Shots In The Dark

The Rolling Stones catalogue has just been released on iTunes, and a quick perusal of it makes a few things obvious.

1) They used to be really good.
2) They suck now. Can anyone name a song off, say, the past six records they've made?
3) It's very likely that they've put out more greatest hits albums than they've put out albums of new material.
4) They are corporate whores.


Actually, I don't mention number four because of iTunes, but because of the excruciatingly bad Ameriquest ads all over television at the moment. They feature a guy in a suit who's supposed to be in the front rows of a Stones concert—and boy, there's a telling image—although I think the crowd is actually superimposed on footage of the Stones playing. He's talking about how Ameriquest, which is a mortgage company, is sponsoring the new Rolling Stones tour.

This is such a bummer for so many reasons....

I guess there's a certain appropriateness to the fact that a rock and roll tour by a group of sexagenarians is being sponsored by a mortgage company. But for the consumer, what exactly does sponsorship mean? Other than a barrage of poorly-produced ads?

The Rolling Stones were, if memory serves, the first band ever to have a tour sponsored. Back in 1981, Jovan Musk (also high on the list of deeply uncool sponsors) paid the band $500,000 to underwrite the tour. Since then, Budweiser and Sprint have paid significantly more.

The band originally explained this sell-out as a way of keeping ticket prices down, but that's a rationale they don't even try to throw against the wall anymore, because they know it won't stick. Every time they hit the road, the Stones charge the highest ticket prices in the world of music—face value for Stones tickets is often in the hundreds of dollars.

If these guys have managed their money well, they must all be worth in the nine figures. And yet, they constantly debase their reputation (sponsorship, playing corporate gigs and birthday parties, licensing their songs) in their lust for lucre. How much money do you need to be happy? How much is enough?

The idea that rock 'n roll is a pure art form, free of commercial corruption, has of course never been true. But there are degrees. The Rolling Stones make me respect even more artists like Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young and Tom Petty, who a) don't accept sponsorship and would never let their music appear in ads, and b) manage to keep their ticket prices down nonetheless.

I have this naive idea that greed is wrong (which is one reason I can't watch "The Apprentice"). It often makes me feel alienated from mainstream American culture. But it also makes me really appreciate people in high places who feel the same way.

Next on the musical whore list: Sheryl Crow.

The Times weighs in with a piece on Harvard's difficulty replacing Jack Meyer, the brilliant money manager who's overseen the truly remarkable rise in the university's portfolio—I'm guessing it's hit the $25 billion mark by now. The Times reports that, in the decade ending in 2004, Harvard had an average annual return of 15.9%. Wow.

No one wants the job, the Times suggests, because a) it's high-profile, and money managers don't like to be in the spotlight (RB: that's far from universal, IMHO), and b) while they can make, say, $30 million a year at Harvard, if they ran a hedge fund, they might make something more like $250 million annually.

Lots of thoughts about this.

First, and most important, the Times completely ignores another, oft-whispered reason for Meyer's departure and the reluctance of anyone else to take the job: the role that Summers may have played in Meyer's decision to resign.

I've heard from multiple sources in the Harvard world and the financial community that Meyers had grown frustrated with Summers' desire to have direct involvement in the Harvard Management Company, the investment firm Meyers ran to manage Harvard's money—even to the point of suggesting specific investment strategies and choices. That, more than the controversy over his staff salaries, may be the reason Meyers quit.

It may also be the reason no one else wants the job.

The Times inadvertently nibbles around the edges of this by reporting that the original search team for a Meyers replacement consisted of Summers, brother-in-arms Robert Rubin, and University treasurer James Rothenburg. (Both Rubin and Rothenburg are Summers' appointees to the Corporation.) That trio failed to find anyone, but its existence alone suggests that Summers must have wanted someone he could keep close, someone he could control. The fact that it failed might also suggest that those interviewed by the threesome were wary of Summers' role.

(The search is now being undertaken by a search committee. One wonders at what point Summers, Rubin and Rothenberg realized that their failure to hire someone was going to make them look silly.)

Because, truth be told, the salary differential between Harvard and hedge funds can't alone explain the fact that Harvard hasn't found anyone in the eight months it's been looking. Surely there must be a money manager somewhere who thinks that $25 million a year is enough; surely there must be a Harvard alum somewhere who believes that taking a money hit from the offensive to the insane is worth it, to serve the old alma mater. Perhaps it's not the money that matters, but the boss.

I know that some reporters have tried to get at the real story of Meyer's exit, but as long as Meyer won't talk, it's a tough nut to crack. Still, it's a huge and important story. Harvard can survive tension between the president and his faculty. But it will not stand for a president who may have driven out a money manager with an unprecedented track record. Because in the end, the key to Harvard's success, its titanic image, its aura of fortress-like impregnability, is money.

One wonders, too, how those alumni donations are going...wasn't that capital campaign supposed to start by now? Or has it been postponed again?

It would be interesting for someone at some point to create a chart of the problems that Summers was supposed to have solved...versus those he has created.

I'm back from five days spent in bucolic Woods Hole, on the southern tip of Cape Cod; I was doing some research at the Marine Biological Laboratories there. What a nice bunch of people! They allowed me to sit in on a class, showed me around the campus, and just generally welcomed me in every way they could. The way that a place of higher learning ought to be...

Woods Hole is a lovely town. It hosts two centers for marine biological study, the MBL and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (the acronym is pronounced "hooey," I'm told). Main Street has a few restaurants, a t-shirt shop, a market, a community center, and two coffee shops. I got used to getting my coffee and popover in the morning at Pie in the Sky; there are few greater pleasures than a summer morning in a seaport town, drinking coffee and reading the paper outside in the salt air.

There was just one problem: Woods Hole is part and parcel of Red Sox nation. And in this sense, a visit there felt like being a democrat in North Korea, like you're a lone martyr, fighting the good fight against some inbred totalitarian ideology. I saw a little girl wearing a handmade t-shirt that said on the front, "I root for two teams..." On the back, it continued, "...the Red Sox, and anyone playing the Yankees!" Poor love. I considered calling social services, but decided she was probably too far gone to be helped.

The t-shirt store had one popular item, a shirt that showed the Yankees logo being squeezed. The caption read "Chokees!", a reference to the 2004 playoff tragedy. I saw several lost souls wearing this very same item.

Huh.

I don't quite understand that line of attack. Because if the Yankees choked, then the Red Sox comeback wasn't really so glorious. It wasn't that they were heroic; it's that the Yankees choked.

Now, as a Yankees fan, I hate to give the Sox credit, but I don't think the Yankees choked at all. Every game between the two teams last season was a battle, and whoever won, it always seemed it could just as easily have gone the other way. So even when the Yankees were up 3-o in the championship series, no one in New York was counting the Sox out, that's for sure. The Sox won because—gulp—they were the better team last year, and they deserved it.

Also, because Kevin Brown is one of the world's crummiest pitchers.

Anyway, my point is, Sox fans can't have it both ways: They can't talk about how amazing their team was, and in the same breath delight in the Yankees' "choke."

Oh, and by the way? The Sox lost to the Twins, 12-0, last night.

The second episode of "Over There" still suffered from some Hollywood flaws, such as the torture sequence at the beginnng—it was a dream, right?— but I have to say, I found much of it gripping. The scenes involving the soldiers manning a roadblock were really unsettling; you certainly got the feeling of how easy it would be to shoot an innocent civilian, and how easily it would be to get killed by someone who looked like an innocent civilian.

I know the ratings for Week One of "Over There" were strong; I don't know what last night's were, but I hope they held up. This may be an imperfect depiction of war, but it's better than what the network news is showing—when they show anything at all.

I just saw the president on CNN say something like, "We are fighting and beating the terrorists in Iraq so that we don't have to confront them here at home."

Does anyone still believe this nonsense? If we're getting safer at home, why are people getting searched on the subway in New York? Why does Congress want to make Washington air space permanently off-limits?

The truth is, we are creating new terrorists in Iraq, it's very unclear whether we're winning there, and our country feels less safe now than it did in 2002, for example.

Bush added that "we will stay on the offense against these people."

Huh.

Does anyone else feel that we're not exactly taking the offensive, whether in Iraq or at home?

These lines are essentially what Bush has been saying for the past five years. I wonder if the general public isn't finally wising up to the fact that this is, and has always been, pablum. There may be serious, legitimate rationales for the war in Iraq. But Bush isn't making them.

The New York Times has a short piece on Harvard's settlement of the HIID matter. Short, but it does provide more information than the Harvard Gazette, including the fact that protagonist Andrei Shleifer will have to pay $2 million to the government.

According to the Times, "Mr. Shleifer said in a statement that he believed he would have prevailed had the case gone to trial, but that legal fees would have exceeded the amount he was paying the government."

Huh.

If I could afford it—and Shleifer, who also has a private investment firm on the side (as does his wife), can—and I really believed I would prevail, I'd go to court. Apparently money means more to Shleifer than becoming convicted of a civil crime.

Which, come to think of it, might explain why Shleifer is convicted.

The Miami Herald's editorial page says that Conrad Harper's principled departure from the Harvard Corporation shows the importance of having minorities involved at the highest levels of higher education, and suggests that Larry Summers should resign.

If you have some time to spare, try finding any mention of the Harvard Institute for International Development on Andres Shleifer's resume.

Guess what? You won't!

Oh sure, there's an item for "Advisor, Government of Russia, 1991 to 1997." Followed by about ten pages of awards and publications. But nothing for HIID...

Harvard has settled with the Department of Justice in the Harvard Institute for International Development fraud case. Under the terms of the settlement, Harvard will pay $26.5 million to the federal government. And that raises more questions about the fate of Harvard economist, and close friend of Larry Summers, Andres Shleifer.

Some background. In 1992, HIID won a $50-million contract from USAID to consult on Russia's transition from communism to capitalism. At the time, HIID—which no longer exists—was run by Shleifer. But it all came crashing down when the government charged Shleifer with insider trading, allegedly investing in companies he was directing US dollars toward. In 2000, the government filed a civil lawsuit against Harvard, charging fraud.

The settlement appears to be a victory for both sides. The government gets some money and some vindication; Harvard gets rid of a lawsuit that has dragged on for years, brought reams of bad publicity—it would bring more if it weren't so darn complicated—and could, if they'd lost a trial, have cost the university considerably more than $26.5 million.

So now comes the interesting part: What will Larry Summers do with Andres Shleifer? Though Shleifer is mysteriously on leave for the upcoming school year, he still has tenure at Harvard. He is officially the Whipple V. N. Jones professor of economics.

On the one hand, Shleifer has just cost the university almost $27 million. (Perhaps more, if you include legal fees.) On the other hand, he's one of Summers' close friends at Harvard. And though Summers was said to have recused himself, it's widely believed that he remains a staunch supporter of his friend.

Let's pose a hypothetical, to make this even more interesting: What would Summers do if the professor who cost the university that much money were African-American and taught African-American Studies? Or a female sociologist? Or an African-American anthropologist?

I think the answer is pretty clear; those people would no longer be teaching at Harvard. More: Summers would make an example of them.

At this point, Summers may have no choice but to bid farewell to Shleifer. Certainly the language of the Harvard Gazette story on the matter (see link above) doesn't bode well for Shleifer.

"We welcome having this matter behind us," Robert W. Iuliano, the University's vice president and general counsel, told the Gazette. "Over the course of the litigation, the Court has affirmed our position that the University engaged in no institutional wrongdoing. "

Note that phrase, "no institutional wrongdoing."

A couple paragraphs down, the Gazette adds this: "The University was found liable only for breach of contract, and the Court made clear in its ruling that the conduct causing the breach was not done with Harvard's knowledge or to Harvard's benefit."

Hmmm...and we all know who did engage in that conduct, don't we? Is Harvard hanging Shleifer out to twist in the wind?

I find this drama fascinating from a moral and political perspective, but from a personal one, it must be tough for Summers. It can't be easy to have to fire a friend. But I don't see how Summers has any other choice.

Here's a question I don't know the answer to, and maybe someone out there can help: Do Harvard professors get paid while they're on leave? (I would think they do, except under exceptional circumstances.) More specifically, is Shleifer going to be paid this school year?

(Are you out there, Harvard Crimson?)

If so, hasn't he cost Harvard enough?

Movie studios have never exactly been a font of principle and courage, but even by their standards, it'd be pathetic if they buckled to Catholic pressure to water down The Da Vinci Code.

The thesis of the book is that the Catholic Church suppressed the revelation of a marriage between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, and imposed a male hierarchy upon what had been a religion with a strong female presence.

Imagine...someone saying that the Catholic Church is dominated by men. The outrage!

So naturally, Catholic groups such as Opus Dei and the Catholic League are pushing Sony and director Ron Howard to water down or change the book's central tenet. (Does the Catholic League do anything except protest?) And Sony is hinting that it doesn't want to do anything to offend Catholics.... Problem is, if you change the conspiracy theory, the book pretty much won't make any sense whatsoever.

The Da Vinci Code is barely a book in some traditional measures, such as characterization; it's really a dressed-up screenplay. At least from that perspective, it's pretty darn good. It may be all a crock, but it's a fun read, and it'd make a great movie pretty much as written.

So let The Da Vinci Code be. Remember: It's a novel. Fiction. Why would the Catholic Church be so afraid that people will believe a fiction? Or is it just this particular fiction that the church doesn't want people to believe>

Big & Rich are the most uncool white men in the history of creation. And the fans at country music concerts couldn't dance if their lives depended on it. Sorry, red staters, but it's true.

I mean, really..."my give a damn's busted"?

That's what a poster accuses me of being (see the posts under "Steroid Nation") for accusing the entire Red Sox team of being on steroids yet cheering Jason Giambi on like mad.

The answer is, yes, I am a sentimental fool. And if you throw some alcohol in me, I am also a dancing fool.

More to the point....

Other people have suggested to me that Giambi's remarkable return to form must mean that "he's back on the juice." I simply refuse to believe it. After the health problems he went through last season...after all the vitriole to which he was subjected, despite being the only man in baseball to tell the truth and admit that he took steroids...I simply can't believe that Giambi would risk taking them again. And so I choose to believe that he worked and worked and worked—especially with hitting coach Don Mattingly—and has become a great player again.

We all need to believe in something, right? I choose to believe in redemption. Because we all make mistakes. Don't we deserve the chance to make things right?

Jason, please—don't prove me wrong. I don't think I could handle the disappointment.

Bill Schneider on CNN just flashed a poll saying that 76% of Americans don't object to the teaching of creationism in public schools...but in a classic case of either bad polling or bad reporting, Schneider didn't mention whether Americans supported teaching evolution as part of a science curriculum or in a religious context. Which is kind of the point, no?

What would the response be if the poll asked, "Should creationism be taught in science courses?"

If the number of Americans who said no wasn't higher than 24%, I'd be a little surprised and a lot depressed.

So now Seattle Mariners pitcher Jamie Franklin has tested positive for steroids, the second major league baseball player in two days to be busted. (The Orioles' Rafael Palmeiro, of course, was the first.)

This is all very discouraging, but equally unsurprising. All the stories about how widespread steroid use has been in baseball are proving to be true. And Palmeiro's finger-wagging denial before Congress now seems ever-more calculated and practiced; it reminds me of Bill Clinton's adamant tone when he said, "I did not have sex with that woman."

Which brings me to my point: We now have to consider very seriously the possibility that the entire Red Sox team was on steroids last year, when the Sox won the Series. It certainly helps to explain their behavior, in addition to their hitting and pitching.

As a result, we should now discuss whether the Sox' World Series victory should go into the record books with an asterisk...kind of like the 1918 Black Sox.

It pains me to say this, but perhaps we should just negate that Series victory....as if it never happened.

Conrad Harper's letter to Larry Summers and the rest of the Harvard Corporation has been posted on the Harvard website. Because I'm writing from a dial-up connection—yes, dial-up—I can't really quote from it here. No matter; you should read it yourself . It's quite remarkable. We now know that at least one member of the Harvard Corporation called on Larry Summers to resign last spring....

I've long argued that many people at Harvard have embarrassed themselves or done damage to their own reputation in order to defend Larry Summers. Some did so because Summers was or could be responsible for their own professional advancement; some did so out of the belief (mistaken, in my opinion) that they were helping Harvard.

I have also argued that one unintended consequence of the Corporation's choice of Larry Summers might be a complete discrediting of the Corporation, leading to meaningful reform of the secretive, elitist way the Harvard Corporation does business. I still think that's a long shot—at least the second part of the thesis—but we're a little closer to that than we were about a week ago.

I'm up in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, doing some research on a topic TBD. (Not the worst place to be working in the first week of August in what has been a miserable summer, at least in terms of the weather.) So the posts will be somewhat sporadic for the next few days...

Here are things I might write about if I had the time today:
1) Jason Giambi hitting as many home runs in a month (14) as the Yankee recordholder, Mickey Mantle (good)
2) John Bolton (bad)
3) The reaction I received when I told a group of science students, about half of them women, that I'd written a book about Larry Summers and Harvard (sarcastic laughter that surprised even me)
4) the question of why the New York Times sports section put a story about the Red Sox winning a game above the fold on page one, and how the Times is either giving Boston a nod, now that it wons the Globe, or trying to show its status as a national paper at the expense of hometown fans....

More tk....