And on a Personal Note

I know Matt Cooper (pictured above, along with Judith Miller of the New York Times) a little bit, and he's one of the nicest guys you would ever want to meet. In a business with a lot of sharks, he's just a pleasure—friendly, supportive, warm, generous. And funny, too: Matt has a sideline doing stand-up comedy. (Although somehow I suspect it's been a while since he took the stage.)

But every time I see Matt now, he looks somber and stressed—not at all as I remember him. For his sake, I'm glad that this silly judicial ordeal is ending soon. I hope he's retained his ability to laugh at the ridiculous.  ¶ 4:47 PM 1 comments   

  Setting the Record Straight A few days ago, after I wrote that little item on John Kennedy and Princess Diana below, I got an e-mail from a British journalist named Joanna Walters, a New York-based correspondent for the Daily Express. Though she hadn't seen the blog, she wanted to interview me regarding the alleged tryst between John and Princess Diana.

I didn't want to talk to her, for a bunch of reasons. I'm not the appropriate person to give newspaper interviews on the subject, if anyone fits that description. Second, I have no desire to become known as the go-to guy for any interview on John Kennedy; I'm happy to speak about John and George, but otherwise, no. And third, I don't trust British journalists. If you folks think that American journalists have their ethical issues...

I told Walters that I wouldn't give an interview, but I had written something relevant on my blog. In fact, if you look down about an inch, you'll see exactly how I felt.

Now I've seen the story, and I deeply regret telling her even that. Because Walters took what was written here and used it as if I had given her an interview. Her story has several quotes crafted to make it look as if she and I spoke about this subject. We did not. Period. Not off the record, not on background, nothing.

Though the quotes are innocuous, I'm livid about this sleazy piece of journalism. In fact, I feel kind of like Jessica Simpson, about half an inch down.  ¶ 11:08 AM 0 comments   

  Your Moment of Zen   ¶ 10:18 AM 0 comments   

  Someone's Going to Get Busted So Time has announced that it will turn over reporter Matthew Cooper's notes to keep him from being sent to jail in the Valerie Plame matter.

I agree that this is a horrific precedent which will have the effect of discouraging people from talking to reporters; no longer can reporters assure them that their identity will be protected.

On the upside, I can't wait to find out which White House figure was doing the dirty-dishing....

Was it Scooter Libby? Karl Rove? Guesses, anyone? And what will President Bush do when the identity of someone who's endangering the security of a CIA agent is exposed?

I love it when chickens come home to roost....  ¶ 10:10 AM 0 comments   

  Tucker Carlson's Awkward Situation Alessandra Stanley doesn't think much of Tucker Carlson's new chat show on MSNBC, "The Situation with Tucker Carlson."

She says it's shallow, superficial, sarcastic, and has the effect of making Carlson seem dumber than he is. (In fact, he's not dumb at all.)

"And he is surprisingly churlish," Stanley writes. "He interviewed Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain, on whether military women should be allowed to work in combat zones and slapped down her reasoned arguments with schoolyard sarcasm, dismissing her position as, 'Mutilation is a woman's right.'"

Two points about this.

I barely know Carlson, but I'm not at all surprised by the churlish part, judging from my one real encounter with him. It was a few years ago, when I was the exec editor at George. Carlson had written a piece for us, I don't remember what about, but it was fine. (My predecessor had assigned it.) But for some reason, the subject of George came up on Crossfire, and Carlson just trashed the magazine, saying how terrible it was.

A couple days later, I picked up the phone and called him. I said something like, Tucker, why'd you say such harsh things about the magazine? You seemed happy enough to cash our check.

I mentioned the specifics of what he'd said.

Carlson claimed that he hadn't said that.

I mentioned that I had the transcript of the show in front of me.

He hemmed and hawed and backpedaled like mad, and said something about how sometimes on TV you say things you don't mean.

I'm sure this is true. I've been on TV enough to know the pressure you feel to say things that are more pointed, more extreme, and less nuanced than your real beliefs. Still, I found the whole episode pretty unimpressive.

Here's the second point: Carlson's style of interrogation—the smarminess, the easy put-down, the sneer, the sarcasm, the glibness, the eye-rolling—has become typical of the vernacular of American conservatives in, say, the last ten years. (If you need any evidence, just look at some of the posters on this site.) Like that line, "mutilation is a woman's right"—you just want to groan and say, Tucker, why so immature? The woman's trying to make a point.

Is it just possible that this style is wearing out its welcome?

It's never been particularly enjoyable, of course. Listening to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity is like eating at McDonald's; it can taste good in the act, but afterward, you think, Why did I just do that? Yuch.

But more important, it seems particularly ill-suited to a time of great seriousness in American history. It's more about scoring cheap debating points than about finding common ground or resolving problems, and it's certainly not about actually listening to people who hold differing opinions.

During the Clinton administration, that approach led to transforming a stupid sexual piccadilloe into a constitutional crisis.

Now there's a war on—a war started by conservatives—and the conservative debating style just seems defensive, anxious, and increasingly irrelevant.  ¶ 8:33 AM 0 comments   

  Santorum: Losing It So Rick Santorum is now blaming priest pedophilia on the fact that many priests...live in Boston. No, for real. You think I'm making this up; you think that surely a United States senator could not be such a horse's ass; but you can't make this stuff up.

In an article on the website Catholic Online, Santorum writes about why the priest-child abuse scandal is actually a good thing: "I see in this fall an opportunity for ecclesial rebirth and a new evangelization of America," he proclaims.

But before he can say why, Santorum has to limit the damage from the scandal. He does so by—what else—blaming liberals.

He writes: "It is startling that those in the media and academia appear most disturbed by this aberrant behavior, since they have zealously promoted moral relativism by sanctioning "private" moral matters such as alternative lifestyles. Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

When the culture is sick, every element of it becomes infected.

Republicans are supposed to be the party of individual responsibility, right? Apparently not. Priests who molest children are just the victim of their "sick" cultural environment. They must be watching too much MTV. The point is, it's not their fault.

And Boston? Has Rick Santorum ever even been to Boston? If he had, he'd know that it's socially a profoundly conservative city. Think Irish Catholic, senator. Think Italian and Catholic. Think...well. just think Catholic. I mean, if the culture of Boston is sick, whose fault is that exactly?

(All right, there are some African-Americans—quite religious in Boston—and high WASPs thrown in. Not exactly cultural radicals.)

You know, senator, Philadelphia's a pretty liberal city too. Hasn't had a Republican mayor since Reconstruction, probably. Quite a few universities.

Maybe the one thing that saves Philadelphia from having as many priest child molesters as Boston is...hmmmm....because there aren't as many priests?  ¶ 9:41 AM 0 comments   

  Go Away, Condi Now that Condoleeza Rice has come to New York to say what a great place this would be to host the 2012 Olympics, my enthusiasm for New York doing so has just diminished.

Certainly the Olympics would do many fine things for this city. But there's no place in New York for the kind of jingoistic, America uber alles attitude of Rice and her compatriots in the Bush administration. The Republicans already came here for their political convention. We were good hosts, I think and hope, but let's face it: New York City and the Republican party don't have much in common. We're tolerant. They're not. We're diverse. They're not. We live comfortably alongside people from other nations. They want to conquer other nations. Especially the ones they know nothing about.

Okay, I'm being hyperbolic. But people on both sides of this line can concede that New York was a very odd place to host the GOP convention.

In fact, the only reason the convention was held here to was to turn Ground Zero and memories of 9/11 into a political advertisement.

That's exactly what the Republicans would want to do with the Olympics, and that's why Condoleeza Rice came here.

The people of this city—people from all over the world—are a great reason to have the Olympics in New York. Would the Bush administration really understand anything about that?  ¶ 3:20 PM 6 comments   

  Defending Hillary I've been so busy that I haven't really had time to keep up with the brouhaha over Ed Klein's new book about Hillary, which I'm not going to link to as I wouldn't want anyone to actually buy it. But reading up on the controversy, I am amazed that anyone published this book. It sounds vile.

David Brock's organization, Media Matters for America, has compiled a list of the mistakes and inaccuracies in the book that is remarkably damning.

(Brock, by the way, is the author of a slightly dull but surprisingly balanced—surprising given Brock's politics at the time—biography of Hillary, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham.)

Here's one line of Klein's that jumped out at me:

"[Hillary] said she was passionately in love with her husband, but many of her closest friends and aides were lesbians."

I mean, where to begin?

Here's another interesting story, by journo Michael Tomasky, about how Klein lifted a quote from a book Tomasky wrote and changed it to make it more sensational.

The Media Matters chart of inaccuracies goes on so long it's almost overwhelming. Can anything about this book be trusted?

It's possible that Ed Klein has done what I wouldn't have thought possible: take Swift Boat sleaze one step further; to take it so far, in fact, that he's delegitimized it (not that it was every particularly legitimate).

But Klein's book does point up a larger issue: publishers don't fact-check. They pay libel lawyers to go over the material for potentially defamatory statements, but otherwise, they don't much care if a book is accurate. Accuracy, it turns out, usually doesn't have enough of an impact on sales to justify the expense of paying fact-checkers.

Writers who care about accuracy have to hire their own fact-checkers, which is an expensive proposition when you're reviewing an entire book. But it's worthwhile. I hired fact-checkers for both my books, at a cost of a few thousand dollars each time. A few minor mistakes crept by nonetheless; they always do. But no one challenged the fundamental accuracy of either work, which, given how controversial they both were, is something I'm proud of.

Did Ed Klein factcheck The Truth About Hillary? It's hard to believe he did. It's like that old journalism saying: some stories are too good to check. Or, in this case, too bad.  ¶ 7:52 AM 1 comments   

  A Dozen Years?

So Donald Rumsfeld thinks that the Iraq insurgency could last for twelve years, despite the fact that it lacks "a Mao or a Ho Chi Minh."

And yet, in the very same interview, he defends Dick Cheney's assertion that the insurgency is in its last throes. "If you look at the context of [Cheney's] remarks," Rumsfeld said yesterday on Fox, "last throes could be a violent last throe, just as well as a placid or calm last throe. Look it up in the dictionary."

All right. Here's how my dictionary defines "throe":

1 A severe pang or spasm of pain, as in childbirth. (See Synonyms at pain.)
2 throes A condition of agonizing struggle or trouble: a country in the throes of economic collapse.

Not much about placidity or calm in those definitions, is there? Just a lot of nasty stuff about pain and agony, spasms and struggles.

It's increasingly obvious that the macho men in the Bush administration, who so like to project the image of overwhelming competence, simply have no idea how to win this war in Iraq. (Hell, they can't even buy armored Humvees.)

When they can't convince us that they know what they're doing, how can they possibly expect young men and women to volunteer to go to Iraq for the next decade?

I used to think that all those Iraq-is-Vietnam analogies were facile. But when the secretary of defense starts to talk about a decade-long insurgency, and practically invites the rebels to come up with their own Ho Chi Minh....

  ¶ 8:29 AM 14 comments   

  No, He Didn't A new book claims that John Kennedy, my old boss, slept with Princess Diana in a New York hotel room.

I'm hardly an expert on John's sex life, and it's not something I wrote about in my own book, American Son.

But about this particular innuendo, trust me—it just ain't so. It's just the kind of thing that people say about people who aren't around any longer to defend themselves. And in this case, it's a kind of celebrity sex fantasy. Because their lives seemed similar in various surreal elements...and they certainly would have made an attractive couple, wouldn't they?  ¶ 7:51 AM 5 comments   

  Welcome, conservatives! Here at "Shots in the Dark," we really are a big tent. Unlike, say, some political parties that I could mention.

My criticism of Jonah Goldberg seems to have struck a nerve; the comments section of that post is a hotbed of anti-RB vitriole. Why, even Jonah himself has gotten into the act, insulting me, my (first) book, my (last) name—but not actually responding to my criticism of his argument.

What strikes me about some of the posters is the way that they stubbornly hold certain ideals sacred and inviolable: Harvard is a bastion of liberalism (not really), Ted Kennedy is the devil (seems a bit strong, no?), Cornel West is a fraud (would they say this if he were white?), and Eric Alterman is truly unpleasant.

Well, maybe that last one....  ¶ 7:38 AM 7 comments   

  Jonah Goldberg Oinks for Larry Summers I have mixed feelings about this column by Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online.

On the one hand, I consider Jonah Goldberg a loathsome character, a self-satisfied ball of snark untempered by warmth, maturity, kindness or wisdom.

On the other hand, he's certainly clever (if prone to showing off his cleverness, as in this column, when he throws in references to Cafe Vienna, the Bronze Age, and the Blues Brothers, as if to say, "Look at me! I can go high! I can go low!".)

And Goldberg is clever enough to note the awkwardness of the recent study purporting to show why Jews are smart versus the outrage over Larry Summers' recent remarks purporting to show why women are dumb.

(I'm simplifying, but you get the point.)

Goldberg writes, "The flames of the Summers auto-da-fe cast a useful light on the cognitive dissonance, schizophrenia, and bad faith dotting the intellectual and political landscape today when it comes to genetics."

("Auto-da-fe" being a phrase Goldberg tosses out to show off his whippersnapper-smarts while suggesting that those who criticize Summers constitute an Inquisition.)

Well...no.

It's certainly true that the subject of genetic differences between genders, races and ethnic groups makes people uncomfortable. It should. A study showing "superior" intelligence in Jews makes me squeamish for myriad reasons. A university president suggesting that men may be genetically superior to women in math and science—you bet, that makes me shift uneasily in my seat.

I think I'll be nervous when the day comes that such topics do not make us a little uncomfortable.

But as with every single conservative who's blabbed on about this brouhaha, Goldberg makes his point by creating a straw man: that it was the mere suggestion of genetic differences which aroused such ire among women and the Harvard faculty.

Not so.

It was Summers' unambiguous suggestion that such differences were a greater contributor to the paucity of women in science than was discrimination. Coupled with the fact that tenure rates for women had dropped dramatically during Larry Summers' four years as president. Both of which presented the idea that Larry Summers was using cockamamie genetic theories to justify denying tenure to women.

In closing, let me quote Goldberg one more time:

"The animal kingdom is replete with enormous male-female disparities. Even among the branch of humans we call feminists, it's a widely held view that men and women think and behave differently."

I'm not sure, but I think that Goldberg is, in a sneering, deliberately-deniable sort of way, suggesting that feminists are a lower form of animal.

Lower than a pig, Jonah?  ¶ 10:18 AM 46 comments   

  Me and My iPod In fact, I did buy a new iPod, as previously discussed. I couldn't find my old 20-gig model; it'll either be in the last box I unpack, or one of the moving guys is enjoying it even now. Truth be told, it had almost reached the end of its storage space anyway. Since my sister and brother-in-law were kind enough to give me an Apple gift certificate for Christmas, I was itching to get a new one.

I got the 30-gig model, which not only plays music but also displays photos. It's knocking my socks off. My former iPod was about two years old, and it was considerably heavier than this new one, even though it held only 2/3 of the music. I love the new color screen and the way the iPod displays album covers along with the song that's playing (as long as you bought the song off iTunes).

People say that Apple's competitors are going to catch up sooner or later. Maybe. But it's hard to imagine a product more exquisitely engineered than this one, and to me, all the other digital music players look like clunky knock-offs. Bill Gates says that MP3-playing cell phones will topple the iPod, but I'm not so sure of that either. With the exception of the Motorola Razor, cell phone design has grown stagnant. I've wanted to replace my old Samsung for about a year—I can't stand the operating program—but haven't seen anything that seems both highly functional and aesthetically pleasing; I'm spoiled by my iPod. (My carrier, Verizon—argh!—doesn't carry the Razor.) So can cell phones really add an entire new function without multi-task overload? Most people don't use all the functions cell phones already have.

The only solution? For Apple and Motorola to hustle out with that iTunes-compatible phone they've been whispering about for some time now....  ¶ 9:12 AM 2 comments   

  The Return of the Re-Ethicist This week the Ethicist (a.ka. Randy Cohen) fields a question from Roberta Osborne of Toronto:

"I have M.S., for which there is at present no cure. My doctor has invited me to participate in studies of existing and potential treatments. I admire those who volunteer for such research, but I am concerned about the potential long-term health consequences. Is it ethical to benefit from medicines developed through research studies but not participate in them myself?"

The Ethicist's answer: No one can be forced to volunteer for medical research, but Roberta should give back to the M.S.-medical community in some way. "It would be parasitical for any of us to benefit from a community without contributing to its well-being. But the particular means of giving back are left up to us."

"Look at it this way," the Ethicist continues. "You may walk over the Brooklyn Bridge without shame even though workers suffered and died in its construction while you did not pitch in (what with your not being from around here or being born at the time)."

The Re-Ethicist's response: Wrong!

Well, half-wrong, anyway.

We shall begin by pointing out the essential silliness of Cohen's Brooklyn Bridge analogy.

There.

Now, Cohen is of course correct that no one can or should be forced to "volunteer" for medical research. We know where that road leads.

Nonetheless, he is letting Roberta off the hook rather too easily for her fear of science. The question of her participation in research directed at helping her and millions of other people isn't just a question of compulsion, it's a question about the quality of one's life, about one's attitude towards living. Will Roberta conquer her fear? Will she overcome her instinct for self-preservation by rising to a higher standard of spirituality and living?

Because let's face it—what Cohen is really doing is saying that while it's unfortunate for Osborne to act in a cowardly fashion, no one can force her to be courageous.

And so it is. But we can encourage Osborne to be brave.

It's a bit like checking the organ donor box on your driver's license. No one can force you to do it—but that doesn't mean that it's all right not to. People should be encouraged to conquer their irrational fears. Because sometimes, living an ethical life isn't just about playing by the rules; it's about doing the things that scare you but benefit others.

A postscript: Incidentally, you can get a hint of Roberta's (quite understandable) fear in her language. She writes: "I have M.S., for which there is at present no cure."

Extraneous words in a sentence often indicate an emotional hedge, a reluctance to confront a difficult truth. Notice Osborne's use of the words "at present." Omit them. The sentence now reads: "I have M.S., for which there is no cure."

Means exactly the same thing, right? And yet it's tougher, more honest; the "at present" is a flinch, a way of implying that a cure is right around the corner.

I would certainly not fault anyone with a terminal disease whose fear seeps into her language. But I would have admired Osborne particularly had she written "I have M.S., for which there is no cure." And I wonder if we don't see her flinch not only in her language, but also in her fear of volunteering in medical tests.
  ¶ 8:48 AM 0 comments   

  Captions of the Times An occasional series of captions from photographs printed in the New York Times. Because sometimes, the Times is more zen than it realizes.

  ¶ 5:18 PM 0 comments   

  Why Larry Summers Kept His Job What's the difference between Larry Summers and other notoriously unpopular executives such as Howell Raines, Carly Fiorina, and Phil Purcell, the just-ousted chief of Morgan Stanley?

Simple: All four people were widely disliked for their brusque and abrasive top-down management style. But Raines, Fiorina and Purcell got fired. And as far as we know, Summers never came close to losing his job.

I was thinking about why that was so as I read a piece on Purcell by James J. Cramer in this week's issue of New York magazine. There are some interesting similarities between Purcell and Summers—and between Morgan Stanley and Harvard.

As Cramer writes, "In the end there is a Willy Loman factor on Wall Street that Purcell either forgot or never learned. Although it is not as simple as 'be liked and you will never want,' as Loman says, the corollary is true: You can't be hated by everyone and prosper. By all accounts, Purcell was hated for his intense arrogance by almost everyone who worked for him. His lack of people skills, Wall Street gibberish for 'he thought he was better than everyone else,' ate him."

It would be too strong to say that Larry Summers is hated by "everyone." But he's certainly hated by enough people at Harvard to make his management of the institution profoundly difficult and, perhaps, fatally flawed.

So why, after the faculty vote of no-confidence, did Summers keep his job?

There are many answers, but the primary one has to do with management structure. Purcell was fired by the Morgan Stanley board of directors, which has some independent figures (one of whom, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, is a former colleague of Summers, and would make a great university president herself).

The Harvard Corporation, the seven-person board with the power to fire Summers, has been stocked by Summers. In hip-hop terms, the Corporation is Summers' bitch. (Though I'm told that newcomer Nan Keohane is a strong and independent figure. We'll see.) It has abdicated a meaningful checks-and-balances role.

Moreover, Morgan Stanley had tangible results that showed that Purcell's leadership was not working: departures of top execs, poor earnings, massive payouts to prevent other departures, etc.

At Harvard, "results" are difficult to quantify. Some people have left under Summers, but not enough to prove anything (Harvard's a tough place to walk away from). And Summers has paid out substantial sums to alleviate discontent—$1 million to Skip Gates, $50 million to women—but few people know about the former, and the latter is couched as an investment in the future.

Of course, I'd argue that you can see disastrous results in, say, the conduct of the curricular review. But on this subject and others, one gets the feeling that the Corporation knows only what Summers tells them.

(Cramer on Purcell: "...Purcell never managed down, just up, catering to the board in a way that made many people...think that he would have to commit a homicide to lose the support of these mostly handpicked bakcers. ...They knew only what he told them, and he told them that all was well and the people who were departing were just sore white-shoe losers—and not of the tough-guy, Notre Dame ilk that spawned Purcell.")

One could argue, I suppose, that Harvard is the world's leading university, so the structure of its corporate governance must be doing something right.

But I'm not so sure that we aren't entering into a phase where Harvard is going to be challenged by other universities as never before—an era where the unresponsive, uncommunicative, insular and secretive Harvard Corporation will appear increasingly anachronistic. And, more importantly, less well-equipped to lead Harvard in the 21st century.

It's a great story. Can't wait to see what happens.  ¶ 7:45 AM 0 comments   

  The Move in Progress So far, I can't complain: the technology giants upon which I am dependent have, by and large, come through for me.

Time-Warner cable guys quickly set up my cable television and cable Internet access. (I use Earthlink via Time-Warner.) So far, cable Internet access is considerably faster than my old DSL service from Verizon—and every few weeks, that service would mysteriously go down for no apparent reason, usually just when I was on some sort of deadline for which I required Internet access and e-mail.

I've also switched my phone service from Verizon to Vonage. Since I work at home, I make a lot of phone calls, and I had an unlimited phone plan from Verizon for about $70 a month. I have the exact same plan with Vonage, which transmits telephone calls over the Internet, for $25 a month. If I were you, I'd sell your Verizon stock. (I did.)

Surprisingly, the one company I had trouble with was Apple, whose customer service is generally first-rate. A bizarre thing happened on my way to setting up here in Soha/NoCo (south of Harlem, for long-time residents; north of Columbia, for real estate brokers selling to latecomers like me): I lost the ability to receive e-mails. I could find them on the web, at the page Earthlink uses for web access to e-mail; but my computer was not grabbing them from the Internet.

So I called Apple and spoke with one of those tech guys you sometimes encounter who seems to be thinking out loud as he walks you through a repair process. Or maybe making it up as he went along. Suddenly—after over an hour on the phone—several thousand saved e-mails mysteriously vanished from my computer. At that point, the tech guy mumbled something about getting a product specialist on the line, and after a very lengthy hold, he handed the phone call off to someone named Daniel.

Instant relief. Daniel knew exactly what he was doing, and in about ten minutes we fixed the problem and my e-mails were restored. He and I then had a nice chat about Apple's switch to computer chips made by Intel, whether I should buy a new iMac, whether I should buy a new iPod, and the virtues of a home wireless system. (It'll be a good thing in the long run, yes, they're amazing machines, yes, they're amazing machines, and yes, it's very cool to play music from your computer wirelessly through your stereo.) A disastrous experience was salvaged.

The conclusion? Verizon is the big loser, and I have to say, it couldn't have happened to a more deserving company. As anyone who's ever tried to get Verizon on the phone knows, this is probably the most user-hostile of all the conglomerates/monopolies that grip us in their velvet claws. Their customer service is lousy, their products mediocre, and their prices far higher than a free market would support. (If you don't believe me, Google "Verizon sucks" and enjoy some of the 216,000 hits that come up, including the aptly named website, Verizon Sucks.) I love that Vonage has popped up to exploit a niche in the technology—and tons of customers who've taken abuse from Verizon for so many years finally have a choice. Vonage takes a little bit of tech savvy to set up. But so far, it's a lifesaver.

Now if we could only get those cable bills down....  ¶ 7:12 AM 4 comments   

  Another Harvard Scandal? I've often suggested that, under Larry Summers' leadership, Harvard is adopting the style, norms and culture of Washington, D.C. Now there's even more proof of that—a fact so bizarre that even I'm startled by it.

Let's start with a pop quiz.

Which of these things is not like the others?

a) The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee
b) The Association of American Railroads
c) The Nuclear Energy Institute
d) The American Association of Airport Executives
e) The Confederation of Indian Industry
f) Harvard University

And the answer is: None. At least in one important matter they're all the same.

(Sorry, it was kind of a trick question.)

According to USA Today, these groups were among the ten largest sponsors of privately funded travel for members of Congress. That is to say, they paid congresspeople and senators to fly around the country on junkets—the same thing for which Tom DeLay is now on the hot seat.

And yes, that's Harvard, right up there at #6, between the Association of American Railroads and the Nuclear Energy Institute. Between 2000 and 2005, Harvard spent about $313, 000 on travel for members of Congress. (I'd bet the amounts increased after 2001, when Larry Summers became president.)

To which one can only say: Huh? What is Harvard doing on a list of Washington influence-buyers?

Possibly some of this money was spent flying MOCs to the Kennedy School for "panel discussions." But I'd really like to know who Harvard was flying around and why....

Perhaps the Crimson's Zachary Seward or Mary Habib can find out.....  ¶ 7:42 AM 0 comments   

  I'm Back... ...and about twelve percent of the man I used to be (which was about 70% of the man I ought to be, probably). I have carried and unpacked dozens of boxes, painted like I was getting paid by the brush stroke, and tried to make sense of a kitchen. I have received services from Time-Warner Cable (they were great) and FreshDirect (thank God, they deliver to 122nd Street). The e-mail's a little spotty and the phone service just bizarre—I can call you, but you can't call me, at least not without going into voicemail. But slowly, slowly, I'm getting back on my feet.....

There'll be lots of news to come in the forthcoming days, so please, keep tuning in—and thanks for your patience. As soon as the place is presentable, you're invited to the housewarming.  ¶ 10:30 PM 0 comments   

  Next, the Apocalypse. Or at least the Move. Tomorrow I'm moving from the apartment I've been living in for ten years now. (Holy cow, how did that happen?) This computer is virtually the only thing working in my current digs; everything else is shoved into a box and wrapped with tape like when Frodo met Shelob. The point being that posting may be a challenge for the next day or so.

It's sad to leave this apartment, which has been the home for twenty-five percent of my life. (Holy cow, how did that happen?)

But if I think or write about it now, I'll get maudlin. Or depressed. (It's never a good idea to tackle a tough subject in an empty apartment surrounded by boxes. Don't try it at your home.)

The movers come in nine hours. Wish them luck!  ¶ 10:35 PM 1 comments   

  And While That Publicist is on the Phone.... The Denver Post reports on the first "Aspen Ideas Festival" (i.e., pointless junket) that's about to take place.

I quote: "The first Aspen Ideas Festival kicks into gear for six sold-out days of brainstorming July 5-10. Brainiac Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute organized the think party in a move to jazz up the joint. Speakers at the fest will include Queen Noor, Gen. Wesley Clark, Dr. Jane Goodall, Rick Warren ("Purpose Driven Life"), Chris Matthews, Colin Powell, Toni Morrison, Cokie Roberts, Jim Lehrer, Charlie Rose, Arthur Schlesinger, controversial Harvard boss Lawrence Summers, Mort Zuckerman, NPR prexy Kevin Klose, AOL's Stephen Case, Kurt Anderson, William Bennett, Amazon founder Jeffrey Bezos, David Brooks, Patricia Hannaway ("Shrek" animator), Nina Totenberg, Ken Auletta..."

Controversial Harvard president Lawrence Summers.

Other than Rick Warren, whose book is mentioned, Summers is the only person described—and the description is probably not the one he wants. I think we can safely assume that "controversial Harvard president" is now the implicit description of Summers even where it's not explicit....

A side note: Summers loves to go to these celebrity—pardon the langugage—clusterfucks. He is received less critically than he is by academics, and he likes these media-ready intellectuals-lite more than he does professors. If he had made his remarks on women in science with this group, they would have come away genuflecting....  ¶ 8:44 AM 0 comments   

  Larry Summers, Call Your Publicist The Los Angeles Times reports that all six members of CalTech's 2005 chemical engineering class are female. The group, says reporter Valerie Reitman, "makes a strong case against Harvard President Lawrence Summers' controversial hypothesis that men are innately more proficient in math and science."

She adds: "Interest in math- and science-related majors among women is on the rise at universities across the country. They earned 58% of the undergraduate degrees in life sciences, such as biology and chemistry, 47% in math and 40% in physical sciences, according to 2000 figures, the latest available from the National Science Foundation."

Do you sometimes get the feeling that, in about two years, Larry Summers' theory on the innate differences between men and women explaining the shortage of women in science is going to look not just wrong, but like something out of another era entirely....  ¶ 8:38 AM 2 comments   

  The Re-Ethicist Strikes Again This week in the Times Magazine, Patrick Filbin, of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, writes The Ethicist, a.k.a. Randy Cohen.

His question: "My wife and I traveled to the Caribbean with our chidlren, ages 9, 7 and 1. Before the vacation, I went to a local coin dealer and bought several old and strange coins. We buried these coins on the beach so our children could find "buried treasure." Our kids mark it as a highlight of the trip, but now I feel like a fraud. Have we crossed a line?"

The Ethicist's answer is, in my humble opinion, less than clear.

"It's a fine thing to play with your kids"—(Re-Ethicist's interruption: Unless you're Michael Jackson!)—"but a dubious thing to lie to them. One way to distinguish bentween playing and lying is that play occurs with the understanding and consent of all involved."

Sounds like The Ethicist is about to lay down the law, doesn't it? But no...

"Thus you must figure out what your kids believe about buried treasure, something that will almost surely be different for the one-year-old and the nine-year old. Ask yourself how they would greet candid information.... This is not an easy question, but it's one on which ethical conduct relies, and nobody is better positioned to answer it than you and your wife."

With waffles like that, the Ethicist should open an IHOP.

The Re-Ethicist says: Wrong!

Mr. Filbin, you have some issues. You are lying to your children. Not only that, you're lying to them without even a good reason. Okay, if their dog died and you told them that Rover was chasing rabbits in doggie heaven, that might be okay. But to create an experience for them that will lead to happy memories—yet one that is based on a lie—you are screwing with their heads. You are a parent, sir. Not God. You exist to help your children understand reality, not to create it.

Now, it's certainly true that parents must sometimes be complicit in a lie—Santa Claus, the Easter Egg bunny, etc. The simple fact is that they don't have a lot of decision in such matters; the culture has forced their hand. On the other hand, going out of your way to turn your children into basket cases—that's just sick.

When I was a child, Mr. Filbin, my parents also took me to the beach. While there, I searched for interesting shells and seaglass. I also swam and learned to skip stones. Stuff like that. Once I picked up a crab, only to find that it wasn't nearly as dead as it looked. Ouch!

There's plenty of actual real life—and real living— on the beach, Mr. Filbin. No need to turn it into Fantasy Island. In fact, your question suggests that you have become so dependent on mass-produced "entertainment" that you somehow find nature insufficient by itself. I bet you took your Blackberry to the beach, didn't you? Time for a little soul-searching.

The Ethicist: Wrong again!


  ¶ 8:18 AM 0 comments   

  Token Celebrity News: Tom and Katie It gets weirder: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have gotten engaged.

What I love about the hyper-linked article above is the way that tabloid editors are suddenly kissing up to the couple in the hopes that they'll be rewarded with a wedding exclusive.

Consider this quote from Bonnie Fuller, editorial director of American Media, the parent company of Star magazine: "It could last forever. It could last till death do them part. These are two people that are known to be serious individuals."

It might last forever, sure. And, as the eminently quotable Mike Meyers would say, monkeys might fly out of my butt.

(Here is my rule for celebrity couplings: The more heated are their professions of love, the shorter will be their relationship.)

I also love that bit about Cruise and Holmes being "known to be serious individuals." Cruise just jumped up and down on a couch on Oprah. Katie Holmes is, like, 14 years old and stars in the new Batman movie. I think we are lowering the bar for what constitutes seriousness here.

Here's another knee-slapper: "I think they have every intention of getting married and every intention of having kids," says Janice Min, editor of US magazine. "I think that Tom Cruise is not the kind of celebrity who would venture into this lightly."

Let's see...he's been dating a woman 20 years younger than he for about six weeks, and now, after her sudden adoption of Scientology, they're engaged. This will be his third marriage. She recently broke off a years-long engagement.

Nope. He'd never venture into this lightly. Not Tom Cruise.

And how, exactly, would Min know whether or not they have any intention of having kids?

Which leads me to think of a game that you can play at home. Think of a celebrity. Think of something about that person which is kind of banal but ultimately impossible to prove or disprove. Say it.

Congratulations! You've now become the editor of a weekly tabloid.

  ¶ 8:08 AM 1 comments