Shots In The Dark

So New Yorkers will now have to submit to random bag searches on the subways. In our fight against terrorism, we are losing one more bit of freedom.

I say that with sadness, but not opposition. It's impossible not to ride the subways these days and not think how vulnerable they are to terrorist attack; it's a small miracle that nothing has happened so far. We not only allow, we encourage bag searches on airplanes. Why not subways?

The only problem, of course, is that random bag searches often aren't random at all; if you're a backpack-toting tourist from Pakistan, odds are you're going to spend some time with your friendly New York policeman.

I know I should be upset about that, too, but I can't say that I am. Given who's committing acts of terrorism these days, and the sheer impossibility of inspecting everyone's bag, it only makes sense to do some profiling of potential searchees. Let's just hope that the search process is carried out with some sensitivity, so that we don't wind up needlessly humiliating people who've done absolutely nothing wrong.

But let there be some logic to this process, as well. I remember how, after 9/11, the Yankees banned the carrying of bags into the Stadium. In reality, men were forced to check their bags, no matter how small, at a bar across the street. Women could carry in purses of virtually any size....

Here's what Liddy Dole—Senator Liddy Dole—had to say about Democratic Senate candidate Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, whose father was governor of that state:

""I don't know that he has addressed any issues. They are kind of locking him away, letting him run on his father's name."

Huh.

Um....Mrs. Dole...wasn't your husband a senator for, oh, about 30 years? And weren't you the one who ran one of the most notoriously issue-free campaigns in modern political history?

Oh, and if your name-piggybacking weren't enough...I'm sorry, but who's president, again? And governor of Florida?

Honestly, these people....

Does anyone else think that David Brooks thinks so highly of the John Roberts nomination because John Roberts is just like, well, David Brooks?

Larry Summers has just appointed Evelyn Hammonds, an historian of science and African-American studies, to the post of diversity advisor at Harvard. (Technically, the senior vice-provost for diversity.)

As the Boston Globe points out, just nine months ago, Summers declared that there was no need for such a figure at the university. That, of course, changed after his remarks about women's lack of brainpower in matters scientific.

Who is Hammonds? Well, she's a black woman with a B.S. in physics from Spelman College and a B.E.E. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. She also has an S.M. in physics from MIT and a Ph.d. in the history of science from Harvard. She's been involved in undergraduate advising at Harvard and served on a task force for women faculty. She's published one book, Childhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City," 1880-1930," and a number of papers usually dealing with race, gender, and science, such as one titled, "Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Female Sexuality." She's now working on a book about the history of race in science and medicine.

I think it is safe to say that, for all sorts of reasons, this is not the kind of professor Larry Summers would have preferred to appoint to a high-ranking position in his administration....

While various liberal activist groups are already hot and bothered, and some Democratic senators sound like they're lying in wait, I can't see any reason not to confirm John Roberts quickly.

Let's consider what we know about Roberts.

1) He's qualified. It'd be nice if he were more of a legal thinker, but on the other hand, he's had enormous experience in the law, he's obviously very smart, and he seems to have lived an ethical life. Three out of four ain't bad.

2) He's conservative. So what? He's well within the mainstream of political and legal thinking. The president certainly has a right to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, as long as they're not nut-jobs. Anyway, as we all know, once appointed, judges can surprise you.

3) By attacking Roberts, Democrats and liberals would only damage their own credibility; they'd look as if they were fighting only because they've geared up for a fight. Let Roberts pass. Remember that some day there will again be a Democratic president, who will want his qualified nominees to SCOTUS to receive respectful treatment from the opposition party.
There are plenty of battles to fight; Democrats don't need to fight this one. They'll only wind up looking hysterical and out-of-the-mainstream.

4) Anyway, I suspect that it's the next nomination liberals will have to worry about—the imminent replacement for Rehnquist. If Dems huff-and-puff on this one, they'll lack credibility when the president really does nominate a dangerous ideologue and they huff-and-puff all over again.

5) And here's a final piece of unasked-for advice. The president has tried to frame the debate by appropriating the term "civility." Democrats should retake the word and change the subject by asking the question: "Is it civil for the president's closest aide to engage in a smear campaign against a patriotic CIA agent?" Don't talk about John Roberts. Talk about Karl Rove.

Keith Kelly wrote in yesterday's NYP media column about the strange incident involving American Media and confidentiality agreements.

(I'd link to it, but the Post charges you for stories that are a day old. Doesn't Rupert Murdoch have enough money?)

So I'll just quote Keith extensively.

(Necessary back story: American Media is the publisher of various gossip and weightlifting magazines, and the company that signed Arnold Schwarzenegger to a secret $8 million consulting deal just days before he became governor.)

Keith Kelly: "Insiders at American Media said that as the company began to sweat over how to deal with the disclosure [of Schwarzenegger's deal], many ex-employees said they were surprised to suddenly receive warning letters from American Media informing them that they were still bound by their confidentiality obligations to the publisher. The letters went out on July 7 to hundreds of employees—from lowly assistants and secretaries to top executives.

"A spokesman for American media, Stuart Zakim, said that there was 'absolutely no connection' between the warning letters on July 7 and the Schwarzenegger disclosure a week later.

"'It was just a reminder that we do periodically,' he insisted of the letters."

Well, we can just write off that disclaimer as PRBS. (You can figure that out.) The letters were obviously an attempt to intimidate employees who might have known something about the Arnold deal from talking to the press. It isn't be the first time American Media has attempted to intimidate its employees; as I wrote back in April, the company actually sued to stop an ex-employee from writing a novel because it was rumored to be a send-up of AMI editor Bonnie Fuller.

I've mentioned before the ironies in a company that publishes Star and the National Inquirer trying to stop its employees from speaking to the press....

But the problem with confidentiality agreements goes beyond mere irony. They are a real threat to the practice of journalism and historiography in this country. Again, to quote myself, confidentiality agreements are increasingly used by the powerful to silence the powerless. And yet, no one seems to make a fuss about them.

As some of you may know, I've had my own run-ins with a confidentiality agreement. In my case, a document intended for one thing was deliberately distorted by people who hadn't written or signed it to try to keep me from writing a book—and those people were almost successful.

Now Arnold Schwarzenegger is using confidentiality agreements to keep his staff from talking about him, and AMI is using them...also to keep their staff from talking about Arnold. Now we know one reason why: Because the governor of the nation's largest state received an $8 million payoff (and was there any actual work involved on his part?) which may well have affected his veto of a piece of legislation.

I'm sure there are instances where confidentiality agreements are important: business transactions, for example. More and more, though, they're just insidious.

Fishermen off Martha's Vineyard caught and killed an 1,100-pound tiger shark in a fishing competition, but didn't win the prize because they were too late returning to port. Six minutes sooner, and they would have won. Not much consolation for the shark.

According to the AP, "The toothy tiger shark may not have won the competition, but it did win the admiration of other fishermen. Steven James of the Boston Big Game Fishing Club said this truly was a monster shark, and one that 'could eat you.'"

Could. But didn't. And I'd bet that it's been decades since anyone was killed by a shark off Martha's Vineyard. Conversely, humans kill millions of sharks every year. Most are caught in massive, miles-long drift nets; many are killed for their fins, which Asians use in soup; and some are killed by fishermen who think that destroying a beautiful animal makes them bigger men.

A beautiful animal, you say? Absolutely. Sharks are amazing creatures, especially when seen underwater. I've never dived with tigers—and frankly, I wouldn't advise it, unless from a cage—but trust me, when you see a shark underwater, it's like no other fish in the sea: dramatic, powerful, and graceful. And rare. It's getting harder and harder to see sharks, as human beings kill more and more of them—whether by accident, in the mistaken belief that their fins are aphrodisiacs, or, perhaps worst of all, for sport.

And the media doesn't help much. This wasn't a "monster shark," as the AP put it. This was a big shark, a fantastic specimen, and one that's getting harder and harder to find. Imagine if the AP had said, "a rare, magnificent specimen of one of the world's oldest species was pointlessly slaughtered today by human beings who wanted to win a contest and take a picture of themselves with the dead animal before tossing its carcass back in the ocean." That's more true than calling the shark a "monster." So how come no one writes it?

I don't want to be attacked by a shark any more than anyone else does, but on the other hand, I don't want to live a life entirely free of risk. It's sheer hubris to think that we should rid the planet of any other species that might put us in danger, no matter how infinitesmal the odds. Yet that's exactly the effect of the hysterical media coverage every time a shark bites a surfer's leg off.

These Martha's Vineyard fishermen shouldn't be proud of themselves. They should be ashamed.

We have lost one of the great ones; Scotty is dead.

Who can forget all those classic Star Trek episodes in which Kirk would say, "Mr. Scott, how long to fix the warp drive?" And the chief engineer would answer, "I don't know, Captain, but I'd guess about three weeks." And Kirk would grit his teeth and say, "Well, Scotty, you've got 12 minutes until we all die."

And somehow Mr. Scott, a role model for resourcefulness while under the influence, always managed to fix the damn thing just in time.

Having gone where no man has gone before, James Doohan has now gone where all men and women will ultimately travel. Let us hope that he is looking down on us from above, a glass of his beloved scotch in his hand, that irreverent grin on his face, ready as ever to save the Enterprise should his services again be required.

The Red Sox are back in first—who the hell is Wayne Franklin, anyway, and who ever told him he could pitch?—and George Bush has nominated a conservative white man to the Supreme Court.

Why do these things somehow seem to go together?

More to come, but I'm on deadline.....

One of the magical things about living in New York is the knowledge that no matter how long you live here, you will never stop seeing things you've never seen before, learning things about the city you never knew. There's always a block that you've walked by a thousand times and never strolled down...that turns out to be a secret beauty. A store you've never ventured into that turns out to have just what you're looking for. A restaurant you've never heard of that, once sampled, proves to serve something so good, you can't believe you've never tasted it before.

Case in point...

Last night, I was walking down a stretch of Columbus Avenue, between 70th and 71st, that I've walked a hundred times if I've walked it once. For some reason, I happened to look up at a building on the west side of the street. High on its red brick facade was a large, wooden sign I'd never noticed before. "J.M. Horton Ice Cream Co.," it said in grand old block letters. The sign looked old, and I couldn't believe that I'd never seen it before.

On arriving home, I promptly googled "J.M. Horton Ice Cream," and found something, of course. (How did we live without Google?)

J.M Horton was an ice cream maker founded, apparently, in 1873. At one point, it was the largest ice cream company in New York, selling three-fifths of all the city's ice cream, and providing desserts to several presidential inaugurals. It existed in that Columbus Avenue location even before 1904, when the IKT, New York's first subway line, began running on nearby Broadway. A few shops down the block was a little store called Hellman's Deli. You will recognize the name as the maker of the mayonnaise that we can't eat as much of as we'd like to.

Pretty great, huh? A sign from the past saved into the present. A reminder of what the Upper West Side once was.

The Yanks are in first place, Johnny Damon's hitting streak ended, and the J.M. Horton sign rules over Columbus Avenue. Who cares about the weather? (Which is miserable, by the way.) There's no better city in the world.

Everything is okay as long as you're not convicted.

President Bush, as you probably know by now, has changed his tune on Karl Rove. In the past, he said he'd fire anyone who was "involved" in leaking Valerie Plame's identity. Now he says he'll fire anyone who "committed a crime."

This blatant shift to save his brain—which is to say, Karl Rove—has fooled no one.

Whatever your politics, this should be a truly demoralizing moment in the history of presidential politics. The President of the United States has just declared that people who work for him can engage in all manner of skullduggery—as long as they're not convicted of a criminal offense.

This is setting the bar shamefully low.

I've never worked in the White House, but I would consider it one of the greatest honors in American life. Nobody should have a higher standard of ethics than people who work in the White House—whatever party they belong to.

Being able to work for the president as long as you are not a felon is not a sufficiently high standard. This country deserves better.

Two other points.

Remember all the Bush—ite rhetoric back in 2000-2001 about how they were going to restore honor and dignity to the White House?

You don't hear that any more.

And two, can you imagine what conservatives would be saying if Bill Clinton had pulled a switcharoo like this? The anti-Slick Willie crowd would be screaming bloody murder.

Well, guys—consistency's a virtue. Let's hear it.

For a day, anyway. But the Yankees have overtaken the Orioles and the (boo, hiss) Red Sox and moved a half game into first place.

Let me be the first to say that, in some respects, they have no right to be there. Their pitching staff is a ramshackle joke. (Is there a less clutch, less pleasant human being alive than Kevin Brown? If you're going to be a jerk, you'd better at least be good.) The Yankees have an entire starting rotation on the disabled list. (And it's only costing them about $60 million.)

Watching Bernie Williams play the outfield reminds me of watching Michael Jordan in the minors. It's excruciating. You want someone to pat his hand and tell him everything's going to be okay.

Jason Giambi is having such a wonderful and unexpected resurgence that even some of my Yankee friends (you know who you are, ye of little faith) wonder if he isn't back on the juice.

And when one of these players gets hurt....the Yankee bench is thinner than Lindsey Lohan.

Nonetheless...here we are. Number one, baby.

I have previously referenced the classic football film, "The Replacements," so you'll know what I mean when I say, you gotta have heart. The Yankees, apparently, do. Heart is Gary Sheffield and A-Rod beating the Red Sox like a drum. It's Al Leiter coming up from the minors and pitching a gem. It's Jason Giambi bunting—bunting!—for a single. It's Ruben Sierra, the occasional DH, coming up big in the top of the 8th against Texas last night. It's Tanyon Sturtze, pitching as many innings as he can. And it's Mariano Rivera, with an ERA so low that Ed Klein has to look down to see it.

This Yankee team has driven me crazy at various times over the season...but I'm kinda starting to believe. I've been burned before with this bunch, oh yes. But pleaseGodpleaseGodpleaseGod...let us continue to kick some Red Sox ass.

P.S. Meanwhile, up in Boston, Dan Shaughnessy is blaming Red Sox manager Terry Franconia. He writes: "The Sox have lost nine of their last 13 at Fenway and the manager with the World Series ring on his finger is suddenly sitting on the hot seat."

Silly Dan Shaughnessy. Don't you know you're the one to blame for the Sox's swoon? You're the guy who wrote that the Sox would win it going away, "like Secretariat in 1973." Your hubris has angered the gods of baseball.

Guess what, Boston? The Curse is back, and it's Dan Shaughnessy's fault.

One of the more unpleasant developments in the world of media criticism—a generous term in this context—is the website Gawker, a cynical, bitchy site about celebrity and the media. The people behind Gawker are anonymous, their writing unsigned...but that doesn't stop them from sniping at virtually anyone who's ever appeared in the media (including, yes, yours truly). A typical Gawker item: making a joke about Paris Hilton having "the clap." As you might imagine, Gawker—like just about any site that plays on people's jealousies and insecurities, and is sometimes funny—is wildly popular.

So it was a delight yesterday to read this item on the New York Post's Page Six. I'm going to quote the whole thing here (sorry you can't see the photo), because this level of vitriole in the New York media is indeed unusual:

"July 17, 2005 -- THIS is the face of snarkiness incarnate. Unknown outside the dork-infested waters of the Blogosphere, her name is Jessica Coen, and she's the co-editor of Gawker.com, where she regurgitates newspaper and magazine stories and slathers them in supposedly witty sarcasm. Every time we bump into Coen, 25, who likes to accessorize with a stuffed dog poking out of her handbag, she smiles and showers us with sycophantic praise. But her every mention of PAGE SIX on her Web site is snide and snarky. Word to Coen: Next time you see us at a party, keep walking. Or slithering. You can't be a boot-licker and a back-stabber at the same time."

Gawker's response? A weak attempt at parody:

"There’s This Pot. And This Kettle.

This is the face of hard newsiness incarnate. Unknown outside the skeeve-infested circles of gossip-mongers, its name is Page Six, and it serves as the gossip column for the New York Post. (Incidentally, the Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who isn’t even American.) Page Six, which eats only the kittens they choose not to drown, loves to set fire to your furniture while wearing last season’s skeevy H&M. Page Six hates Live 8 and was thrilled to hear about what happened in Iraq this weekend. On their way to a vacation in North Korea, Page Six tried to kill a recently adopted Ethiopian baby. Word to Page Six: Watch your step, ‘cause Brad Pitt ain’t gonna have none of that."

Advantage: Page Six, whose attack has the ring of truth, while Gawker's response is just...lame.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big Page Six fan either. But Page Six is buried within the NY Post—not exactly highbrow media—and in a weird way, it does have its own set of moral codes.

At its best, Gawker is a vehicle for social satire of our celebrity culture. More often, it's just a way for kids whose careers aren't going as planned to be mean without having to be held accountable for their nastiness.