Myths of Katrina Remember that terrible story about how someone in New Orleans shot at a helicopter trying to airlift sick people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? And the seven-year-old girl who was raped and killed in the Superdome? The stories of rampant lawlessness and rape, of gangs of thugs running amok at the very same Superdome?

Never happened, according to this excellent article in Reason magazine. None of it. Instead, there were rampant rumormongering, lousy journalism, and irresponsible public officials, like when Mayor Ray Nagin predicted that there'd be 10,000 New Orleans citizens dead from the hurricane. (The actual toll—still awful, of course—was about 900 at the time Reason went to press.)

The article doesn't mention a pet peeve of mine, which I'll bet my left pinkie could fall into this category of hysteria and hype: the reports of thousands of missing children which prompted CNN, in full milk-the-hurricane-for-every-rating-point-we-can mode, to run photos of "missing" children like an on-screen slide show.  ¶ 8:23 AM 0 comments   

  Ethics and Etiquette: A Discussion Judging from your posts, some of you think that I'm being unfair to Larry Summers and Lisa New for suggesting that the establishment of a wedding registry opens the door to, in my word, "ass-kissing," and that President Summers would do better to ask people who wish to celebrate his marriage to contribute money to Harvard.

I will concede that I'm a stickler for ethics, and that given the possibility of impropriety, it's best to be cautious. It's hard to say where this came from exactly—many sources, I'm sure—but I do remember one incident that affected me deeply.

After my sophomore year in college, I volunteered for a congressman in Washington, New Haven Democrat Bruce Morrison. I did the usual routine stuff—answered letters, wrote a bill to try to get New Haven on a postage stamp (it didn't pass), that kind of thing.

Like all congressional offices, ours would receive bundles of gifts from lobbyists and trade associations who wished to curry favor with the congressman and his staff. (The one I remember particularly well was a case of beer from Anheiser-Busch.) Every other office that I knew of was more than happy to take these gifts. The congressmen, who tended to underpay their staffs, knew that these little gifts could boost office morale, and didn't like to think that the staffs could be influenced by them—though of course they could be, and were.

But Morrison had run as a reformer, and he was serious about that; he made us return every single gift that came to the office. On one level, I was none too happy about that policy; I wasn't getting paid a dime to work there, and as a result, I rose at 5:00 AM on weekend mornings to work as a phone operator at the Washington Post. (Taking calls from angry subscribers who didn't receive their papers, or their comics sections—but that's another story.)

On another level, though, I admired Morrison for his position. I could see that these gifts did have an impact on the other congressional offices; you'd be surprised how little it takes to bribe someone, to create a feeling of indebtedness. ("Oh, come on, we should meet with these guys, they sent us that great case of beer....") If it didn't work, the lobbyists wouldn't have done it.

To some, Morrison's policy might have seemed priggish. But on balance, I think he was right. The gifts were designed to influence, and at least some of the time, they did. Better not to take the chance.

Now, of course, there are significant differences between gifts to a congressional office and gifts to newlyweds. But my point is twofold. First, that's one example of why I think about such things. And second, every act of giving becomes more loaded when you are giving to someone in power, someone who can do things for you. If you don't believe that, then you are living an unexamined life.

Ultimately, it's really the responsibility of the person in power to think about the issues involved...and the responsibility of the rest of us to discuss them. I've never resented it when people have discussed various ethical conundrums I've gotten into, partly because I always thought I was right, partly because the discussions had the potential to be interesting.

Perhaps I'm wrong; perhaps I'm over-reacting. But how could the discussion be a bad thing?  ¶ 11:27 AM 0 comments   

  Andrew Has a Point I generally disagree with Andrew Sullivan's diatribes against "the left," mostly because I think the left is so marginal and irrelevant that it's hardly worth getting upset about. But I do enjoy his year-end "Moore Awards," named after Michael Moore.

(Did Jane Smiley really say that? What a dolt.)

Check 'em out.....but remember that if one were to compile a similar list making fun of right-wing excesses in 2005, it would be equally entertaining, and considerably longer. And the scary part is, when the left-wing rants, everyone gives 'em a good kick until they're silent. When the right-wing rants, Karl Rove picks up the phone.....

P.S. Oh, wait—Andrew does compile some right-wing rants. Quite funny. (Just keep scrolling....)  ¶ 11:13 AM 0 comments   

  At Yale, a Radical Departure The Times has this interesting story on anthropologist David Graeber, an associate professor who did not receive tenure at Yale and blames that fact on his left-wing politicking. It's one of those stories where it's impossible to know whom to believe: the folks at Yale, who say that Graeber frequently showed up late to class; Graeber, who says older professors didn't appreciate his support for a grad student union (a truly dumb idea, in my opinion, but never mind); or the former Yale prof who says it's all the result of a system by which young professors at Yale get screwed. I imagine it's a bit of everything.

There is one little detail that makes me wonder about Graeber. Early in the article, he holds up a rubber bullet that he says was fired at him by Canadian police during an anti-globalization protest. The bullet, according to Graeber, grazed his head.

Given the difficulty of recovering a bullet that has grazed but not hit one in the head, I wonder if Graeber isn't taking a little artistic license here....

On the other hand, Graeber does give this quote, which, based on my own experience in graduate school and reporting Harvard Rules, seems exactly right:

"So many academics lead such frightened lives," he said. "The whole system sometimes seems designed to encourage paranoia and timidity. I wasn't willing to live like that."  ¶ 10:29 AM 3 comments   

  Thoughts on the Demise of Radar I haven't written about Radar, the new magazine more read about than read, because its founding editor, Maer Roshan, is an acquaintance, and I didn't think the magazine was very good. But I also believe that new magazines take some time—and deserve some time—to find their voice. You really can't judge a magazine on three issues, particularly one that was operating under a short financial leash and with a constantly uncertain future.

Now Radar is, well, under the radar: financier Mort Zuckerman pulled the plug on a promised $12 million investment after just three issues. The magazine's abrupt end has prompted some unfortunate sniping, with the magazine's young staffers making unfortunate jokes about Zuckerman ("What's small and pulls out in a hurry?") and Zuckerman behaving more professionally, pointing out that the magazine was losing money hand over fist. An angry Roshan has publicly taken exception to Zuckerman's version of events, which strikes me as a mistake, because when something like this happens, you should always be thinking about your next employer, not your last one. To his credit, though, Maer was passionate about his magazine, and I'm sure this has been tough on him—you can't blame the guy for being upset.

I think there were a couple of forces in play here that haven't really been talked about.

The first is that Radar was the wrong magazine for the time we're living in. Its obsession with celebrity—not in an US magazine-like way, but filtered celebrity—felt very '90s to me, very Talk. The covers were horrible: Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, and...well, I don't think I even saw the third issue. It all felt vaguely warmed-over and unserious, falling into a gray area between escapist rubbish and a serious magazine. And, I think, Maer made the mistake of believing that what plays well with inside-the-media media—Page Six, Gawker—mattered to anyone outside of a couple of Manhattan zip codes.

Second, the mainstream media right now is controlled by Baby Boomers, and they have been extremely reluctant to hand over the reins to the younger generation. (Is it X? Y? I can't remember.) That is, for example, the unwritten theme of Timothy O'Brien's interesting profile of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner. By contrast, it's very hard to think of a national magazine edited by someone under 45. The New Republic, I suppose, and maybe Men's Health. (If that counts.) Instead, the younger people are making their inroads at new magazines or on the web—one reason why Radar's website was the only part of the magazine that seemed to be having any impact.

Radar represented a media youth movement of sorts, but I'm not sure that Maer was the best ambassador of his generation. I suspect the rap against him—that he focuses more on public relations than on editing—is probably right, and the business side of things never seemed to interest him much. Perhaps because Maer's search for funding was so well-publicized, there was about Radar always an air of children playing with their parents' money. Maybe ten years ago, that would have worked; people were throwing money around more carelessly then. But now, there just seemed something pathetic about it.

On the one hand, I'll miss Radar, because I believe in magazines and want there to be more of them. On the other hand, I wish there could be more magazines that make our culture more serious, and Radar was not one of them. Maybe, had it been given time, it would have been.  ¶ 8:33 AM 6 comments   

  'Tis the Season, Apparently Want to curry favor with the president of Harvard and his wife? Well, here's one way to do it: Send them a gift from their Williams-Sonoma registry. (Follow the link and type in Elisa New.)

By my count, there are 35 different items that the new couple would like—and some more than one of—ranging from a $12 set of marisol napkins to a "Provence platter" for $199. There's also a wafflemaker ($59.95) and an ice cream maker ($149.95). Also, quite a lot of wine glasses.
Apparently the Summers-New household plans to do a lot of entertaining: Note that they're asking for three sets of 16-piece dinnerware, at $169 a set.

I am not enough of an etiquette expert to pass judgment on whether one is supposed to do this sort of thing for a second wedding (for both), or when the combined income of the new household is in the range of $750,000 a year, not to mention the free housing and the use of a car and driver. (It's almost enough to make one wonder if the new couple is expecting to be looking for new housing in the near future.)

But I do know that this kind of thing can lead to gifts being given for the wrong reasons. In Washington, they'd call it influence-buying, but in Cambridge, they can just call it ass-kissing.

Here's a suggestion for President Summers: Get rid of the wedding registration—surely you can afford your own ice cream maker—and announce that anyone who would like to celebrate your marriage with a gift could do so with a contribution to Harvard's financial aid fund. Wouldn't a gesture of pro-Harvard generosity create some much-needed goodwill?

On the positive side, Lisa New has good taste in homewares....  ¶ 1:26 PM 5 comments   

  A Suggestion for U2 One of the things I've always liked about U2 is the band's rebel status. From its wonderful, startling first record, "Boy," to the "Achtung Baby" experimentation of the '90s, U2 has always kept one foot squarely in the outsider's camp. And I think that's kept their music fresh and inspiring.

But over the past few years, U2 has become as socially acceptable and conservative as, say, Sheryl Crow. That's partly because they've mellowed somewhat, and their audience has aged. I'm told by those who've seen U2 shows on their current tour that Bono has taken up the unfortunate habit of pulling children up onto the stage. I may be old-fashioned, but the thought of bringing your child to a rock show appalls me. Rock should not be little kid-friendly.

A bigger factor may be Bono's politicking. Don't get me wrong, it's incredibly important, more important than his music, although you can't really separate them—the latter helps broadcast the former. But because of Bono's aid work, U2 has become a way for slick politicos to claim street cred without risking the possibility of embarrassment.

For example: Larry Summers has listed Bono as his "favorite performer," and the New York Post reports that Hillary Clinton has U2 on her iPod. Time magazine named Bono one of its persons of the year. I'm told that former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle—now a lobbyist—was near the stage at a recent U2 show in Washington.

Now, come on. Does anyone believe that Larry Summers and Hillary Clinton ever listen to U2? Someone should ask them to name three U2 albums...or three U2 songs. Or three members of U2.

So here's what I think U2 ought to do the next time they head into the studio: Make a record that is so passionate, so political, and so rebellious that no upstanding politician could safely support it. U2 needs to reclaim that sense of danger it used to have....  ¶ 10:01 AM 5 comments   

  The Union Has Caved ...and the strike is over, though the trains still aren't running.

"We got nothing. Absolutely nothing," said George Perlstein, a member of the Transit Workers' Union executive board.

Which makes one wonder why exactly the union went out on strike in the first place...whether union head Roger Touissant overestimated the union's staying power or level of public support...and just how much longer Touissant will remain head of that union after the dust settles. No one's going to be very happy about a strike that devastated New York businesses for three days before Christmas...and that won the union "absolutely nothing."

And while Mayor Bloomberg made a big mistake describing union leaders as "thuggish," Touissant was equally offensive in comparing the transit strikers to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. Rosa Parks was not breaking the law so that she would get to retire at age 50, rather than 55....  ¶ 3:31 PM 0 comments   

  Summers Irony Watch As Harvard president, Larry Summers has adjusted several of his more liberal positions so as to curry favor, or simply not alienate, the Republican congressional majority—by refusing to challenge enforcement of the Solomon Amendment, for example, or promoting patriotism at Harvard by pushing for the return of ROTC to campus. Not that it matters—the GOP is sticking it to higher education anyway.

In voting to cut the federal budget by some $40 billion, the Republicans in Washington have slashed public support for higher education. Here's how the Times describes the cuts:

Nearly one-third of all the savings in the final budget bill comes from student aid, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

Under the bill, college students would pay higher interest rates on loans. Many banks will receive lower subsidies. And the Education Department will work with the Internal Revenue Service to ferret out students and parents who underreport incomes on financial aid applications.

..."This is the biggest cut in the history of the federal student loan program," said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, an umbrella group for public and private colleges and universities.

It's yet another irony of the Summers administration....ironies which stem from philosophical incoherence or position-shifting for political advantage.

Summers has a visceral dislike of the left, and that's another reason why he's taken some of these positions; he doesn't want to espouse the same political views as, say, Cornel West or Richard Thomas. Of course, the left does believe in federal support of education. So there is that, then.



  ¶ 2:55 PM 0 comments   

  A Red Sox Heads to the Bronx I'll admit, the thought of Johnny Damon in pinstripes is going to take some getting used to...but for the Yankees, it's an excellent move. One, it puts the Red Sox in a jam—there just aren't many good centerfielders left to sign, and it's psychologically devastating to the team. (Imagine if Jorge Posada signed with the BoSox.) And two, it helps the Yankees considerably. Let's face it: Bubba Crosby just wasn't the man to play center every day. In Damon, you have a guy who hits over .300 and wreaks havoc on the basepaths. Plus, he allows Derek Jeter to hit second, where he's probably a bigger offensive threat.

It's weird, though—you now have on the Yankees the guy who crushed them in that ghastly Game Seven of the 2004 ALCS.

Well, if you can't beat him, sign him.

Which gives the Yankees a lineup something like this: Damon, Jeter, A-Rod, Sheffield, Matsui, Giambi, Posada, Robinson Cano, Andy Phillips.

Wow. That's going to be tough to beat.  ¶ 2:45 PM 4 comments   

  Hark! A Train What is this? A subway just rolled past outside my window, heading north to 125th Street.

Has the union seen the logic of my arguments and caved?  ¶ 9:12 AM 5 comments   

  Strike! Day Two Broadway outside my window is strangely empty today, at least as empty as it ever gets. Perhaps people are staying home, or gave up their cars to take the train in from the suburbs. Whichever. The novelty of this strike has worn off fast, even for me, and I'm lucky enough not to have to commute to an office. But yesterday I did have errands to do down around Lincoln Center, and so I wound up walking there and back—about 110 blocks all told. Today, Christmas shopping for the nieces and nephews, and there isn't much of that up here around Columbia University.

Meanwhile, the union is fighting with itself, as it should be. It's also facing fines of a million dollars a day, and additional fines for specific union leaders, for every day the strike continues—and it doesn't have a lot of money in the bank.

It did, however, manage to plant a wildly sympathetic story in the Times. It's just bizarre. Reporter Steven Greenhouse writes:

Just hours before the strike deadline, the authority's chairman, Peter S. Kalikow, put forward a surprise demand that stunned the union. Seeking to rein in the authority's soaring pension costs, he asked that all new transit workers contribute 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, up from the 2 percent that current workers pay. The union balked, and then shut down the nation's largest transit system for the first time in a quarter-century.

Greenhouse emphasizes that the increase in health care contributions would save the MTA only $20 million over three years, roughly the cost of two days of police overtime. "This war was declared over a pension proposal that would have saved the transit authority less than $20 million over the next three years," he writes in a line that reads as if penned by transit worker union chief Roger Touissant.

After the jump, however, Greenhouse quotes one pension expert who says that the measure would save the MTA $160 million over ten years, and after that about $80 million a year. Which makes it sound more worth fighting for.

I suspect that with every passing day, the union's position will grow weaker. Tomorrow is Thursday, probably the last day many people will come to work before Christmas. The week between Christmas and New Year's is a downtime for most workers (although a very busy one for retailers). People will find a way to cope. According to Gawker, they're coping by a) walking to work, b) staying home and gambling on the Internet, and c) having sex.

Meanwhile, for the union, those fines will start piling up...and the workers will start calculating whatever raises they gain against whatever pay they lose.


  ¶ 8:54 AM 0 comments   

  Summers as Martyr Meanwhile, over at Foxnews.com, the march to turn Larry Summers into a right-wing martyr to political correctness continues. Summers is used as the prime example in an anti-PC diatribe.

Here's what Foxnews.com contributor Wendy McElroy has to say:

Last January, when Harvard University President Lawrence Summers raised the mere possibility of biological differences as an explanation for the 'gender imbalance' in science, a vicious PC backlash forced him to apologize publicly no less than three times. After what some called his "Soviet-show-trial-style apologies," Summers made an act of contrition by pledging "to spend $50 million over the next decade to improve the climate for women on campus."

Sigh. Where to begin? President Summers didn't raise the "mere possibility" of gender imbalances. He strongly suggested their reality, and dared his audience to "prove me wrong." Then there's the question of whether genuine outrage and "vicious PC backlash" are the same. (Answer: sometimes, perhaps, but not in this case.) And who exactly does Fox cite (in a hyperlink) as the source of that "Soviet-show-trial-style apologies" line? Well, it comes from the National Journal's Stuart Taylor, who's pretty right-wing himself. So that's kind of like Dick Cheney quoting Jesse Helms as an objective authority.

Irony watch: Clinton-administration economic hero Larry Summers has become a right-wing hero.

Beyond irony, this is a very tricky position for Summers—it means he's lost the left, but at the same time, he's really not a good fit for conservatives, and if he spoke out against something they believe in, he'd lose that base of support fast.

Hmmm. Perhaps that explains his silence on intelligent design.
  ¶ 8:46 AM 0 comments   

  Where are the University Presidents? That's the question PBS reporter John Merrow asks in the Christian Science Monitor. Name the presidents of any three American colleges or universities, Merrow challenges readers.

Go ahead...

Concludes Merrow: How could the public know the names of higher education leaders, who are largely silent on the great issues of the day? Today's presidents only get noticed if they say something outrageous (Harvard's Lawrence Summers's comments about women and science), live too lavishly (former American University President Benjamin Ladner), or make millions (Lynn University's Donald Ross).

It is yet another irony of President Summers' tenure that a man who was hired to put the role of university president back on the cultural map is now being used as an example of a president known for all the wrong reasons.

But then, President Summers has missed some obvious opportunities to speak out on issues of the day which would make sense for someone in his role: intelligent design, for example. But, as Merrow points out, only three university presidents have publicly spoken out against considering intelligent design as science: Cornell president Hunter Rawlings, University of Idaho President Timothy P. White, and University of Kansas Chancellor Bob Hemenway.

This is pathetic. Why hasn't Summers, who has made science the singular emphasis of his presidency, spoken out on this issue? Is it because he doesn't want to spark any more controversy? Or because somehow the issue is too obvious, and in his contrarian way, he thinks it's beneath him to talk about something so glaring?

Summers' spokesman, John Longbrake, pointed out not too long ago that Summers had addressed a Harvard club audience on the subject of intelligent design. But that's preaching to the converted, as it were.

It's too late now—the tide seems to be turning against intelligent design. But it is unfortunate that, back when Summers' words might have meant something, the Harvard president stayed mysteriously silent.  ¶ 8:34 AM 0 comments   

  The Resistance Will Not Die The Crimson runs a fascinating piece on the coalition of department chairs at Harvard which has quietly developed into a powerful anti-Summers faculty bloc.

I enjoy irony, so I often point out the ironies of Summers' presidency, and here's another one: A president who has set out to diminish the power of the faculty may well wind up increasing that power, because he has united so many professors in opposition to him.

And from what I hear, Summers has returned to his imperial manner these days, and is acting as if the brouhaha of last spring never happened....

In Cambridge, the drama is far from over.  ¶ 9:42 AM 0 comments   

  Strike! As I write this and look out my window—multi-tasking!—cars on Broadway are stacked like shoes in Imelda Marcos' closet. People are getting frustrated; I've heard the distant sound of one screaming woman, and the bleating of horns drifts upward toward the sky.

Existential digression: Why do people in bumper-to-bumper traffic honk their horns?

All of this is because the Transit Workers Union has gone on strike, and buses and subways aren't running.

The primary issue is retirement benefits. At the moment, transit workers can retire at 55 and receive full pension benefits, which are substantial—half their annual pay, among other things. I'm not sure how many other Americans have that assurance after only 25 years on the job.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority wanted to raise the retirement age from 55 to 62 for new hires. That seems reasonable to me. But earlier this year, the union, which gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to New York's wildly corrupt state legislators, pushed a bill that would actually lower the retirement age from 55 to 50. (It was actually passed; Governor George Pataki vetoed it.)

The MTA has dropped its demand for a higher retirement age for new workers and is instead asking that future employees contribute six percent of their wages toward pensions, up from two percent now. The union refuses to consider the idea.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, I sympathize with the workers, who often have tough jobs. Would you want to drive a train underground for eight hours a day for 25 years? Or maneuver a bus through midtown Manhattan? That can't be good for the blood pressure.

Of course, there are some union workers who have pretty cushy jobs—subway attendants, for example, who do shockingly little work and frequently manifest a ton of attitude if you dare to interrupt them while they're reading a newspaper or chatting on their cell phones. Three-quarters of the time they're being paid to sit in a booth and drink coffee.

But going back to the workers' side, the MTA does seem to adjust its budget numbers arbitrarily—they have a deficit, they need to raise fares; they have a surplus, they want to build a new headquarters. I don't trust 'em.

On the other hand, New York's transit workers are pretty well paid, and they have great benefits. (They don't have to contribute a thing for health insurance, for example.) The average subway or bus driver is paid $63,000 a year, which is a living wage, though far from excessive in this area.

On balance, I think I'm supporting management on this one. The union wants its workers to be able to retire at age 50? Come on.

Two other points: As difficult as this strike is going to be, I think it would have been much worse if it had come when first expected, about four or five days ago. This city is already shutting down for Christmas; many people just won't come in to work. And the week between Christmas and New Year's is dead anyway. As is the week after New Year's, for that matter. So I think a mid-December strike would have been worse.

Second, it's days like this when I'm especially pleased that the office I commute to is about ten feet away from my bedroom....  ¶ 9:01 AM 0 comments   

  Quote of the Day Larry Summers' women-in-science controversy has faded at Harvard, but it lives on in media year-end wrap-ups. Like, for example, this from Newsweek:

"When they are sitting there constantly saying, 'Am I smart enough? Am I smart enough?' it doesn't really help when the president of the university says, 'Maybe you're not'."

—Harvard physics professor Melissa Franklin, on comments made by Harvard president Lawrence Summers that suggested women might not be as well equipped for the sciences as men. Summers has since apologized.  ¶ 10:32 AM 0 comments   

  More on the Narwhal The Crimson follows up the Times with more on the breaking narwhal story.

Here's my favorite detail: the man who discovered the purpose of the narwhal's tusk, Martin T. Nweela, is a dentist. (Perhaps not coincidentally, he describes the tusk as essentially a very long tooth.) Nweela is a clinical instructor at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and somehow he also manages to have a full-time dentist's office in Connecticut.

Why did Nweela start pursuing the mystery of the narwhal's tusk? Because it related to dentistry? For reasons of medical advancement?

No.

Because he was curious. That's all. He was just...curious.

I love that.

Although under other circumstances, the idea of a curious dentist would make me extremely uncomfortable.

For more on the narwhal, check out Nweela's website, www.narwhal.org.  ¶ 7:39 PM 0 comments   

  Blogging Heads Has anyone else seen this site for warring bloggers on video? This particular debate involves my old New Republic colleagues—well, they were both far more senior than I, but never mind—Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus arguing about torture. Both of whom, apparently, have iMacs with iSight, perhaps built-in.

(There—obligatory Apple plug out of the way. When are those guys going to start paying me?)

Bob and Mickey are arguing about torture, and while the debate is kind of hit-and-miss—Mickey, who's pro-torture, is a very smart guy, but Bob Wright, anti-torture, is scary-smart—the phenomenon of the video debate is perhaps more interesting and probably ultimately more important. Torture is an issue that's really been propelled to the forefront of American politics by two things: 1) John McCain and 2) the blogosphere. So just as the v-blog was inevitable, I suppose the Internet version of the McLaughlin Group was equally fated. It's pretty cool, really. This is the democratizing power of the Net at its finest....  ¶ 7:30 PM 3 comments   

  Blood Money? Harvard's decision to accept $20 million from a Saudi prince is stirring up controversy; the Crimson reports that New York congressman Anthony Weiner has written a letter to Lawrence Summers protesting Harvard's action.

From the Crimson:

Weiner said in a press release issued Dec. 13 that American universities should not accept gifts from the Saudi royals, who “have a record of funding terrorist organizations.”

“August institutions like Harvard University and Georgetown University should not accept funding from a family that bankrolls terrorist organizations,” he wrote to Summers. “Their hands should be clean of any relationship with individuals associated with terrorism.”

A few thoughts.

First, this situation has the potential to blow up into a media feeding frenzy, if Bill O'Reilly, et cetera, latch onto it.

Second, there are really two questions here.

Are the allegations true? And if they are, should Harvard turn down the money?

I can't speak to whether this particular Saudi has donated money to Hamas, etc—which is the question at hand, not whether Saudi princes in general have donated money to Hamas.

But if he has, should Harvard take the money nonetheless? Isn't it better for him to give money to Harvard than to terrorists? Shouldn't Harvard use the money to promote understanding and knowledge?

I think there's a credible argument that Harvard should take the money.

Problem is that Larry Summers has criticized people for giving money to Hamas before: 2002 Commencement speaker Zayed Yasin. (And the charge wasn't even accurate.)

He's also run into this tension of the dirty origins of Middle Eastern money before, when Sheik Zayed of the United Arab Emirates wanted to endow a professorship at the Harvard Divinity School. That didn't work out so well for Harvard, which ultimately returned the money.

I'm fascinated by this issue, as it touches upon a number of very important issues for Harvard: the conflicts of globalization and the university, the changing role of Harvard in the world, the desire to find new and deep, deep-pocketed donors, and last but far from least, the question of the university's moral role in the world. These are not easy issues, and I hope they can be civilly debated in the days ahead.  ¶ 11:10 AM 3 comments   

  Harvard: Applications Down? Consider these two headlines from Harvard news organizations:

Early Admissions Return to Past Levels
—Harvard Gazette, 12/15/05

Number of Early Admits Drops
—Harvard Crimson, 12/15/05

What's going on here? Well, it's virtually impossible to tell from either article, since Dean William Fitzsimmons is the master of the confusing applications-related statistic, but it appears that the number of applicants to Harvard is dropping.... 800 students just received early admission, down from 892 last year, from a pool of 3827 applicants, down from 4212 last year.

Some of that drop may be due to changes in the admission procedures to prohibit students from applying early to more than one college. (Although that rule change took place three years ago, which prompted a very substantial fall-off from something like 7,000 early applicants a year.)

Fitzsimmons tells the Gazette: "Our return three years ago to our long-standing policy of 'single-choice' Early Action has helped to abate some of the frenzy that has beset early admission programs across America over the past decade or so. The pattern of the past three years suggests a return to a better era, when students could take the time during their senior year in high school to make more thoughtful decisions about where they wanted to spend the next four years," he said.

Huh.

I have great respect for Fitzsimmons, but that sounds like spin to me. Universities don't usually think it's a good thing when the number of students applying to them drops substantially. And since Harvard puts out a press release every time the number of applicants hits a new high, it's hard to credit this turn in the other direction as a positive development.

What's also interesting is that given Larry Summers' worthy free-tuition program for students from families with incomes lower than $40,000, you'd expect applications to be way up. But so far, they're not—they're down about ten percent from last year.

I'm not sure what this all means, quite, because I don't have enough data. Except that alumni giving is down, and so now is the number of early applicants....

The Crimson, by the way, reports two very salient facts that the Pravda-like Gazette conveniently omits.

(And I quote...)

Harvard was the only Ivy League school to report a decrease in its early pool this year, receiving 3,872 early applications, down from 4,212 for the Class of 2009.

Yale received 4,065 early applicants this year, topping Harvard for the first time in recent memory.

Despite Fitzsimmon's portrayal of the numbers as a return to normalcy, this is not good news.
  ¶ 5:38 PM 5 comments   

  Harvard's New Crimson: Deficit Red In the Globe, Marcella Bombardieri breaks some big news today: Harvard College is hemorrhaging cash.

FAS sources tell her that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is facing annual deficits ranging from $40 million this year to $80 million in 2009-2010. Which, given the lack of veritas in current Harvard accounting, probably means that they're underestimated by 25-50 percent.

What's the explanation for this state of affairs? "Sluggish fundraising, the construction of buildings, and the costs associated with improving undergraduate education."

That last is conspicuously vague—what expenditure could not be crammed under the label, "improving undergraduate education"? If you bought a Mercedes for a professor that helped him/her get to class faster, would that be improving undergraduate education? The only large new expenditure in that realm that comes to mind is the $50 million-plus "faculty diversity initiative"—i.e., the Larry Summers' gaffe fund.

FAS dean Bill "What Do I Care, I'm Out of Here Anyway" Kirby pooh-poohed the deficits
by saying that the school has the money to cover them (obviously true) and that "It's our job, with as formidable an endowment as we have, to show we are using it."

This is the kind of quote that makes one question Kirby's truth-telling; it's so clearly PRBS. (You can figure that out.) Because by that logic, FAS should just spend its endowment into the ground. After all, if you have such a, ahem, formidable endowment, you'd better show you're using it.

In truth, of course, a preferable situation would be to display evidence of money well-spent without going into debt. Even for FAS, $80 million a year isn't chump change, and you'd better believe that this is going to hit the faculty where it lives—salary, benefits, department budgets and so on.

It is an irony of course that the former Treasury secretary of an administration which prided itself on running a government surplus is now presiding over the largest annual deficits in Harvard College history.

And another question: When will that capital campaign begin?

For five years now, Larry Summers has had to spend relatively little time fundraising—a fraction of the time devoted to that pursuit by his predecessor, Neil Rudenstine, who was criticized for the amount of time he spent raising cash.

Is it finally time for Summers to start pressing the flesh in earnest? And what will be the results if he does?  ¶ 7:59 AM 7 comments   

  Quote for the Day "Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west. For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar's gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go.
"It is where I went."

—Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

Has anyone defined America better than that?
  ¶ 7:46 AM 4 comments   

  The Brokeback Mountain Controversy Occasionally, I go out for a night on the town with some guy friends, and we do guy things. We see "Wedding Crashers" and "Sideways." We play tennis. We drink beer and eat cheeseburgers. We jokingly call the outings "man-dates," which is a term that the New York Times Sunday Styles section applied to straight men doing things together. Whatever.

All was bliss, until the other day one of my "posse," as it were (though there is no Leo DiCaprio figure in this group) suggested that we see "Brokeback Mountain," the film about two gay cowboys. And I put my foot down: No way, I said. Not appropriate for a mandate.

(Which is, by definition, not actually a date. If you follow me.)

Does that make me a bigot?

That's exactly the question that Mickey Kaus asks in his Slate blog. (Thanks, Mickey. Especially because you answer "no.")

Mickey's thesis: "My wild hypothesis is that more people will go see a movie if it features an actor or actress they find attractive! If heterosexual men in heartland America don't flock to see Brokeback Mountain it's not because they're bigoted. It's because they're heterosexual."

Whew.

Of course, that doesn't explain why I'd be perfectly fine seeing the movie with a she-date (i.e., a woman).....

But since David Leavitt doesn't even think that Brokeback Mountain is a "gay movie"—and he's gay!—then I'm even more confused.  ¶ 9:52 AM 14 comments   

  In Praise of the Narwhal The excellent William J. Broad writes in the Times about a startling discovery: the real function of the narwhal's tusk.

Scientists and mariners have long wondered about the function of the whale's staff, which can grow up to nine feet long. Theories have included breaking Arctic ice, spearing fish, piercing ships, courting females, digging for food, and fighting with other narwhals.

Now it turns out that the answer is very different: the narwhal's tusk is filled with nerve endings that make it, as Broad writes, "a sensory organ of exceptional size and sensitivity...[whose] nerves can detect subtle changes of temperature, pressure, particle gradients and probably much else."

Says Martin T. Nweeia, a narwhal researcher and clinical instructor at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine—an unusual combination—"This whale is intent on understanding its environment. The tusk is not about guys duking it out with sticks and swords."

Which suggests how blind we can be when studying the world around us, how our theories about animals and the environment are really a sort of Rorschach test that tell more about us and our limitations of perception than they do about scientific truth. What would we do if we had a nine-foot tusk? Well, use it to impress women or to fight other men. What do the whales do? They use it to learn about the world around them in ways substantially more sophisticated than any comparable aspect of human physiology.

Which is also my way of saying that the time will come when we finally realize that the ongoing slaughter of whales is one of mankind's greatest crimes.

The real moral of the narwhal discovery? We should study these remarkable animals not just to learn about them, but to learn from them.  ¶ 9:35 AM 2 comments   

  All in the Family Is Mike Wallace senile? His son, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, seems to think so....after Mike Wallace suggested to the Boston Globe that the country is "fucked-up" and that it's probably Bush's fault.

Let's see: Who's more mentally imbalanced, someone who thinks that President Bush has taken this country in the wrong direction or someone who works for Rupert Murdoch?  ¶ 9:29 AM 0 comments   

  Great Examples in Selective Memory For some reason, I've gotten on The New Republic's spam list, so about every week I get an e-mail purporting to be from part-owner Marty Peretz (for whom I used to work). It's a little annoying, but a little amusing at the same time, since anyone who knows Marty would find it hard to reconcile his gruff, provocative voice with the slick sales pitch of these e-mails.

Consider this week's e-mail, highlighting Andrew Sullivan's essay on torture in the current issue:

Dear Reader,

By almost everybody's reckoning, Andrew Sullivan is one of the great political and philosophical essayists of our time: controversial, rigorous, sensible. He also writes like a dream, like some of the other extraordinary essayists in this magazine's history: Walter Lippmann, Rebecca West, Edmund Wilson, and Alfred Kazin. Educated at Oxford (where he was president of the Oxford Political Union) and at Harvard (where he earned his PhD in political theory), Andrew served first as an intern, then as an associate editor, and finally for more than five years as editor of The New Republic. Since then he has been a writer of books, his own blog, articles for The Sunday Times of London, and, of course, essays in TNR. No one who has read his last essay in our pages, "The End of Gay Culture," will soon forget either its sweep or its attention to the significant details of his narrative. Subscribe today to read Andrew's past powerful pieces.

Very generous words of praise for Andrew, who is indeed immensely talented. It's almost enough to make you forget that Andrew's five years of editing The New Republic came to an abrupt end when the same Marty Peretz unceremoniously, um, fired him....

Obviously the relationship between the two has survived, as it should. It's just that TNR's history is so much more interesting than its promotional materials convey....  ¶ 11:30 AM 0 comments   

  02138 Also Comes to Harvard As Alex Beam reports, Harvard will soon get a new alumni magazine, called 02138. It's started by a young Harvard grad named Bok Kim, and the deep pockets come in the form of David Bradley, owner of the Atlantic and National Journal (no relation to yours truly).

Beam is (shocked, shocked) skeptical, saying that he can't imagine anyone other than Harvard grads reading the magazine. I think that's sort of the point. Whether that's enough to make any money for David Bradley, I don't know.

But I do like the idea. Harvard Magazine is pretty good, as far as alumni magazines go. Yet there's an enormous amount of material in the Harvard universe that doesn't get covered—particularly things that Harvard alums beyond Cambridge are doing—and competition between magazines is always a good thing.

Some months ago, Bok Kim took me to lunch here in Manhattan to pick my brain about his idea, which is of course enormously flattering and half the reason I'm giving him this plug.

The other half is because he seems like a very smart guy, and because I do think the magazine has a legitimate foundation, and because I'm always a supporter of new magazines.....  ¶ 10:03 AM 0 comments   

  Saudia Arabia Comes to Harvard In the form of Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who has just given $20 million to Harvard and Georgetown universities apiece, to be spent on the study on Islamic culture.

There's a mini-controversy here: The same prince gave $10 million to New York City after 9/11, but Rudy Giuliani returned the cash after finding out that the Saudi had made pro-Palestinian remarks. It's probably fair to say that Giuliani's act had as much to do with local politics as with principle.

Here is an interesting question, though, for media deconstructionists: Why does the Times quote Harvard provost Steven Hyman and v-p for finance Donella Rapier...and no one from Georgetown? The correct judgment call...or just lazy journalism reflecting the Times' Harvard-is-God bias?

(After all, each school got the same amount of money, and it surely matters more to Georgetown than to Harvard.)

The AP story, by the way, uses one quote from the prince, one quote from Harvard, and one quote from Georgetown....  ¶ 9:43 AM 0 comments   

  One Reason to Love the '80s Depeche Mode, of course. I first started listening to them in the '80s, when they became popular with songs like "Just Can't Get Enough," "Everything Counts" and "Blasphemous Rumors." Since then they've continued to put out albums that update their sound without changing it radically, most very good—Violator, Ultra—and only one (Exciter) subpar. Lately, they've been starting to get the critical respect they deserve; Johnny Cash soulfully covered one of their biggest hits, "Personal Jesus."

Still, when I announced that I planned to see them live at the Garden last week, some were skeptical. "They're still around?" was the typical response.

Unknown to the pop culture ignorami, it's actually a fair question, in that the two most important band members, Martin Gore and David Gahan, have both struggled with alcohol and drug abuse over the years, and Gahan briefly died. (His heart was restarted after a couple of minutes of inaction.) And that's not even counting the slashed wrists....

But I'm happy to report that the show was just fantastic, one of the best concerts I've seen in years. Loud, raucous, intense, Depeche Mode had the crowd on its feet, usually singing along, for the entire two-hour show. On songs such as "Enjoy the Silence," the crowd actually handled most of the vocals; we Depeche Mode diehards know the words. Gahan is a great lead singer—charismatic, passionate, edgy. And guitar player Gore is charismatic in his own weird way; for most of the concert, he played wearing what the Times described as a "plumed, centurion-style helmet, leather kilt, and black wings." (The Times loved the show, by the way.) Gore is one of the great songwriters of popular music; you will laugh, but I'd put him on the Lennon-McCartney, Jagger-Richards, Springsteen level. If you don't believe me, check out the double cd of Depeche Mode's greatest hits—as the expression goes, they just keep coming.

What's the point? Well, two things. First, you should all go buy DM's latest, Playing the Angel, which is absolutely addictive. As if to announce a triumphant return, it starts with a fantastic blast of industrial-sounding synthesizer...and gets even better from there.

But second, our culture obsesses over things that are hot-hot-hot now-now-now. So I find it strangely encouraging that somehow great artists can still fly below the radar, with enough success to fill two shows at Madison Square Garden and yet somehow there are people who say, "They're still around?"

The question says more, I think, about how we associate music with the period of youth, and when we lose our youth, we lose our music.

Or is it the other way around?  ¶ 9:10 AM 6 comments   

  Back from the Chapel Readers of the New York Times and this blog may have noticed an interesting coincidence: that the same weekend I announced I was headed off to a wedding, Larry Summers and Elisa New got married.

  ¶ 9:57 AM 1 comments   

  The Lameness of CNN Sometimes, CNN just drives me nuts. This time, I banged out a quick post for the HuffPo blog, where you'll sometimes find me. If you're interested, you can read my frustration here.  ¶ 6:11 PM 4 comments   

  Going to a Chapel.... As of tomorrow, I'll be off to Wyoming, where an old friend is getting married, so posts will probably be erratic....  ¶ 9:11 AM 2 comments   

  John Berendt Follows Up I went to a luncheon for John Berendt yesterday—he's the author of the new book, The City of Falling Angels, and, of course, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

I was interested in what Berendt would have to say about following up "Midnight," as he refers to it, given that it's about the most successful non-fiction book other than the Bible ever written. Talk about pressure. And it was clear from Berendt's talk that he struggled to find the right follow-up. Once he got the idea of writing about the destruction by fire of the Venice opera house, and the mystery of it all, he spent four years researching the idea before he even wrote a proposal.

(Okay, a luxury most authors don't have.)

I haven't read The City of Falling Angels yet, but I'm looking forward to it—its very existence is a success for Berendt. Here's hoping the book does well.
__________________________________________________________________

Obligatory full disclosure here: As of about two weeks ago, Berendt and I are represented by the same literary agent.  ¶ 8:56 AM 4 comments   

  The Price of Music, Cont'd. On Slate, Adam Penenberg proposes a solution to the debate over the proper price for electronic music: a Digital Music Exchange, a sort of stock market for songs, by which the price of a song would fluctuate depending on how many people want to buy it.

Of course, those who believe in the free market would say that this is exactly what we have now. But since the vast majority of the music business is hegemonically controlled by a few conglomerates, that clearly isn't the case—which is why Apple has tried to impose some sanity onto the system with a flat (and fair) price.

My own suspicion is that we're moving to a world where recorded music is going to be like computer software: largely given away in order to entice the consumer to a) buy something more expensive, such as the computer/concert tickets. By this logic, songs will, from a marketing perspective, largely be seen as advertisements for the band's other products: concerts, t-shirts, and stuff that I haven't even thought of.....  ¶ 8:50 AM 0 comments   

  Speaking of Excellence with a Soul Bono comes to Harvard...

I continue to think that Bono is a fascinating and important man. And I'm not even all that big a U2 fan.....  ¶ 8:43 AM 3 comments   

  The Politics of Kong, Continued Some of you doubted my interpretation of the environmental and racial politics of the new King Kong film. It's a "popcorn movie," one of you wrote. In other words: Lighten up.

Balderdash!

In its coverage of the movie premiere, the Times has found at least one person who agrees with me that Kong has a pro-environmental subtext: the director Darren Aronofsky. (Who is, by the way, a very talented guy.)

“It was a very sad movie,” Aronofsky said. “It doesn’t put me in the party mood. I’m going to go give money to the WWF or the Nature Conservancy.”

(Emphasis happily added.)

It is a sad movie, by the way.

Perhaps if there were any African-American people invited to the after-party, they could confirm my concerns about the problem of race in the film.  ¶ 8:34 AM 3 comments   

  Hillary At War—With The Left Hillary Clinton held a fundraiser last night, something she's going to be doing about three times a week for the next few years, I'd say. But what was unusual was the fact that she was protested (in absentia; Hillary didn't show) by a group of about 75 lefties angry about her position on the war in Iraq.

Which is remarkable, considering that it's pretty tough just to figure out what her position on the war in Iraq is.

Anyway, a group called Grandmothers Against the War thinks that Hillary is not sufficiently opposed to the war.

One of them, Ann Roos, told the Times, "Hillary has no plan to withdraw the troops - we could be there for another 15 years under her. She'll never get my support again. I feel so let down by her taking a wishy-washy, all-things-to-all-people position."

While I think Ms. Roos has a point about Mrs. Clinton wanting to be all things to all people, I suspect that Hillary wouldn't be too upset to be protested by left-wingers seeking immediate withdrawal from Iraq. It helps position her as a centrist, which she desperately wants to be considered, so that she'll be more palatable to the many Americans who viscerally can't stand her....
__________________________________________________________________

P.S. I continue to wonder why the Times doesn't more actively use hyperlinks in its online versions of articles. It didn't include one for Grandmothers Against the War, for example. I found a link in about five seconds, and that's not because I'm good at this sort of thing, but because it's easy.

P.P.S. I'm also amused that Mrs. Clinton held her event at the New York nightclub Crobar, where lots of activities go on that wouldn't go over very well with those centrist voters she's seeking.....  ¶ 8:20 AM 3 comments   

  At Harvard, Excellence Without A Soul As Alex Beam reports in the Boston Globe, there's a new book coming out about Harvard shortly. It's called Excellence Without A Soul: How Great Universities Forgot Education, and it should make for compelling reading. The author is Harry Lewis, the former dean of Harvard College who was ousted—ostensibly by FAS dean Bill Kirby, but more likely by Larry Summers.

(Lewis' story is covered in Harvard Rules; Beam interviewed me for his article, and he quotes me briefly in the article.)

I haven't read Lewis' book, but it seems to me that this intangible question of how to make Harvard not just excellent, but also good, has been at the center of all the recent books about Harvard—Lewis', mine, Ross Douthat's. No one questions Larry Summers' desire for excellence, but lots of people wonder about what gets lost in the relentless push to make students automatons of achievement. One example: Derek Bok's "moral reasoning" requirement in the Core curriculum, which the new curriculum will abandon.

Lewis' book should provoke debate about the central question of Summers' presidency—how, in the process of getting ever richer and more corporate, Harvard has lost its heart. Other than "excellence," what does Harvard stand for?

The two men have always disagreed about fundamental questions of Harvard's direction, and unlike Summers, Lewis has always believed in the intrinsic value of public debate. This should be interesting.  ¶ 3:22 PM 0 comments   

  The Politics of Kong Having said all the below about Kong, let me now say something about Kong and politics.

First, the movie now has a clear environmental subtext that, I suspect, it didn't have in its previous incarnations: a plea to treat beautiful, rare animals with respect, and not just shoot them to death. (New Jersey bear hunt, anyone?) In making Kong so realistic, so human, Peter Jackson really makes us care for the animal. And so it is impossible not to watch the film and think, Why must we slaughter such a thing of beauty? Why do we have to travel to foreign lands, scary though they may seem, and kidnap their treasures for the crassest kind of exploitation, which leads ultimately and inexorably to their destruction?

In this sense, Kong could also be seen as an argument against globalization.

There is another, less positive political subtext to the film: Increasingly, Peter Jackson has a race problem.

There is one token African-American character in the movie: Evan Hayes, who plays the first mate of the Venture. But there are some terrible anti-black stereotypes: the hideous savages who populate the walled village of Skull Island, and the step-n-fetchit dancers of the Broadway show featuring a captured Kong.

Then throw in the fact that Lord of the Rings was an entirely white film, and the only characters of color were the ghastly, bestial Orks, and you now have four straight Peter Jackson movies in which white people face off against savages, who are either literally or figuratively dark-skinned humans.

Granted, Jackson is working from materials that embodied the racial attitudes of their eras. But I'm not sure that's reason enough to simply reflect those ideologies without commenting on them. If I were African-American, I think I'd have a bone to pick with Peter Jackson.  ¶ 9:41 AM 4 comments   

  King Kong: You Heard It Here First So I went to see King Kong, the most hyped movie of the year, last night—an advance screening at the AMC 25 theaters on 42nd Street. Universal had taken out the entire 25 (yes, 25) theaters for an early screening designed to build buzz.

Here is the buzz.

1) King Kong is a remarkable technical achievement. I don't think I've ever seen a film so dependent on special effects that looked so consistently real. The integration of sets and computer imaging is almost seamless, and through virtually all of the film I found myself thinking, How did they do that? The only films that one could compare it to are the Lord of the Rings trilogy—which were, of course, made by the same director, Peter Jackson.

2) Kong himself is a complete success. He goes from scary to puzzled to sweet convincingly, and his death is heartbreaking. (Kind of like the New Jersey bear hunt. But I digress.)

3) The film's climax atop the Empire State Building is both technically stunning and emotionally powerful. If, like me, you're not fond of heights, this is a particularly disturbing scene. You may also wonder, as I did, why Naomi Watts would not at least kick off her high heels as she climbs a narrow ladder up to the very top of the Empire State Building.

4) I'm not sure what this film is rated—it's impossible to tell from the website—but don't bring your children under ten, at least. Certain scenes are really pretty scary—particularly the boat crew's first discovery that Skull Island is inhabited, or the scene in which insects which emerge at night and attack the survivors on Skull Island (a personal favorite). One of the men has his head swallowed by some kind of giant worm with serious teeth. Pretty nasty. The little girl seated next to me was not happy.

5) Why is Jack Black in any movie? And why did he have to be in this one? His casting insults the intelligence of the audience, and I kept thinking how much more a better actor could have done with this role.

6) Naomi Watts is charming, particularly when she uses a little vaudeville routine to soothe the savage beat. Also, she is easy on the eyes.

7) Peter Jackson is deeply uninterested in sex. For all of the explicit violence in his films, there has never been a hint of explicit sex—only diaphanous kisses. It's sort of weird. Imagine if things were reversed in our culture, and we showed sex in film the way we show violence, and vice-versa. Wouldn't that be healthier? Or maybe not. (Anyway, I digress again.)

8) The movie's about 15 minutes too long, and during a few scenes, I was aware of the slow passage of time.

9) This film passes my personal movie litmus test with flying colors: What do you get for your $12? In other words, when you come out of the theater, do you feel like you know why you just paid that much money rather than waited for the DVD? Woody Allen films never pass this test; Michael Bay films fall into the "How much would I pay not to see it?" category; and Peter Jackson films are always worth more than the ticket price.

(Hmmmm...perhaps variable pricing for films?)

10) For some reason, the screening we saw was, literally, painfully loud. I hope that this is not your experience.

11) I counted no less than three MSNBC anchorwomen in the audience: Lisa Daniels, Chris Jansing, and Alex Witt. Who knew that Lisa Daniels is a graduate of Harvard Law School?

Bottom line: King Kong isn't a perfect movie, but it's pretty wonderful, and the director's relish for his project comes through in every scene. So (and here's your buzz, Universal): Go see it. You'll get your $12 worth.  ¶ 9:37 AM 7 comments   

  Hillary Goes Up in Flames Mrs. Clinton has co-sponsored Senate legislation to criminalize desecration of the American flag. It's not a constitutional amendment, but it would still "secure legal protection of the flag in the face of attempts to deface and damage it," in the words of Senate sponsor Bob Bennett of Utah.

Bennett's press release on the legislation says this:

"The Flag Protection Act of 2005 criminalizes desecration or damage of the United States flag under three circumstances. First, when a person damages a flag with the primary purpose and intent to promote violence or breach the peace. Second, when a person damages a flag belonging to the United States. Third, when a person damages a flag belonging to another person."

Oh, Hillary. Is this supposed to be your Sister Souljah moment? Do you have to be quite so craven?

Look, no one's for burning the flag, other than anti-Americans around the world. But this is a law that's clearly aimed at protest (a First Amendment right) under the guise of the protection of property and opposition to "hate crimes." It's a Trojan horse. And, just days after Mrs. Clinton called for pulling troops out of Iraq, she must hope this will help her appeal to conservatives and avoid being branded as a left-wing nutcase.

And this is the Democrats' standard-bearer?

So far, the best reason to vote for Mrs. Clinton is still how much fun it would be to have her husband back in the White House....  ¶ 8:38 AM 0 comments   

  Record Companies Screwing Consumers Again Apple seems to have lost its fight with the record companies over the $9.99 uniform pricing policy in the iTunes music store: the new Eminem greatest hits collection, posted online today, is selling for $14.99.

Some context: When Apple opened its music store, it announced that all songs would each cost 99 cents, and entire albums would all cost $9.99. Desperate for some legit online music forum that would save them from piracy, the record companies agreed. But ever since iTunes became a huge hit, the record companies have been getting greedy. (What a surprise.) They've been pushing for what they call "variable pricing," which they define as the ability to raise prices on some records while lowering them on others. In practice, this means that the record companies will raise prices on some albums, while lowering prices on none.

(Remember, after all, that it was the practice of the record companies to charge the most for older compact discs by artists like The Beatles and Neil Young, despite the fact that virtually all the production costs on such albums had already been incurred, apparently on the theory that Baby Boomers could afford the higher prices. Which, among other things, meant that young people who wanted that music either wouldn't buy it or would steal it, which is one reason artists felt compelled to sell out to Cadillac, etc., in order to feel that their music was still relevant.)

So a couple of weeks ago, along came Madonna's new album at $12.99, and here's Eminem at $14.99—for a greatest hits album. Which is to say, an album that has no production costs whatsoever. Pure profit.

This is fascinating and depressing: These prices are about what the physical cd's would have cost in the days before iTunes existed. Which means that the record companies will have eliminated all their packaging and distribution costs, but are charging essentially the same price for their albums.

Meantime, I've yet to find any prices of iTunes albums that are actually lower than the former top price of $9.99.

No wonder it's hard to take the record companies seriously as they bitch and moan about the state of their business. And no wonder people steal music.  ¶ 8:10 AM 2 comments   

  More on King Marcella Bombardieri in the Globe does a nice survey of some of the issues involved in the choice of Patricia King to the Harvard Corporation.

King sounds like an intriguing woman....  ¶ 10:04 AM 0 comments   

  Truman on My Mind Saw the film "Capote" the other night, and it filled me with thoughts about the nature of journalism and the responsibility journalists owe to their subjects.

The film portrays Truman Capote, played marvelously by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, as he struggles to tell the story of two men who committed four brutal murders—and elevate his career to a level of immense fame and prestige in the process. It's a very rich film for a writer to see, because it explores the way that writers transform experience into art and the emotional complications and betrayals that can result. At some point in their careers, every writer must confront exactly these issues, and probably more than once. In this context, I haven't—I've interviewed three men convicted of murder, two of whom I thought were guilty as hell and one of whom clearly was not—but I never empathized with either of the murderers, as Capote did. For me, these issues loomed during the writing of American Son. (Which, lest you misunderstand me, I would never equate with In Cold Blood, a classic book.) But that is a tale for another time.

As I said, the movie gives one lots of food for thought, but there was one thing that I thought got lost in the translation, and that was the brilliance of Capote's writing. I re-read "In Cold Blood" a couple months ago—I hadn't read it since college—and though the novelty of the technique has diminished with time and imitation, the skill manifest in the prose remains, perhaps even elevated by the mediocrity of some of its descendants.

Here's one of my favorite passages, which tells of a cop on the hunt of the killers who interviews the proprietress of a cheap hotel where they stayed. It's hot stuff.

The detective clapped his hands. Eventually, a voice, female, but not very feminine, shouted, "I'm coming, " but it was five minutes before the woman appeared. She wore a soiled housecoat and high-heeled gold leather sandals. Curlers pinioned her thinning yellowish hair. Her face was broad, muscular, rouged, powdered. She was carrying a can of Miller High Life beer; she smelled of beer and tobacco and recently applied nail varnish. She was seventy-four years old, but in [the detective's] opinion, "looked younger—maybe ten minutes younger." She stared at him, his trim brown suit, his brown snapbrim hat. When he displayed his badge, she was amused; her lips parted, and Nye glimpsed two rows of fake teeth. "Uh-huh. That's what I figured," she said. "O.K. Let's hear it."

Capote makes this sound so easy, but his choices are subtle and original—her "yellowish" hair; the comma in "female, but not very feminine," and the semi-colon after "she was amused"; the primal implication of "her lips parted." And the wonderful, sparing use of the detective's quote: "younger—maybe ten minutes younger."

It's fabulous writing, now as then.  ¶ 9:22 AM 11 comments   

  King Comes to Harvard Larry Summers and the Harvard Corporation have chosen a replacement for Conrad Harper, who resigned in protest of Summers: She is Patricia A. King, Georgetown University Carmack Waterhouse professor of Law, Medicine, Ethics and Public Policy.

Some notable facts about Ms. King...

1) She is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, but according to the Crimson, has never maintained particularly strong ties to the university, and so is something of an unusual choice. Larry Summers might have liked that quality about her; he tends not to like Harvard College grads with a strong sense of Harvard tradition, as they often resist the changes he is trying to make.

2) She is also an unusual choice in that she is both black and female. But then, since Conrad Harper was the only minority on the Corporation, Summers really had no choice but to choose a member of a minority group.

3) She is a specialist in bioethics, with expertise in the human genome—something which would have made her an attractive candidate for Larry Summers. King has served on endless panels and committees discussing ethical issues in medicine and research. In fact, she may have come to Summers' attention through Dan Wikler, a professor of ethics and population health at the Harvard School of Public Health, with whom she served on the panel linked to in the word "committees." In 2002, both Summers and Wikler were elected members of the National Academy of Sciences.

(Of course, since she has been in Washington for decades, and Summers spent the '90s in Washington, their paths may have crossed then.)

4) She's media-friendly, making frequent appearances on the PBS News Hour, such as this one to discuss the guilty verdict in the O.J. Simpson civil trial.

My thoughts? This is one of those moves that reminds you that Larry Summers can be an extremely smart man. He's found a candidate who'll please African-Americans and women concerned about the diversity of the Harvard Corporation. He's also found a woman in science, which helps redress his women-are-dumber-than-men gaffe last spring. Make no mistake: This is not a Corporation choice, this is a Summers pick.

But most importantly, he's found someone who has longstanding experience in the ethical issues stemming (as it were) from biomedicine. Summers is attracted to interesting minds, and I can imagine that he sees in King someone with whom he can have long conversations about the implications of the biomedical research he is promoting at Harvard.

And ultimately, this is the real significance of King's choice: she represents Harvard's new direction intellectually. The rest—her gender, her ethnicity—is a red herring.  ¶ 8:31 AM 2 comments   

  WASP-date? Here's the text of an e-mail I just received:

Welcome to Waspdate!

Waspdate is a new daily email newsletter that chronicles the drama, melodrama and tragicomedy of the dating scene among NYC’s young elite and their wannabes. Each installment will feature a story about life and love in Gotham submitted by you, our dear readers, and dissected, bisected and vivisected by our crack staff of love experts–hopeless romantics, spurned lovers, and meth-addled swingers.

Dating in New York can be like a taxi ride in midtown at rush-hour–you try to get where you’re going by fits and starts, much of the time you’re stopped dead in the middle of traffic, and then you finally speed up only to swerve suddenly and kill a pedestrian. Waspdate is here to help you avoid oncoming traffic, teaching, or at least amusing, by example. In short, we're resurrecting Dear Abbey and slapping on a Barbour coat and a pair of Manolos.

But, you say, "I’m not white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant." And, that’s OK. Your ancestors may not have been on the Mayflower, you may not have even one pair of whale pants to your name, you may not know a single Muffy or Biff, you might actually have to work to make money, and if we told you to meet at us at "the club", let's be honest, you probably wouldn't know where to go. But, it doesn't matter. These days, being a WASP is a state of mind.

So, if you believe that your rightful place is on top, whether earned or inherited, that you will get there because you are who you are, and you're looking for that special someone, or—gasp—have found him or her, we want your stories. All names and otherwise telling information will be changed to protect the innocent, and guilty alike. Waspdate will leave the trash talk for the squash court, thank you very much.

Forward this on to your friends, so they will pass it on to their friends. Send it to your boyfriend, so he’ll send it to his boyfriend. And, we can get this fete started.

To submit stories, send an email to [email protected].
To subscribe, send an email to [email protected] with JOIN in the subject line.
To unsubscribe, send an email to [email protected] with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line.

LAUNCHES 12.12.06

Two things.

One, whether or not it's true that "being a WASP is a state of mind," a real WASP would never publicly disclose details of a date.

And two, I can't imagine why anyone would send this to me.....  ¶ 2:40 PM 7 comments   

  Take Maureen Dowd...Please She's done endless publicity for a book that no one seems to be buying. Here, she chats with Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith (an old friend of mine), and really, her ego is just out of control.

When Smith asks her about Judith Miller, she says that Smith is goading her into a "catfight," and that men love catfights because they always think that the women will be kissing at the end. (Apparently that's a Seinfeld joke.)

Maureen Dowd and Judith Miller kissing is an image that I did not want in my head. Stuck...in my head. I think it's safe to say that the only people who might thusly fantasize are a small group of octogenarians who subscribe to the New York Review of Books and believe that Alger Hiss was innocent.

Later in the interview, Dowd discusses TimesSelect, the newspaper's pay-per-view service for online material. " I feel like Rapunzel behind a wall, you know, up in a castle," Dowd says.

Let's just consider the implications of that self-description for a moment, shall we?






Smith next asks Dowd why she was the sole TimesSelect columnist who did not post an autobiographical video of herself.

Dowd replies, "It just seems a little narcissistic to make a bio video of you, video of yourself. I feel like people reading the column already know."

Hmmm. It's narcissistic to make a biographical introduction of yourself, because you feel that everyone already knows your bio.

Interesting.

Later, Dowd draws extensive analogies between the White House and the Star War movies.

I've long thought that MoDo is the most overrated newspaper columnist in the United States (hell, let's say the world). She's refreshing on the Times Op-Ed page because a) she's the only woman, and brings a different writing style and set of concerns, and b) everyone else is so frigging serious all the time.

But I'm convinced if you took any non-Times writer with a respectable amount of wit and cleverness, and some interest in politics, and dropped them down on that prime NYT real estate, that writer would generate the same level of enthusiasm.

Reading the Times op-ed page is usually like eating your vegetables. Not fun, but good for you. Reading Dowd is like eating dessert first.

Which is fine. There's nothing wrong with a little dessert, as long as you take it in moderation and don't confuse it with anything substantive.  ¶ 8:38 AM 2 comments   

  Larry Summers Gets Some Aid Eli and Edythe Broad, the donors who gave $100 million to help Harvard and MIT start the Broad Institute for genomic research, have given another $100 million.

Granted, it's a joint project and the gift is split between the two universities. Nonetheless, this gift is a feather in Larry Summers' cap, and he's earned the right to crow about it.....  ¶ 1:41 PM 3 comments   

  Hooray for My New Computer I love my new G5 iMac, and so does Walt Mossberg.

It's taken 20 years, but finally the marketplace has fully begun to realize the superiority of Apple computers and the Mac operating system.

Okay, granted, they're still at four percent market share. But things are looking up!  ¶ 1:38 PM 1 comments   

  The President and the Press The White House tried to pay off American journalists to promote foreign coverage. So it should come as no surprise to us that it has been planting ghostwritten articles in the Iraqi press.

Apparently they really do believe in exporting American-style democracy overseas....  ¶ 1:36 PM 0 comments