Shots in the Dark

Here at “Shots in the Dark,” we really are a big tent. Unlike, say, some political parties that I could mention.

My criticism of Jonah Goldberg seems to have struck a nerve; the comments section of that post is a hotbed of anti-RB vitriole. Why, even Jonah himself has gotten into the act, insulting me, my (first) book, my (last) name—but not actually responding to my criticism of his argument.

What strikes me about some of the posters is the way that they stubbornly hold certain ideals sacred and inviolable: Harvard is a bastion of liberalism (not really), Ted Kennedy is the devil (seems a bit strong, no?), Cornel West is a fraud (would they say this if he were white?), and Eric Alterman is truly unpleasant.

Well, maybe that last one….

I have mixed feelings about this column by Jonah Goldberg in National Review Online.

On the one hand, I consider Jonah Goldberg a loathsome character, a self-satisfied ball of snark untempered by warmth, maturity, kindness or wisdom.

On the other hand, he’s certainly clever (if prone to showing off his cleverness, as in this column, when he throws in references to Cafe Vienna, the Bronze Age, and the Blues Brothers, as if to say, “Look at me! I can go high! I can go low!”.)

And Goldberg is clever enough to note the awkwardness of the recent study purporting to show why Jews are smart versus the outrage over Larry Summers’ recent remarks purporting to show why women are dumb.

(I’m simplifying, but you get the point.)

Goldberg writes, “The flames of the Summers auto-da-fe cast a useful light on the cognitive dissonance, schizophrenia, and bad faith dotting the intellectual and political landscape today when it comes to genetics.”

(“Auto-da-fe” being a phrase Goldberg tosses out to show off his whippersnapper-smarts while suggesting that those who criticize Summers constitute an Inquisition.)

Well…no.

It’s certainly true that the subject of genetic differences between genders, races and ethnic groups makes people uncomfortable. It should. A study showing “superior” intelligence in Jews makes me squeamish for myriad reasons. A university president suggesting that men may be genetically superior to women in math and science—you bet, that makes me shift uneasily in my seat.

I think I’ll be nervous when the day comes that such topics do not make us a little uncomfortable.

But as with every single conservative who’s blabbed on about this brouhaha, Goldberg makes his point by creating a straw man: that it was the mere suggestion of genetic differences which aroused such ire among women and the Harvard faculty.

Not so.

It was Summers’ unambiguous suggestion that such differences were a greater contributor to the paucity of women in science than was discrimination. Coupled with the fact that tenure rates for women had dropped dramatically during Larry Summers’ four years as president. Both of which presented the idea that Larry Summers was using cockamamie genetic theories to justify denying tenure to women.

In closing, let me quote Goldberg one more time:

“The animal kingdom is replete with enormous male-female disparities. Even among the branch of humans we call feminists, it’s a widely held view that men and women think and behave differently.”

I’m not sure, but I think that Goldberg is, in a sneering, deliberately-deniable sort of way, suggesting that feminists are a lower form of animal.

Lower than a pig, Jonah?

In fact, I did buy a new iPod, as previously discussed. I couldn’t find my old 20-gig model; it’ll either be in the last box I unpack, or one of the moving guys is enjoying it even now. Truth be told, it had almost reached the end of its storage space anyway. Since my sister and brother-in-law were kind enough to give me an Apple gift certificate for Christmas, I was itching to get a new one.

I got the 30-gig model, which not only plays music but also displays photos. It’s knocking my socks off. My former iPod was about two years old, and it was considerably heavier than this new one, even though it held only 2/3 of the music. I love the new color screen and the way the iPod displays album covers along with the song that’s playing (as long as you bought the song off iTunes).

People say that Apple’s competitors are going to catch up sooner or later. Maybe. But it’s hard to imagine a product more exquisitely engineered than this one, and to me, all the other digital music players look like clunky knock-offs. Bill Gates says that MP3-playing cell phones will topple the iPod, but I’m not so sure of that either. With the exception of the Motorola Razor, cell phone design has grown stagnant. I’ve wanted to replace my old Samsung for about a year—I can’t stand the operating program—but haven’t seen anything that seems both highly functional and aesthetically pleasing; I’m spoiled by my iPod. (My carrier, Verizon—argh!—doesn’t carry the Razor.) So can cell phones really add an entire new function without multi-task overload? Most people don’t use all the functions cell phones already have.

The only solution? For Apple and Motorola to hustle out with that iTunes-compatible phone they’ve been whispering about for some time now….

This week the Ethicist (a.ka. Randy Cohen) fields a question from Roberta Osborne of Toronto:

“I have M.S., for which there is at present no cure. My doctor has invited me to participate in studies of existing and potential treatments. I admire those who volunteer for such research, but I am concerned about the potential long-term health consequences. Is it ethical to benefit from medicines developed through research studies but not participate in them myself?”

The Ethicist’s answer: No one can be forced to volunteer for medical research, but Roberta should give back to the M.S.-medical community in some way. “It would be parasitical for any of us to benefit from a community without contributing to its well-being. But the particular means of giving back are left up to us.”

“Look at it this way,” the Ethicist continues. “You may walk over the Brooklyn Bridge without shame even though workers suffered and died in its construction while you did not pitch in (what with your not being from around here or being born at the time).”

The Re-Ethicist’s response: Wrong!

Well, half-wrong, anyway.

We shall begin by pointing out the essential silliness of Cohen’s Brooklyn Bridge analogy.

There.

Now, Cohen is of course correct that no one can or should be forced to “volunteer” for medical research. We know where that road leads.

Nonetheless, he is letting Roberta off the hook rather too easily for her fear of science. The question of her participation in research directed at helping her and millions of other people isn’t just a question of compulsion, it’s a question about the quality of one’s life, about one’s attitude towards living. Will Roberta conquer her fear? Will she overcome her instinct for self-preservation by rising to a higher standard of spirituality and living?

Because let’s face it—what Cohen is really doing is saying that while it’s unfortunate for Osborne to act in a cowardly fashion, no one can force her to be courageous.

And so it is. But we can encourage Osborne to be brave.

It’s a bit like checking the organ donor box on your driver’s license. No one can force you to do it—but that doesn’t mean that it’s all right not to. People should be encouraged to conquer their irrational fears. Because sometimes, living an ethical life isn’t just about playing by the rules; it’s about doing the things that scare you but benefit others.

A postscript: Incidentally, you can get a hint of Roberta’s (quite understandable) fear in her language. She writes: “I have M.S., for which there is at present no cure.”

Extraneous words in a sentence often indicate an emotional hedge, a reluctance to confront a difficult truth. Notice Osborne’s use of the words “at present.” Omit them. The sentence now reads: “I have M.S., for which there is no cure.”

Means exactly the same thing, right? And yet it’s tougher, more honest; the “at present” is a flinch, a way of implying that a cure is right around the corner.

I would certainly not fault anyone with a terminal disease whose fear seeps into her language. But I would have admired Osborne particularly had she written “I have M.S., for which there is no cure.” And I wonder if we don’t see her flinch not only in her language, but also in her fear of volunteering in medical tests.

An occasional series of captions from photographs printed in the New York Times. Because sometimes, the Times is more zen than it realizes.

What’s the difference between Larry Summers and other notoriously unpopular executives such as Howell Raines, Carly Fiorina, and Phil Purcell, the just-ousted chief of Morgan Stanley?

Simple: All four people were widely disliked for their brusque and abrasive top-down management style. But Raines, Fiorina and Purcell got fired. And as far as we know, Summers never came close to losing his job.

I was thinking about why that was so as I read a piece on Purcell by James J. Cramer in this week’s issue of New York magazine. There are some interesting similarities between Purcell and Summers—and between Morgan Stanley and Harvard.

As Cramer writes, “In the end there is a Willy Loman factor on Wall Street that Purcell either forgot or never learned. Although it is not as simple as ‘be liked and you will never want,’ as Loman says, the corollary is true: You can’t be hated by everyone and prosper. By all accounts, Purcell was hated for his intense arrogance by almost everyone who worked for him. His lack of people skills, Wall Street gibberish for ‘he thought he was better than everyone else,’ ate him.”

It would be too strong to say that Larry Summers is hated by “everyone.” But he’s certainly hated by enough people at Harvard to make his management of the institution profoundly difficult and, perhaps, fatally flawed.

So why, after the faculty vote of no-confidence, did Summers keep his job?

There are many answers, but the primary one has to do with management structure. Purcell was fired by the Morgan Stanley board of directors, which has some independent figures (one of whom, Laura D’Andrea Tyson, is a former colleague of Summers, and would make a great university president herself).

The Harvard Corporation, the seven-person board with the power to fire Summers, has been stocked by Summers. In hip-hop terms, the Corporation is Summers’ bitch. (Though I’m told that newcomer Nan Keohane is a strong and independent figure. We’ll see.) It has abdicated a meaningful checks-and-balances role.

Moreover, Morgan Stanley had tangible results that showed that Purcell’s leadership was not working: departures of top execs, poor earnings, massive payouts to prevent other departures, etc.

At Harvard, “results” are difficult to quantify. Some people have left under Summers, but not enough to prove anything (Harvard’s a tough place to walk away from). And Summers has paid out substantial sums to alleviate discontent—$1 million to Skip Gates, $50 million to women—but few people know about the former, and the latter is couched as an investment in the future.

Of course, I’d argue that you can see disastrous results in, say, the conduct of the curricular review. But on this subject and others, one gets the feeling that the Corporation knows only what Summers tells them.

(Cramer on Purcell: “…Purcell never managed down, just up, catering to the board in a way that made many people…think that he would have to commit a homicide to lose the support of these mostly handpicked bakcers. …They knew only what he told them, and he told them that all was well and the people who were departing were just sore white-shoe losers—and not of the tough-guy, Notre Dame ilk that spawned Purcell.”)

One could argue, I suppose, that Harvard is the world’s leading university, so the structure of its corporate governance must be doing something right.

But I’m not so sure that we aren’t entering into a phase where Harvard is going to be challenged by other universities as never before—an era where the unresponsive, uncommunicative, insular and secretive Harvard Corporation will appear increasingly anachronistic. And, more importantly, less well-equipped to lead Harvard in the 21st century.

It’s a great story. Can’t wait to see what happens.

So far, I can’t complain: the technology giants upon which I am dependent have, by and large, come through for me.

Time-Warner cable guys quickly set up my cable television and cable Internet access. (I use Earthlink via Time-Warner.) So far, cable Internet access is considerably faster than my old DSL service from Verizon—and every few weeks, that service would mysteriously go down for no apparent reason, usually just when I was on some sort of deadline for which I required Internet access and e-mail.

I’ve also switched my phone service from Verizon to Vonage. Since I work at home, I make a lot of phone calls, and I had an unlimited phone plan from Verizon for about $70 a month. I have the exact same plan with Vonage, which transmits telephone calls over the Internet, for $25 a month. If I were you, I’d sell your Verizon stock. (I did.)

Surprisingly, the one company I had trouble with was Apple, whose customer service is generally first-rate. A bizarre thing happened on my way to setting up here in Soha/NoCo (south of Harlem, for long-time residents; north of Columbia, for real estate brokers selling to latecomers like me): I lost the ability to receive e-mails. I could find them on the web, at the page Earthlink uses for web access to e-mail; but my computer was not grabbing them from the Internet.

So I called Apple and spoke with one of those tech guys you sometimes encounter who seems to be thinking out loud as he walks you through a repair process. Or maybe making it up as he went along. Suddenly—after over an hour on the phone—several thousand saved e-mails mysteriously vanished from my computer. At that point, the tech guy mumbled something about getting a product specialist on the line, and after a very lengthy hold, he handed the phone call off to someone named Daniel.

Instant relief. Daniel knew exactly what he was doing, and in about ten minutes we fixed the problem and my e-mails were restored. He and I then had a nice chat about Apple’s switch to computer chips made by Intel, whether I should buy a new iMac, whether I should buy a new iPod, and the virtues of a home wireless system. (It’ll be a good thing in the long run, yes, they’re amazing machines, yes, they’re amazing machines, and yes, it’s very cool to play music from your computer wirelessly through your stereo.) A disastrous experience was salvaged.

The conclusion? Verizon is the big loser, and I have to say, it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving company. As anyone who’s ever tried to get Verizon on the phone knows, this is probably the most user-hostile of all the conglomerates/monopolies that grip us in their velvet claws. Their customer service is lousy, their products mediocre, and their prices far higher than a free market would support. (If you don’t believe me, Google “Verizon sucks” and enjoy some of the 216,000 hits that come up, including the aptly named website, Verizon Sucks.) I love that Vonage has popped up to exploit a niche in the technology—and tons of customers who’ve taken abuse from Verizon for so many years finally have a choice. Vonage takes a little bit of tech savvy to set up. But so far, it’s a lifesaver.

Now if we could only get those cable bills down….

I’ve often suggested that, under Larry Summers’ leadership, Harvard is adopting the style, norms and culture of Washington, D.C. Now there’s even more proof of that—a fact so bizarre that even I’m startled by it.

Let’s start with a pop quiz.

Which of these things is not like the others?

a) The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee
b) The Association of American Railroads
c) The Nuclear Energy Institute
d) The American Association of Airport Executives
e) The Confederation of Indian Industry
f) Harvard University

And the answer is: None. At least in one important matter they’re all the same.

(Sorry, it was kind of a trick question.)

According to USA Today, these groups were among the ten largest sponsors of privately funded travel for members of Congress. That is to say, they paid congresspeople and senators to fly around the country on junkets—the same thing for which Tom DeLay is now on the hot seat.

And yes, that’s Harvard, right up there at #6, between the Association of American Railroads and the Nuclear Energy Institute. Between 2000 and 2005, Harvard spent about $313, 000 on travel for members of Congress. (I’d bet the amounts increased after 2001, when Larry Summers became president.)

To which one can only say: Huh? What is Harvard doing on a list of Washington influence-buyers?

Possibly some of this money was spent flying MOCs to the Kennedy School for “panel discussions.” But I’d really like to know who Harvard was flying around and why….

Perhaps the Crimson’s Zachary Seward or Mary Habib can find out…..

…and about twelve percent of the man I used to be (which was about 70% of the man I ought to be, probably). I have carried and unpacked dozens of boxes, painted like I was getting paid by the brush stroke, and tried to make sense of a kitchen. I have received services from Time-Warner Cable (they were great) and FreshDirect (thank God, they deliver to 122nd Street). The e-mail’s a little spotty and the phone service just bizarre—I can call you, but you can’t call me, at least not without going into voicemail. But slowly, slowly, I’m getting back on my feet…..

There’ll be lots of news to come in the forthcoming days, so please, keep tuning in—and thanks for your patience. As soon as the place is presentable, you’re invited to the housewarming.

Tomorrow I’m moving from the apartment I’ve been living in for ten years now. (Holy cow, how did that happen?) This computer is virtually the only thing working in my current digs; everything else is shoved into a box and wrapped with tape like when Frodo met Shelob. The point being that posting may be a challenge for the next day or so.

It’s sad to leave this apartment, which has been the home for twenty-five percent of my life. (Holy cow, how did that happen?)

But if I think or write about it now, I’ll get maudlin. Or depressed. (It’s never a good idea to tackle a tough subject in an empty apartment surrounded by boxes. Don’t try it at your home.)

The movers come in nine hours. Wish them luck!