Shots In The Dark

Yankees versus Red Sox. Three final games. The Yankees up by one. The Red Sox playing at Fenway, where they are tough to beat.

As I've said before, isn't autumn baseball grand?

These are two terrific teams engaged in the best rivalry in sports. And there is nothing like baseball to ratchet up the tension. For the past month, this pennant race has been tightening...and tightening....and tightening. It's getting hard to take. My brother, also a Yankees fan, insists that he would like nothing more than for the regular season to end in a tie, followed by a one-game playoff between the Yanks and Sox. I couldn't take it, and I don't know if most Sox fans could either. If the Yankees lost, we'd be subjected to millions of column inches about how the 1978 Bucky Dent homer has finally been erased. If the Yankees win, we'd lord it over Sox fans so brutally they'd never recover.

No...please. It's bad for the heart. Let the Yanks win two out of three this weekend.

Herewith, a handy viewers' guide to the most pertinent questions of the next three days.

1) How big a factor will Fenway be?
2) Whose middle-inning relief pitchers will hurt their team more?
3) Which Mike Mussina will show up on Sunday—the one who pitched a terrific game in his first start back from a sore elbow, or the one who lasted about an inning in his last start?
4) Will anyone pitch to David Ortiz after the sixth inning? Just walk the friggin' guy, okay?
5) Can Tim Wakefield continue to pitch as brilliantly as he has the past couple of months? (Won't that guy ever retire?)
6) Curt Schilling has been mediocre this year—except when pitching against the Yankees. Can he pull it off again, just as he did about three weeks ago, when he was masterful against the Yanks at the Stadium? Or will he bumble and fall?
7) Who'll rise to the occasion more tonight: Yankee rookie pitcher Chien Ming Wang, who is as cool a customer as I've ever seen in a rookie, or the emotional, fiery David Wells—who famously fades near the end of a long season, particularly as he gets older and fatter. (Sorry, was the framing of that question biased?)
8) Who'll manage better, Joe Torre or Terry Francona? Last year, Francona clearly outmanaged Torre in the championship series, making a series of moves that all paid off while Torre managed like a mime on Prozac.
9) Who wants the MVP more, David Ortiz or Alex Rodriguez? (Who says I never say anything good about the Red Sox? Unless something changes dramatically this weekend, I'd give the award to Ortiz, no matter which team finishes first. Rodriguez has been great for the Yankees...but it seems like every time the Red Sox come from behind and win, Ortiz is the reason. The guy is just great.)
10) Defense, defense, defense. Whose is better? I give a slight nod to the Yankees—particularly at third, where A-Rod has been astonishingly good.
11) As Gene Hackman famously said in the classic football film "The Replacements," in order to win the big games, "you gotta have heart." Which team wants it more?

Go Yankees!

Today marks Jack Meyer's final day as head of the Harvard Management Corporation, the investment group that invests Harvard's billions. Meyer has been wildly successful in the job, so the pressure is on his successor, which may be one reason why, despite an almost year-long search, his successor has not yet been named.

Vice-president for finance Ann Berman—herself heading for the exits—tells the Crimson that there will be "transitional leadership" at HMC until a final replacement for Meyer is named.

There remain those at Harvard who are hoping that phrase "transitional leadership" will apply to other areas of the university.

In any case, this is a hugely important story. More than its students, more than its professors, what drives the modern Harvard is money, and it could be argued that Jack Meyer has been the most important person in the creation of modern Harvard. It could also be argued that this will be the most important personnel decision Larry Summers will make as president.

In universities as in politics, the adage holds true: If you want to know the real story, follow the money.

The University of Michigan is initiating a series of undergraduate courses on ethics. Here's one description:

"Forums to facilitate discussion about ethics are undefined right now, but their basic function is clear — providing a discussion setting on topics such as military action in Iraq and Harvard President Lawrence Summers’s controversial comments on women in science."

It is an interesting moment in Harvard's history—although not inherently a bad one—when its president has become a topic in other universities' classes for a conversation about ethics.

Funnily enough, the Michigan program is taking shape just as Harvard seems to be phasing out its own undergraduate requirement in "moral reasoning".....

Here's a line from the battle-cry of defiance posted on Tom DeLay's website:

"Thank you for visiting and I look forward to keeping you up to date on our fight this out of control DA."

It's a classic story: Whenever you get indicted, the first thing that goes is your ability to write a sentence.

David Brooks has a solid column in today's Times about the DeLay situation. (I'd link to it, but because of the NYT's foolish, influence-diminishing greed, I can't.)

Here's the critical graf:

"Will we learn from DeLay's fall about the self-destructive nature of the team [partisan] mentality? Of course not. The Democrats have drawn the 10-years-out-of-date conclusion that in order to win, they need to be just like Tom DeLay. They need to rigidly hew to orthodoxy. They need Deaniac hyperpartisanship. They need to organize their hatreds around Bush the way the Republicans did around Clinton."

Seems to me that Brooks is exactly right. While Democrats can revel in the Republicans' current troubles, those troubles actually mask glaring Democratic weaknesses. It's still unclear what the party stands for, other than a nip-at-his-heels opposition to Bush. The party lacks not only a vision, but also strong, charismatic leaders to communicate it. The closest the Dems come to such a figure—at least in terms of the 2008 election—is Hillary Clinton, and even though you can't underestimate her, she does have an awful lot of baggage.

My guess is that by the time 2008 rolls around, most Americans are going to want a fresh face from both parties. (Weirdly enough, 69-year-old John McCain, whose candor is always refreshing, fits the bill more than anyone else other than Barack Obama, who won't be running this time.) Is there any Democratic candidate who fits that description? Because despite the GOP implosion, Democrats still lack a candidate they can proudly call their own.

According to Jennifer Aniston, yes, says the gossip rag Star (via Gawker).

I must say that, as a former magazine editor, I admire the editor who came up with the idea of running a side-by-side comparison of a beautiful but slightly wacko movie bombshell and a hideous fictional movie monster torn apart by the corruption of power.

Yes, you need to do the serious stuff. (Maybe not at Star, though.) But sometimes, you need to have a little fun too....

And just for the record, in my opinion, Jennifer Aniston really ought to be annoyed at her ex-husband, not Angelina Jolie, who has two lovely adopted children.

I would add that there are other figures in our public life who may bear a greater resemblance to Gollum.

Tom DeLay is indicted, the Red Sox lose, and the Yankees retake first place...on the same day. Coincidence? I think not.

Humor me, if you would, while I make a modest suggestion.

One of the many reasons I dislike the Sox is that, although they play in leftie Massachusetts, they are actually a Red State team. They have the most evangelical Christians of any team in baseball, even as they date college students (she's a freshman?) and marry strippers. They are proudly anti-intellectual, calling themselves "the idiots." They campaign for George W. Bush.

So isn't it just possible that the fate of the Sox and the fate of the Republican Party are linked? And that the heavens have turned against both?

I know the season isn't over. I know anything can happen, and overconfidence is a recipe for disaster. But I can still hope, right? Hope that just maybe this time, for once, God is on our side.

Here's a funny/sad joke.

Donald Rumsfeld is giving the president his daily briefing. He concludes by saying, "Yesterday, three Brasilians were killed."

"OH NO!" the president says. "That's terrible."

His staff sits stunned at this rare display of emotion, nervously watching as the president sits, head in hands.

Finally, Bush looks up and asks, "How many is a brazillion?"


________________________________________________________________

P.S. Thanks, Kristen...

Yesterday's faculty meeting sounds like a hot one. First, Randy Matory led a discussion about Conrad Harper's resignation from the Harvard Corporation, suggesting that "the secretive Corporation, which is Harvard’s highest governing body, is indifferent to faculty concerns and has shied away from confronting difficult questions regarding Summers’ leadership."

Sounds about right to me, from what I hear.

A quick digression: I'm enjoying the fact that the default adjective the Crimson uses to describe the Corporation is "secretive." Not "influential," not "wise," not "respected," not even "powerful." But "secretive." The Crimson is correct: its secrecy is the most salient fact about the Harvard Corporation...and it is also part of the dynamic by which the Corporation's very legitimacy is eroding. It fascinates me that a consequence of the Harvard Corporation secretly choosing Lawrence Summers to be Harvard's president will ultimately mean a choice it doesn't want to make: becoming more transparent, or losing its moral authority over Harvard. Are the alumni paying attention?

Okay, back to the faculty meeting.

Apparently an even hotter discussion revolved around the fact that FAS dean Bill Kirby announced that FAS is going to slow the hiring of new faculty. It's not a freeze, Kirby insisted, just more modest growth to give FAS finances a chance to breathe.

Huh.

Here's a question for some enterprising Crimson reporter: What is the real state of the university's finances and fundraising?

Some relevant facts:
1) Harvard Management Corporation head Jack Meyer is quitting, and Harvard can't seem to find a replacement for him.
2) Vice-president of finance Ann Berman is leaving Harvard to spend more time at her home in Italy.
3) The University reported that its fundraising last year was the highest since Larry Summers became president, which sounded, let's say, counter-intuitive to me, because....
4) Harvard fundraisers simultaneously announced that they are postponing a long-planned capital campaign for another couple of years. The campaign was supposed to have started by now, but President Summers' controversies have delayed its inception, and Harvard fundraisers say now that the delay is intended to help prioritize the Allston development.
5) And...FAS is slowing hiring, despite very public pledges by Bill Kirby to increase the size of the faculty. It would be interesting for someone to go back and look at his statements to this effect over the years and see how they jibe with his current announcement. It would also be interesting to see how many of those new hires are senior faculty, how many are part-time or junior, and how many more faculty are taking leaves of absence under the university's recent, more generous leave policy.
6) Meanwhile, as some at the faculty meeting apparently pointed out, the university is spending $50 million in diversity efforts as a result of Summers' unfortunate remarks about women in science.

Sounds to me like there's a story there...and an important one. I suggest a three-part series.
__________________________________________________________________

P.S. I'm grateful to the Crimson for reporting on the faculty meeting, but it's a little hard to tell from your relatively brief stories what really goes on. Can't you guys post a transcript? Or at least the minutes?

Two Japanese scientists filmed a giant squid 900 meters underwater off the Ogasawara Islands in the North Pacific. How cool is that? No one's ever photographed a giant squid before. And to make it even cooler, "Architeuthis"—that's the squid—"appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey."

Excellent!

Here's their report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The Times reports that the Army whistleblower pursuing the exposure of detainee abuse believes that the Army is more interested in harassing him and his fellow truth-tellers than in rooting out torture.

"I'm convinced this is going in a direction that's not consistent with why we came forward," Captain Fishback said in a telephone interview from Fort Bragg, N.C. "We came forward because of the larger issue that prisoner abuse is systemic in the Army. I'm concerned this will take a new twist, and they'll try to scapegoat some of the younger soldiers. This is a leadership problem."

(Credit to reporter Eric Schmitt for getting Fishback on the record for the first time.)

As if to confirm his supicions, this is what Donald Rumsfeld said when asked about the torture.
"All I know is that the Army is taking it seriously. To the extent somebody's done something that they shouldn't have done, they'll be punished for it."

Let's deconstruct that response a little bit, beginning with the phrase, "All I know is..."

Mr. Rumself is the secretary of defense. If all he knows is that the Army "is taking it seriously," then he is profoundly ignorant of extremely serious allegations regarding the men under his charge. It is hard to know what's worse: whether Rumsfeld is telling the truth about his ignorance, or whether he's lying in an attempt to cover his own ass and disassociate himself from the horror of Americans torturing their prisoners.

Okay. Let's move on to the "Army is taking it seriously" part. It amuses me, in a dark sort of way, that Rumsfeld says this as if it is meaningful. To take allegations of torture seriously is not an accomplishment. It is a responsibility; it is a minimum. It is not something to be proud of. But in any event, the Army's response—trying to root out the whistleblowers—suggests that it is taking the matter seriously not because torture is wrong, but because it is bad public relations.

Finally: "To the extent that somebody's done something wrong, they will be punished for it." Implicit in Rumsfeld's statement is that any misdeeds are merely the work of wrongheaded individuals, and a little jail time will take care of the problem. (Reinforcing Fishback's concern that younger soldiers will be scapegoated.) There's no acknowledgment of Fishback's charge that this torture was systemic. Until he at least addresses that issue, Rumsfeld isn't dealing with the problem of torture.

But one can see why he's dodging: Because if the torture is systemic, then it has to do with the culture of the military which he leads, and the very nature of this war, which he promoted.

Would it be too much to suggest that Capt. Fishback and Donald Rumsfeld trade places? Fishback could run the Pentagon, and Rumsfeld could go fight in Iraq....

Ashley Smith, the Georgia woman who persuaded her murderous captor to release her by reading him excerpts from "The Purpose-Driven Life," has now admitted she also gave him some of her crystal methamphetamine.

What a fable for our times! Nothing is simple anymore. Rafael Palmeiro takes steroids and Viagra; Kate Moss does blow; Lance Armstrong may or may not have taken hormones; Ashley Smith snorts a little meth. (You do snort it, don't you?) Everyone, apparently, is medicated, and the line between the legal and the illegal never seems to make sense.

Me, I like some good strong coffee in the morning....

What do Pope Benedict XVI, Camille Paglia, and Lawrence Summers have in common? No, it's not their hair. They're all on a list of Foreign Policy magazine's top 100 "public intellectuals," and you can vote for your top five.

The list is a little bizarre; you can see the biases of Foreign Policy's editors pretty clearly. A quick scan, for example, shows about a dozen Harvard people (Henry Louis Gates, Niall Ferguson, E.O. Wilson, etc.)...and, by my count, a whopping six women.

Is that really an accurate reflection of women's intellectual contributions to our public debate? Or is Foreign Policy just sexist? You make the call....

The Yale Daily News has an interesting profile of President Richard Levin, contrasting his management style with that of Larry Summers.

The two men really do represent different styles of leadership. Levin is quiet and low-key; Summers, um, isn't. Outside of New Haven, no one knows who Levin is; everyone seems to know who Larry Summers is. You could argue that Levin has been a better president than Summers has, and that one of the reasons is because he's avoided the kind of controversy Summers keeps provoking in favor of the university's substantive needs. On the other hand, proponents of an activist university president, a "public intellectual," might argue that provoking such controversy is part of the job.

It may also be the case that each president is suited to the particular environment in which he's working. Levin needed to focus on Yale's finances, the condition of New Haven (so much improved under Levin, it's really impressive), and labor strife. Summers, meanwhile, leads a university which doesn't have to worry about money but has been, perhaps, intellectually lethargic....

Have you been following the brouhaha about Allessandra Stanley* and Geraldo Rivera? I'm a little late to the story, but I'm fascinated by it. Stanley's the TV critic for the Times, and Geraldo is, of course, Geraldo.

In a September 5th column on reporters in New Orleans, Stanley wrote this sentence: ""Fox's Geraldo Rivera did his rivals one better: yesterday, he nudged an Air Force rescue worker out of the way so his camera crew could tape him as he helped lift an older woman in a wheelchair to safety."

Geraldo went ballistic, loudly proclaiming that he'd done no such thing and announcing that if Stanley were a man, he'd challenge him/her to a fight. Rivera demanded a correction; Times managing editor Bill Keller refused to give him one.

The Times' public editor, Byron Calame, subsequently disagreed. After watching the videotape upon which Stanley based her allegation, he said, "My viewings of the videotape - at least a dozen times, including one time frame by frame - simply doesn't show me any 'nudge' of any Air Force rescuer by Mr. Rivera." As if to drive home the point that Stanley won't stand behind her reporting, Calame added that "Ms. Stanley declined my invitation to watch the tape with me."

Calame is obviously right; Keller and Stanley are obviously wrong. How do I know that? Listen to Keller's reasoning, in a widely distributed e-mail, in defense of Stanley.

Keller writes: "It was a semi-close call, in that the video does not literally show how Mr. Rivera insinuated himself between the wheelchair-bound storm victim and the Air Force rescuers who were waiting to carry her from the building. Whether Mr. Rivera gently edged the airman out of the way with an elbow (literally 'nudged'), or told him to step aside, or threw a body block, or just barged into an opening - it's hard to tell, since it happened just off-camera."

Let's use the kind of linguistic precision that a Times editor ought to use and deconstruct that a bit. Start with the first sentence: "...the video does not literally show how Mr. Rivera insininuated himself....."

In fact, the word "literally" is a fudge that any decent college newspaper editor would know better than to rely upon. The video either shows something, or it doesn't. Obviously, it doesn't. The correct way to write that sentence: "The video does not show how Mr. Rivera insuated himself..."

I could go on—"a semi-close call"..."it happened just off-camera..."—but you get the point. Keller's indulging in weasel language.

According to Calame, Keller then added that "'frankly,' that in light of Mr. Rivera's reaction to the review, Ms. Stanley 'would have been justified in assuming' - and therefore writing, apparently - that Mr. Rivera used 'brute force' rather than merely a 'nudge' on Sept. 4. "

In other words, the Times can run an allegation about someone that it has no proof of—and then declare its correctness based on the person's reaction to the smear. In fact, the Times can actually embellish the original charge.

Huh.

I don't think they teach that technique in journalism school.

At the end of the web version of Stanley's story, you will now find this wan disclaimer:

"The editors understood the 'nudge' comment as the television critic's figurative reference to Mr. Rivera's flamboyant intervention. Mr. Rivera complained, but after reviewing a tape of his broadcast, The Times declined to publish a correction.

"Numerous readers, however - now including the newspaper's public editor, who also scrutinized the tape - read the comment as a factual assertion. The Times acknowledges that no nudge was visible on the broadcast."

The editors understood the "nudge" to be figurative? Oh, bullshit. If the "nudge" was figurative, then it simply wasn't a story, and no editor would have allowed it, because if it was figurative, then it had no point.

The Times should just admit that Stanley made up an assertion about Geraldo Rivera because she wanted to juice up her story and Rivera's an easy target....and Bill Keller should lay off that pipe.


* Full disclosure: I've had my own issues with Stanley, who once included me in a trend story about "underlings" who write "revenge" tell-alls about their former bosses, despite the fact that American Son couldn't fit that description less. I've also had issues getting a correction from the Times, such as when Style section writer Bob Morris included me in a trend story about the return of "gall" for writing a book about John Kennedy after criticizing others who spoke out about him after his death (long story, this isn't the time)—without mentioning that he was one of those publicly slammed (not by me) for his on-air milking of his (slender) connection to John. This would seem an important thing to disclose to the reader, no? Try telling that to the Times editor who told me to "write a letter," and then refused to print that part of the letter.....

It would appear that Harvard is finally making some progress on its long-delayed curricular review: a committee of five professors is preparing a report of recommendations on general education, the most central aspect of the undergraduate review.

As the Crimson reports, "The report recommends replacing the Core’s 11 fields of study with three broader disciplines—Arts and Humanities, Study of Societies, and Science and Technology. Students would be required to take three courses in each of the two areas most distinct from their concentration."

I am underwhelmed. It took four years to say, well, let's just divide up the world of knowledge into three categories and make students take two courses from each? Truth is, any serious member of the Harvard faculty could have done that in about twenty minutes. It's not exactly rocket science.

What's interesting about this report—and to be fair, the Crimson saw only a draft—is the essential abdication of any educational philosophy. At least the Core, for all its flaws, had a view of the world, a sense of what a Harvard education was supposed to accomplish. A curriculum this broad, and this loosely structured, doesn't seem to have an opinion on anything, except perhaps that the Core is bad, and that Harvard students feel they labor under too many requirements.

Well, it's early yet; there's a long way to go with this curricular review. But is this really the best the finest minds in the nation can come up with?

Janet Maslin reviews the new memoir by Christopher Lawford, the son of Peter Lawford and JFK sister Patricia Kennedy, this morning. It's called Symptoms of Withdrawal, and it actually sounds pretty good.

I read the review with particular interest, and perhaps self-interest, because, having written a book about a Kennedy, I follow the genre. Next out is Carole Radziwill's "What Remains: A Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss." Carole is the widow of Anthony Radziwill, who was one of John Kennedy's closest friends and died of cancer just a few weeks after John, his wife Carolyn, and her sister Lauren died in a plane crash in July, 1999. My heart goes out to her; she has had a rough time.

Having gone through a trial by fire to publish my book, and receiving some pretty tough and personal criticism for doing so, I'm slightly bemused by the fact that these books—which are much closer to "tell-alls" than American Son was—aren't raising an ethical eyebrow. Where are the media ethics police now?

But more than bemused, I'm supportive of these books. This idea that writing about the Kennedys is somehow morally wrong is just silly. (Well, not always.) If people have a legitimate story to tell, they should tell it, and in the best, most honest, most serious way they can. I was even supportive of Robert Littell, whose book, The Men We Became: My Friendship with John F. Kennedy, Jr., came out not long after Littell publicly criticized me for writing American Son.

Anyone who's had close contact with the Kennedys knows that it's a wild ride; we need to be understanding that people process that experience in different ways. For some, that means spewing bile; for others, that means trying to make sense of the experience through a book. I happen to think that one way is preferable to the other, but I understand that both are aftershocks of grief.

So good for Christopher Lawford and Carole Radziwill; I wish them luck with their books. I don't know if I'll be able to read Carole's—that's a little close to a still-painful memory for comfort—but I hope that the act of writing gave the authors some much-needed peace of mind. I know it did for me.

It's a fair question, and a very important one. At least to the British, who are, apparently, in the midst of a heated debate on whether or not Kate Moss is particularly attractive.

I mention this because I've never felt that she is, and so I've watched fascinated as she has been constantly described as a beauty icon. To me, she represented the disconnect between the world of fashion, populated by gay men who see women's bodies as objects to manipulate and control, and the world of male heterosexuality, which is much more catholic in its tastes. One simple example: Every time I hear a female friend complain about her weight when she's not even close to being overweight—which happens way too much—I remind her that straight guys like curves. If you asked straight men whether they'd rather spend a night with Anna Nicole Smith or Kate Moss, Anna Nicole would take about 90% of that poll...

Those are two extremes, of course. But if you look at the magazines that cater to heterosexual guys with babealicious photos—FHM or Stuff or Maxim, all those rags—you won't ever find the heroin chic look on the cover. And those magazines know their market.

The fact is that if fashion designers were straight, Kate Moss would never have become a supermodel in the first place...and she probably wouldn't be a cokehead now. And more important, millions of women wouldn't feel that they have to weigh under a hundred pounds to look beautiful.

The Times has a think piece on how African-American voters lack a consensus on this year's NYC mayoral race, suggesting, the Times says, that the black vote is becoming harder to predict.

Well, kinda. Does this mean that African-American voters are less affiliated with the Democratic Party than they used to be? On a national level, I doubt it. Especially not after Hurricane Katrina.

Does it mean that Freddy Ferrer is such a weak candidate that he can't even hold on to the Democrats' core voters?

Why, yes, it does....

A new paper published in Science holds that the reason there are fewer women than men in the sciences is because of discrimination, not because of innate differences in aptitude between the sexes, as Larry Summers proposed last winter.

The Associated Press runs this quote: "We're not too stupid to do science, but there are real structural and attitudinal impediments to the advancement of women that create an unfair playing field," says Jo Handelsman, a University of Wisconsin microbiologist who is lead author of the paper.

But not everyone thinks the paper is good scholarship.

"It's simply a political statement. I don't see any evidence of original research," said Stephen Balch of the National Association of Scholars.

But then, the NAS itself seems like a political group, judging by this "Open Letter to Lawrence Summers" posted on its website, which begins:

"As badly as Nancy Hopkins and her ilk behaved in berating Lawrence Summers for his provocative remarks about male-female aptitudes...."

Nancy Hopkins and her "ilk"? What exactly are you trying to imply there, NAS? Doesn't sound very scholarly to me....

Some of those readers who didn't like Harvard Rules, or thought that it was too tough on President Larry Summers, faulted my emphasis on his social graces, or lack thereof. They missed my point. My opinion about Summers' manners wasn't the issue; Harvard's opinion was, and Summers' boorish manners had repeatedly handicapped his ability to lead the university. That's why I wrote about them at length.

In today's Globe, Marcella Bombardieri reports on a classic example: At this weekend's reunion of Harvard's African-American alumni, Summers repeatedly mispronounced the name of law school alumn and U.S. senator Barack Obama (Bare-Ack instead of Buh-rock).

As I wrote in the book, that fact that Summers' mispronunciations occur primarily with ethnic-sounding names doesn't help him when he's trying to reach out to minority constituencies.

Obviously, enough people remarked on this for it to make the Boston Globe, and for Obama himself to make a joke about it at another speech when Summers wasn't present.....