Shots in the Dark

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

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

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

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

Let’s deconstruct that response a little bit, beginning with the phrase, “All I know is…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why, yes, it does….

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

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

But not everyone thinks the paper is good scholarship.

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

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

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

Nancy Hopkins and her “ilk”? What exactly are you trying to imply there, NAS? Doesn’t sound very scholarly to me….