Shots in the Dark

Katie Couric’s troubles continue. She’s less popular than Diane Sawyer! Everyone seems to think that she’s gotten too big for her britches. Morning TV watcher Bill Kauzlarich of Farmington, Ill. tells USA Today, “I’m a big fan of Katie (love those legs and heels), but she sure seems full of herself.” While Shirley White of Birmingham, Mich., adds, “Katie’s style has evolved into a know-it-all interviewer who constantly speaks over her guests and at times comes off abrasive.”

Those of you who’ve known me for some time will understand if I pause to enjoy a moment of schadenfreude….

There are times when a White House nomination gets blocked or otherwise derailed for all the wrong reasons—silly controversy, meaningless personal foibles, partisan bickering. What’s happening to the Bolton nomination isn’t one of those times. As the Senate expands its investigation of him, Bolton is twisting in the wind for all the right reasons. By temperament, he’s not the right man for a diplomatic job; and as a longtime foe of the United Nations—not just critic, but foe—his nomination is an insult to that body. Moreover, he’s driven by ideology rather than by judgment, and don’t we have enough of that in this country as it is?

Bolton’s nomination is toast. And if you’re sensing that I’m happy about that, you’re absolutely right.

It all makes me think that humility—as opposed to the arrogance of the people trying to thrust this noxious character down our throats—is really an underrated public virtue.

That’s the headline on this Crimson column in defense of the protester at the CIA/Department of Homeland Security recruitment talk who made himself throw up into a bag, thereby bringing much opprobrium on the protesters and just generally grossing everyone out.

Key graf: “Like most people, I am uncomfortable with vomit. But what made the CIA/DHS protest so brilliantly inappropriate is exactly that it was so inappropriate. The vomit jolted students into paying attention. …Vomit may not be pretty, but vomit works.”

I, too, am uncomfortable with vomit, although as a former college student, I’m mildly familiar with it. So rather than go out on a limb and take an opinion on this important issue, I leave it up to you to decide….

Here’s one review of a recent Cornel West speech at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Key quote: “Anyone who came out to hear West would have found a patriotic and deeply religious man talking about democracy as a spiritual imperative in a way that is refreshingly - at times even jarringly - inclusive.”

West had an audience of about 1,000….or about 300 more than Maureen Dowd when she visited UNCG.

Appeal to a popular audience is hardly the only measure of an academic’s worth—although it does seem to be one that Larry Summers generally values—and it’s certainly not the most important measure, but still, I wonder: Is there any current Harvard professor who could travel to the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and draw a crowd of 1,000 people?

Which is not to slight Harvard professors, but merely to suggest that the banishment of Cornel West is a deep and ongoing loss for Harvard.

This report by the Computing Research Association warns of a drop in the number of undergraduates interested in majoring in computer science. The drop applies to both genders, but it’s particularly dramatic among women. Between 2000 and 2004, the number of men planning to major in comp sci declined 60 percent; between 1988 and 2004 (don’t ask me why the dates are different), the number of women declined 80 percent.

Key quote: “The furor over recent remarks by Harvard University president Lawrence Summers about women’s alleged inability to understand science is whispered to be making things worse.”

There’s no evidence presented for that claim, and I’m sure it would be nearly impossible to prove, but I’d like to see some substantiation.

Bottom line: “The number of total incoming freshmen last fall who felt they would probably major in computer science was just less than 1.5 percent of all enrolled freshmen.”

I don’t know if that number applies to Harvard. I do know that Larry Summers has pushed for the elimination of humanities departments with such low levels of interest….

Here’s one Harvard alum, John J. Christman, class of 1955, who’s so upset about the goings-on at Harvard that he’s cutting off his checks to his alma mater and skipping his 50th reunion.

(Hmmmm…a member of the Harvard class of 1955 panned my book in the LA Times. Must be a cantankerous bunch.)

The unusual thing about this man is that he’s not stopping giving because he’s mad at Summers; he’s stopping because he’s ticked at the faculty.

Key graf: “The recent disrespectful antics of the Harvard faculty toward president Lawrence Summers have just turned me off completely. I know of only one way to get this situation turned around. That is for the alumni to shut off the money spigot.”

Christman goes on to say, “This conclusion has not come to me recently. I have been disaffected since the nonsense of the 1960s was allowed to get totally out of control. The recent actions are only a manifestation of the fact that the inmates have taken over the asylum. The present faculty and fellow travelers are just the students of the 1960s who forced the university to do away with ROTC and establish such nonsensical courses as women’s studies, black studies, etc.”

Really, you can’t make this stuff up.

Of course, Mr. Christman’s decision to stop contributing to Harvard will probably hurt the president he wants to support….

The UK publication Medical News Today picks up the story of the Harvard AIDS scandal. But where are two logical outlets, the New York Times and the Washington Post? The Times should cover the story because of its inherent importance, and the Post has a local angle—how a university mismanaged a government grant, delaying its implentation in contravention of the terms of the grant—and how, according to AIDS doctors in Africa, people died as a result.

Come on, guys. Get in the game. This story is objectively more important than the women-in-science controversy, and just think of all the newsprint you devoted to that….

Saw another powerful, well-made documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival today: “The Brooklyn Connection,” directed by Klaartje Quirijns. The film tells the story of Florin Krasniqui, a Kosovar Albanian living in Brooklyn. Almost singlehandedly, Krasniqui equipped and armed the Kosovo Liberation Army in its war against Serbia—and he did it all legally, buying thousands of guns in the United States and putting them on planes to Albania, where the arms were smuggled over the border into Kosovo.

I once spent some time in Kosovo and wrote a piece about life there after the NATO bombing of Serb troops. It’s a dangerous, creepy place where violence simmers just beneath the surface of ordinary life. But the film is also about how absurdly easy it is to export violence across borders. In one disturbing scene, Krasniqui buys some kind of massive gun (I’m a blue stater, I have no idea what kind) from a Pennsylvania gun shop. The proprietor asks him what he plans to use it for; Krasniqui says he’s going elephant-hunting. No one believes this lie, but no one cares. It’s cover enough.

We hear a lot about other countries, Muslim countries, exporting violence to the United States. But in this case, Krasniqui, a private citizen, exported violence from the United States to a predominantly Muslim country, and he did it all perfectly legally. That’s scary. That the United States happened to support the efforts of the KLA doesn’t change the fact that next time, all those guns could be going to someone we don’t support. And as the film shows, if NATO-occupied Kosovo devolves into violence again, NATO soldiers will be fighting rebels equipped with American firepower. All legally bought and sold.

Full disclosure now: The film was based on a book by my friend Stacy Sullivan, a brave journalist and fantastic writer. It’s called Be Not Afraid, For You Have Sons in America, and it’s a gripping read. Congrats to Stacy and everyone else involved in the making of The Brooklyn Connection.

That got your attention, didn’t it?

But this time, the scandal is at a high school—my old high school, as a matter of fact, the Groton School, in Groton, Massachusetts. A few years ago, an embittered male student raised allegations of sexual abuse at Groton, although sexual harassment might be a better term for it. (Oddly, the alleged perpetrators were also boys, which raised all sorts of stereotypes about prep schools. None of which were true when I went there, and no, I’m not just saying that.)

Anyway, the father of the student was furious with the way the school had handled the matter, and all of a sudden, the New York Post began running salacious Page Six items about buggery (well, not really, but that was the implication) at a hoity-toity prep school (and I guess Groton is pretty hoity-toity, although somehow everyone there, including myself, manages to feel like loners and outsiders).

Terrible publicity for the school, of course, which was such an easy target for the Post that it could do little to fight back. Then the matter got in the hands of an ambitious district attorney who sensed an easy mark, and now Groton has “pled guilty,” as USA Today puts it, to not reporting allegations of sexual abuse.

Groton paid a $1250 fine, which tells you something about how serious its alleged offense was. Still, a big story in USA Today—”Elite Prep School Pleads Guilty in Sex Abuse Case”—isn’t good for any school.

All I can say is that Groton’s getting a raw deal on this one… As it happens, I doubt I’ll ever be able to afford to send my kids there. But if I could, I would. Without hesitation.

Cornel West will be speaking at the University of Houston on Thursday. The grammatical and factual mistakes in this University of Houston press release, by the way, do not bode well for UH students….