Shots in the Dark

Yale president Rick Levin announces his plan to make Yale the country’s greenest university, lands in Newsweek.

What will Drew Faust do?

Oh, and by the way, Governor Patrick—Yale is replacing its cars with hybrids.

New Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick is in hot water for spending state money on swank redecorations for his office and ditching Mitt Romney’s Lincoln Town Car in favor of a Cadillac DTS.

I swear, sometimes I think I should go into politics. Because, guys, this stuff is not that hard.

Okay, Governor, maybe your office is a little ratty. You really want to redecorate? Bring in some “Living” reporter from the Globe, tell him/her how the office doesn’t do the great state of Massachusetts justice, and announce that you’ve found a donor, preferably someone with a longtime interest in historic preservation, to pay for it, because you don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars.

Next…a Cadillac? Oh, Deval, you are a bonehead. What kind of message does that send, driving around in a posh new Caddy? This kind of message:

One word, Governor Patrick: Hybrid. How about the Ford Escape? It’s American, it’s populist, and it gets about six times the gas mileage of the Cadillac. It’s still an SUV, which is unfortunate, but people will forgive you that.

Oh, and Governor—your wife doesn’t need a $72,000 aide. She just doesn’t. (Ever heard the name Alan Hevesi? You could look it up.) Tell her to get over herself. Hire a scholarship student graduating from a local university—not Harvard—maybe the daughter of a veteran—and pay her $30 grand. She’ll be happy to get the job, and you’ll look like you’re helping out a hard-working, up-and-coming young person. Which, in fact, you will be.

Residents of Massachusetts, you have a problem, because if this behavior is indicative of Patrick’s character—and trust me, it always is—in about three years, you’re going to have some serious corruption scandals on your hands.

The Crimson reports that Drew Faust has asked Steve Hyman to stay on as provost.

Interesting.

What does this mean? Here are some possibilities.

1) Sometimes a rose is just a rose: Faust, like others around campus, thinks that Hyman is doing a good job and sees no reason to cast him off just because he wanted to be president

2) Faust knows that she needs to build support with the scientists and thinks this is a good way to start doing so

3) The Corporation wanted Faust to keep Hyman, and since she has been angling for the job for years, she played along

4) Drew Faust is a very secure woman, strong enough to retain a former rival

5) Drew Faust is a placeholder president, which is what the Corporation wanted

Take it from here, folks.

Dear Crimson folks,

One of my least favorite words in the English language is “asshole.” Why? Because even though it’s fairly common, it’s unpleasantly graphic. Maybe I’m Waspy that way, but maybe I’m emo and just very sensitive to words, too. There are some swear words I’m pretty okay with. “Fuck” has a nice ring to it. “Shit” and “bullshit” are good too. But “asshole” bothers me. So sue me, Dr. Freud.

Then again, I’m okay with “motherfucker,” which is icky, it’s true, but in a funny, over-the-top way. No one really means it when they call you a motherfucker, unless possibly you go to Brown, so everyone can have a good laugh. But “asshole” always has a nasty, vicious undertone. A Nixonian quality, really.

Moreover, when we say “motherfucker” in polite conversation—”Gosh, my co-worker is a motherfucker”—eyebrows are raised. Shouldn’t the same be true for the word “asshole.” Our society is vulgar enough as it is. Must we debase it further?

The point is, do I really need to open up your website and see a huge ad for some hack book by “Robert I. Sutton, Ph.D.” called “THE NO ASSHOLE RULE.”

Here’s a tip, Dr. Sutton. Putting “Ph.D.” after your name doesn’t make you look smart and authoritative. It makes you look needy and pathetic and, frankly, probably dumb. Even though you are allegedly a professor at Stanford. It also makes it look like you’re paying Alibris to publish your book, even though you’re not.

I’m sorry; I don’t mean to be a jerk about this. Please, don’t call me an—well, you know. It’s just that I’m having my morning coffee here. Who needs “ASSHOLE” in their face at this hour?

Crimson, you guys don’t need the ad money that much. (Do you?) Strike a blow for clean living. Purge the ass**** from your page. We’ll all feel better.

“I don’t think anybody believes that in the last six years, all of a sudden Bill Clinton has become a different person.”

—David Geffen, who, apparently, is without sin

“I want to run a very positive campaign, and I sure don’t want Democrats or supporters of Democrats to be engaging in the politics of personal destruction.”

—Hillary Clinton, in response

Duke political scientist Brendan Nyhan defends Larry Summers on his blog, pointing out the various ways in which Summers statements about women in science have been translated into the popular press. See for yourself…and while you’re at it, Harvard folks, you might take notice of something else: A professor who actually writes a blog!

(All right, I take it back, he’s a graduate student. But still.)

Meanwhile, a commenter below wondered what was up with Rick Levin’s decision not to abandon early admissions at Yale. Here’s his explanation…and here’s my excerpt of what seems to me the most candid part:

Y: But by keeping early admissions, you keep a system in which the early pool, which is wealthier, has a higher acceptance rate — approximately 18 percent last year versus 8 percent for the regular pool.

L: The quality of the early pool is higher on average. Many of the best high schools encourage their best students to apply early.

Y: In 2002, you told the alumni magazine you would like to see early admissions eliminated everywhere.

L: I emphasized that every school would have to eliminate early admissions to achieve the desired result. But this is very unlikely to happen. If Yale were to eliminate early admissions now, it is most likely that we would end up with a system where the top three or five schools had no early program, and just about everybody else did. That wouldn’t solve many problems and would create some new ones.

By the way, good for the Yale Alumni Magazine to ask Levin some tough questions. While people pay a lot of attention to Harvard Magazine—which is very fine, it’s true—the YAM has actually gotten really good, and is in some ways (design, for example) better than Harvard Magazine.

In what is either shameless and pathetic self-promotion or a candid recognition of its relative place in the world, Bryn Mawr college has posted a webpage devoted to its graduates (e.g., Drew Faust. ’68) who have gone on to prominent jobs at Harvard.

Anna Lo Davol ’64….was a physician at Harvard’s University Health Services.

To be fair, there are some interesting women on the list. (I’d forgotten that Hanna Gray went to Brywn Mawr, and Mary Maples Dunn, and Rosabeth Moss Kanter, and Sally Zeckhauser.)

But still…a whole page devoted to the fact that your alumnae did well at Harvard? Isn’t that sort of like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays putting out a press release devoted to guys they traded to the Yankees?

A couple days ago, Alex Rodriguez said that he doesn’t spend five nights a week at Derek Jeter’s house any more, but they’re still friends. Today, Jeter responds by saying that yes, they get along fine, and the media makes too much of their relationship.

I’m going to defend the media—and A-Rod—here.

There clearly is an interesting dynamic between these two guys. They’re both extremely well-paid, remarkably talented players, with very different personalities. A-Rod seems introspective and sometimes insecure; Jeter loves to play ball and chase girls, and if he thinks about much else, he gives little sign of it. (In my opinion, he should have stuck with Yalie Jordana Brewster, granddaughter of Kingman Brewster and daughter of a Brazilian model. How’s that for bloodlines? Though come to think of it, she might have been too smart for him….)

A few years ago, A-Rod slagged Jeter in an Esquire article, saying that because he’d always been on such good teams, he’d never really had to be a leader. (While that may have been true at the time, Jeter has certainly proved it wrong in the past few years.) Jeter is the hometown here who can do no wrong in the fans’ eyes; A-Rod is the import whom the fans cheer only as long as he doesn’t screw up.

Jeter is a great player, of course. His love for the game and the passion with which he plays it are inspiring. But I think A-Rod deserves our appreciation as well. He’s obviously struggling with some issues—last season was a psychological nightmare for him—and he talks about them out loud. I like his honesty. Baseball, and the Yankees, are more interesting for it. And when A-Rod is playing the way that he can, he really is a joy to watch; there’s probably no more gifted athlete in the entire sport. He may never match Derek Jeter in the hearts of Yankee fans, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be appreciated in his own right.

A sex show, that is. On Monday night, the College of William & Mary hosted something called the Sex Workers Art Show.

Sparkling nipple adornments, feather boas, bare bottoms, erotic dances, striptease music and sex toys entertained a crowd of more than 400 who were packed into the auditorium of the University Center. Another 300 were turned away. The show attempted to empower the actors by portraying the realities of their careers.

A worthy cause, no doubt.

Naturally, the show has caused some controversy, according to the Virginia Gazette.

Ken Petzinger, a physics professor, was outraged to learn that the college had permitted such an event. He found out about it last Friday, too late to stop it.

“I think it’s a totally inappropriate use of student funds,” Petzinger said. “It’s in conflict with other values the college has.”

Mr. Petzinger, by the way, is a Christian bigot who, when he learned that William & Mary planned to extend health care to the partners of gay and lesbian staff, organized a successful crusade against the plan, and managed to beat back health insurance!

Meanwhile, senior Sean Barker, a black studies major who organized the art show, defended it.

“It serves to deconstruct some of the assumptions we may have about sex workers,” he said.

That’s hilarious.

Virginia Walters, another student who helped organize the show, agreed.

“A really important aspect of this particular show is that it’s not pornography,” she said. “People also confuse ‘sex positivity’ with sex all the time, and that’s not what this is about. It’s about making your own choices.”

Don’t you hate it when people confuse “sex positivity” with sex?

And, of course, a sensitive man got all huffy:

…John Foubert, a professor in the School of Ed and faculty sponsor of One in 4, a student organization devoted to battling sexual assault on college campuses, felt compelled to give people more information.

I swear to God, you can’t make this stuff up—”a professor in the School of Ed and faculty sponsor of One in 4,” a group which makes the ludicrous claim that one in four college women will be the victims of rape or attempted rape. (If you want to know more, you could purchase one of the videos they sell for $125 on their website.)

And finally, a 75-year-old guy went to the show.

He was bothered by what he saw. “It’s shocking they had this type of event for impressionable young people,” the man said.

But it’s all right for creepy old men to check out naked strippers making performance art with dildos.

Isn’t it amazing how all the stereotypical types play their parts in such trumped-up dramas? The students say they’re just deconstructing, the physics professor/religious bigot gets outraged, the ed school professor cares deeply about women, and a righteous but possibly pervy citizen grimly mutters his concern.

I swear, it’s just like the ’80s all over again. Next, someone will actually give a damn about Karen Finley.

New York Times Book Review editor Barry Gewen spoke at Radcliffe yesterday after being introduced by Drew Faust. He talked about how there’s not much diversity on staff (shocker there) and how they like the mystery about how books get reviewed and why.

Pity he didn’t talk about how incredibly boring the NYTBR is, and what a terrific job they do of making an exciting subject seem bloodless and irrelevant…..

Here’s a little secret of mine that I think many people share: When you see that Sunday Times lying on your doorstep, don’t you die a little bit inside, overwhelmed at the thought of plowing through the dreariest collection of sections that ever consumed hours and hours of your life? And yet, we feel guilty if we just admit that the whole thing bores us to tears and go out and do something useful with out Sundays.

What fun it would be to make the NYTBR lively and compelling and relevant….to make the book review into something that actually generated conversation, maybe even argument.