums in the eight- and nine-figure range. He wants to focus on the moguls. Meanwhile, there's talk of downsizing at the fundraising offices, which means that there'll inevitably be less emphasis on five-, six-, and even seven-figure donors.

Two points.

With his connections to the worlds of business and finance, Summers is well-positioned to solicit those massive donations.

But this strategy also seems designed to minimize his own fundraising weaknesses—arrogance, lack of charm, poor social skills—as well as the amount of time he has to spend raising money.

But here's the rub: Harvard's fundraising operation has always been a well-oiled machine. In Neil Rudenstine's time, it raised more money in a shorter period than any university had ever raised.

You couldn't say it was broken. Does it really need to be fixed? Or is it being corrupted to cover up the deficiencies of the university's president?

Moreover, part of the purpose of fundraising is to engage alumni in the work of the university. If Harvard is now going to focus on a much smaller fundraising base, what will the long-term implications be for alumni participation, financial and otherwise? And how will that change the nature and character of the university?

I feel like I'm cheating on myself. Today marks the debut of the Huffington Post, where I'll be blogging as well. You can find my first entry—about what John Bolton, Larry Summers, George W. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI have in common—here. Sigh—I didn't make the cut and get featured on the front page with Mike Nichols and David Mamet.

I like Arianna Huffington and I'm flattered to be asked to contribute, but I do wonder if this thing is going to work. A lot of the folks she's asked to blog are, um, kinda old. Will they really do it? And will the people who follow Mike Nichols really log on to read them? I'm just not sure that people past a certain point in their reading habits are going to get the whole blogosphere thing.

(And what a terrible word blogosphere is—can't we do better? "Blogorama?" So many Internet words catch on because they sound mellifluous—"Google," for example, and now "Grokker." Blogosphere sounds like a violent physical reaction to eating something past its prime.)

Anyway, as a certain university president likes to say, I hope I'm proved wrong and the Huffington Post is a huge hit. I've known Arianna a little bit for about a decade now, and I like her very much. She's never afraid to try something new, or make herself vulnerable (often the same thing). And she's living an interesting life....