Shots In The Dark

A miserable day at the Stadium—the Yankees didn't look like a team that deserved to make the playoffs. Poor pitching, sloppy fielding, un-clutch hitting. Argh. And on top of that, they showed a replay of Varitek's collision with Jorge Posada, and I have to eat my words: It was a clean play, and Varitek actually looked like he might have pulled up a bit at the end of it. So...mea culpa.

The Red Sox are still bad guys, though.

Jason Varitek of the Red Sox seems to have a passion for throwing dirty punches at players on the Yankees; just take a look at this photo. (Scroll down a bit to see it.) Last year he did it to Alex Rodriguez, only he hedged his bets by keeping his catcher's gear on and using his glove as a weapon. Now he's charging into home plate, with no slide, both fists extended.

Huh.

In 30 years of watching baseball, I don't think I've ever before seen a baseball player come into home double-punching. Not even Pete Rose would do that, and he was a dirty player. Jason Varitek, you are human scum.

In any event, Yankee catcher Jorge Posada held on to the ball, Varitek was out, and the Yankees won, 8-4. Let's hope the good guys can do it again today, when Shawn Chacon pitches against Curt Schilling, who is also a singularly unpleasant human being. I'll be at the Stadium, cheering for the men in pinstripes. It's like rooting for the U.S. against Osama bin Laden.

Who, come to think of it, several members of the Red Sox kind of look like....

A week ago, George Bush told the head of FEMA, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Today, Brown is history.

I'm glad he's gone. But I still wish the president had called a spade a spade and said that Brown was being relieved of his duties because he was not performing them to an acceptable standard. There's something to be said for the public insistence on accountability.

There's one open at Harvard (and no, it's not the one you're thinking of).

The Boston Globe reports that Harvard continues to have a difficult time hiring a replacement for money manager extraordinaire Jack Meyer.

As I've mentioned here before, the difficulty in finding someone to replace Meyer ought to force Harvardians to discuss the real reason for Meyer's departure, and not all this silliness about a little bad publicity on the salary question. Will some enterprising reporter please track down all those rumors that Meyer is leaving because he got sick and tired of Larry Summers encroaching on his turf?

Condoleeza Rice gets a promotion after years of incompetence. George Tenet gets the Medal of Freedom after leaving the country vulnerable to terrorist attack, and then telling the president that the presence of WMDs in Iraq was a "slam dunk." What does it take to get George Bush to fire someone?

The question is all the more urgent after the inept performance of FEMA head Michael Brown. And as if the situation in New Orleans weren't bad enough, now Time reports that Brown's been padding his (already thin) resume.

According to Time, before joining FEMA, Brown's "only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was 'serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight.'"

Apparently he worked for the emergency services division of the Edmond, Oklahoma, city government from 1975 to 1978.

Even if this were true, it's unclear to me how working for the "emergency services division" of a city of 60-something thousand people qualifies you to run FEMA.

But it isn't even true. Brown was, apparently, an intern at the agency. Explained former city manager Bill Dashner, "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

He was very loyal...and we all know how the president prizes loyalty (Rice, Tenet) even more than he prizes competence (Paul O'Neill, Colin Powell).

The padding doesn't end there...go to the Time link to see how Brown was fired from a law firm he worked at, one of two jobs he was fired from before President Bush made him the head of the federal disaster relief agency.

In two days, we mark the fourth anniversary of 9/11. How can we possibly be having this conversation now?

Because we have a president who is not a serious man.

One MIT scientist thinks so. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that atmospheric physicist Kerry A. Emmanuel has removed his name from a paper downplaying the impact of global warming on hurricanes because he has come to believe just the opposite. Emmanuel argues that the total power unleashed by storms in the Atlantic has more than doubled in the last 30 years.

Emmanuel's theory is far from universally accepted by scientists who study this stuff, of course, and it's sure to prompt a healthy debate. What's unfortunate is that the Bush Administration, which has decided that global warming simply doesn't exist, will be entirely absent from this debate. (Of course, that might be a blessing in disguise.)

I recently wrote a piece for Plenty magazine about GE's new environmental campaign, known as "ecomagination," which aspires to profit from cleaning up the planet and addressing issues such as global warming. (It's not online yet; I'll link to it when it's up.) What struck me as particularly interesting about this push by GE was that the Bush White House has denied the existence of global warming and, literally, has no policy directed towards it. Taking steps to combat global warming, the Bush folks say, would devastate the American economy.

And yet, here's one of the pillars of the American economy saying, in essence, of course global warming exists, and we're going to actually make money by trying to deal with it.....

The ideology of this White House has made it simply irrelevant on a number of issues, even as the rest of the world pushes ahead.....

I forgot to mention that, even though the Times took two days to run its Coldplay review, it still misidentifies Coldplay's guitarist in a photograph. It's not Will Champion, who's the drummer. It's Johnny Buckland. Kind of important....

(The photo and incorrect caption are below.)

I took in a couple of classic New York events over the past couple of nights, both revealing in their own ways. On Tuesday, I journeyed out to to Queens to watch Maria Sharapova and Nadia Petrova duke it out at the U.S. Open tennis tournament. And last night, I subwayed to the Garden to see Coldplay in the second of their two shows at MSG. After all, just because the summer's over doesn't mean you can't have fun any more.

Some thoughts...

I love watching Open tennis—it's a great tournament, and playing in New York seems to get the athletes fired up. But the classist nature of the Open makes me queasy; it's surely New York's most elitist sporting event. Ticket prices are exorbitant—in my case, $67 for seats not too far from the top row—and concessions are brutal. The sponsors are obnoxiously high-end; you could get your photo taken in front of a new Lexis hybrid, if that floats your boat. The Chase Manhattan symbol was emblazoned on both sides of the net.

Rich people go to the Open, and as is so often the case with rich people who get corporate tickets to entertainment events, they're not necessarily fans. (A prime center box, clearly belonging to some corporate sponsor or perhaps a law firm, remained completely empty throughout the match. Argh.) Nor are they necessarily well-behaved. Would anyone care if the young turks of Wall Street were suddenly sucked into another dimension? Gentlemen, no matter how great your seats are, or how hot you think Maria Sharapova is, you don't have to call up your work buddies to say so. Nor do you need to check your Blackberries between every point. Nor do you have to try to impress your friends by shouting a marriage proposal to Sharapova as she's preparing to serve. (Although I did enjoy it when someone from the opposite side of the stadium, in an effort to counter the vast amount of attention paid to Sharapova's looks, promptly responded by asking the same question of Petrova.)

Last night's Coldplay show was of a different character—far less individual and far more communal. That's largely due to the efforts of lead singer Chris Martin to make the Garden feel smaller than it is—getting people to sing along on "Everything's Not Lost," wading into the crowd during "In My Place," making self-deprecatory jokes about the band. ("We look better from far away," he said to the folks in the cheap seats.)

The band also pulled off a neat trick, turning cell phones from a divisive, individualizing tool into a bonding moment. On one song—I can't remember which—the video screen behind the band flashed the words, "Get Your Cameras Ready," in huge lights, then counted down from three. As brilliant white lights illuminated the band from behind, thousands of cell phones lit them up from in front. A nice touch.

As for the music—well, Coldplay has always been a terrific live band, though they're not really known as such. I saw them about five years ago at Irving Plaza, a small club here in Manhattan, and at the time I thought they were amazing and would go far. This show was proof of that. They opened with "Square One" from the new record, then went into "Politik," which is fantastic live, and then "Yellow," their first big hit. A pretty great way to start a show.

It must be said that the concert lost momentum in a couple of places. The songs from X & Y are not consistently as strong as those from A Rush of Blood to the Head, and "Speed of Sound," the first single from the latter, just isn't very successful in concert. Also, an acoustic interlude in which all four band members played from the front of the stage didn't work. I went and got a beer for half of it, and didn't feel like I missed anything.

But those are small gripes. This band is for real; they all play really well, and they have fantastic songs to play. My favorites from last night: "Politik," "God Put a Smile Upon My Face," "Talk," "Clocks"—what a great fast, loud version they did, could you put that out on iTunes already?—and the lovely closer, "Fix You."

A little note on journalism: the New York Daily News and the New York Post both had their glowing reviews of the Tuesday show in Wednesday's papers. The Times review, by Keleefa Saneh, wasn't in till today, which reflects the Times' rather casual attitude towards cultural coverage. (Oh, it can wait a day or so....)

It also meant the review was outdated by the time it appeared. Saneh criticized Martin for making a joke about Mariah Carey that didn't quite work...but last night at the show, Martin apologized for telling a "shit story" about Carey. "I shouldn't have said it, and I'm sorry," he said—I'm paraphrasing slightly—which is kind of a remarkable thing to hear from a rock star. If only politicians would follow that lead....

The Times has a nice write-up on the politics of John Roberts' nomination as chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Here's a prediction: The president, in an attempt to restore his credibility with African-Americans after the Katrina fiasco, will nominate a conservative African-American to the court.

If he can find one....

"It took almost no time for President Bush to put his stamp on the national response to the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.... We cannot yet calculate the political fallout from Hurricane Katrina and its devastating human and economic consequences, but one thing seems certain: It makes the previous signs of political weakness for Bush, measured in record-low job approval ratings, instantly irrelevant...."

—David Broder in the Washington Post, 9/4/05

My cousin George, who lives in New Orleans but got out in time, passed along this story of a friend who was stuck in Charity Hospital:

"She was finally airlifted by a Black Hawk helicopter across the lake to another hospital.
Unfortunately, the pilot didn't have any idea where it was. They actually had to land in front of a Walmart and ask directions."

Sad but true.

After searching the web, reading lots of newspapers, and watching too much TV news, I can't find any indication that Randall Robinson's claim of cannibalism is true. It has sparked some pretty angry rebuttals, though.

I'm disappointed in Robinson, though. While one can certainly understand his anger and frustration over what's happened in New Orleans, things are bad enough without passing on appalling rumors...and such exaggeration can wind up discrediting the terrible things that really are happening there.

P.S. To his credit, Robinson has retracted his claim.

Cornell graduate student Shaffique Adam writes sagely in the Cornell Daily Sun about the corporatization of universities. His piece, entitled "Dollars and Nonsense," considers how "the new model of viewing universities as education service providers is gaining prevalence globally." He warns of the "corporate perspective" in which "students become the consumers of education, but since we are addicted to the product (boycotting classes or transferring away hurts us more than it does the corporation), we will be sure to come along quietly," no matter what the university leadership—its president and an external governing board—does.

Faculty, Adam writes, will become "nothing more than employees who belong to a special union that self-selects and who cannot be fired (tenure), but the corporation still determines how many get employed (you can’t imagine how difficult it is for a department chair to get a new tenure line) and which subject areas get funding and which ones don't."

I think Adam's critique is right on the money, and it's fascinating to apply it to Harvard, where everything he writes about has been occurring since Larry Summers became president in 2001. (After all, what was the Cornell West fiasco about other than a clumsy manager's attempt to rein in an employee he didn't approve of?)

I have my opinions on this trend towards the corporatization of the university, which readers of this blog can probably guess. And I'll certainly concede that there are legitimate arguments on its behalf. What concerns me, though, is how much this is occurring without any real debate about whether it's a good idea, and what we might be losing in the process. Are universities really nothing more than businesses? Are students nothing more than consumers? What do we lose if we adopt this perspective, as Americans are increasingly doing?