Shots in the Dark

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

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

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

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

Huh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huh.

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

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

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

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

Huh.

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

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

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

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

Guess what? You won’t!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note that phrase, “no institutional wrongdoing.”

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

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

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

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

(Are you out there, Harvard Crimson?)

If so, hasn’t he cost Harvard enough?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mean, really…“my give a damn’s busted”?

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

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

More to the point….

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

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

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