Shots in the Dark

So President Bush actually feels more confident about Alberto Gonzales after Gonzales testified before Congress last week.

As the Times puts it, Bush’s vote of confidence in Gonzalez…

…indicated that Mr. Bush, at least for now, has concluded his attorney general can weather the challenge to his leadership at the Justice Department, barring any evidence of wrongdoing.

Maybe so. But does Bush realize that the real damage Gonzalez is inflicting is to him? In putting his credibility on the line for an incompetent apparatchik, the president makes himself look stupid, and gives Americans even less reason to respect him than we already have.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that Bush figures we’ve lost all respect for him anyway, so what difference does it make?

Actually, that’s not entirely nuts….

Ads that are indented so that they block, say, the bottom half of a single line of text—you can still read the line, but only if you squint, invariably seeing the ad at the same time. (I think it’s supposed to look like a technical mistake, when in fact it’s the opposite.)

Would print editors permit their business sides to run ads superimposed over text? No. So why do they allow it online? Because online editorial is run either by tech geeks or by young “editors” who’ve never acquired the concept of church/state separation…..

In the Los Angeles Times, David Greenberg wonders whether the media isn’t too quick to judge men who make gaffes.

In recent years, this hysteria has exacted apologies, resignations and other pounds of flesh…The sloppy, sexist remarks that former Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers made about women and science deserved a reprimand, but they didn’t justify the loss of his job, which came fast and furious last spring.

I know and like David, but he’s wrong about something here—a mistake I want to point out since it’s become so common, it’s now conventional wisdom.

Most commentators who write about Summers’ exit from Harvard now conflate it chronologically with the women-in-science comments, as if the former hastily followed the latter—it came “fast and furious.”

The conflation creates a causality that isn’t accurate.

In fact, as we on this blog all know, Summers left Harvard more than a year after “the troubles,” and could very well have survived “women in science” had he not begun making more missteps.

This matters for two reasons.

One, the suggestion that Summers was fired for exercising his right to free speech makes him an unjustified martyr.

Two, it obscures the fact that there were many other issues involved in Summers’ resignation, some of which are ongoing at Harvard. (Debates over centralization and executive power, for instance.)

I don’t expect that pointing this out will make any real difference, since this conflation has now become the conventional wisdom about Summers’ ouster. (As Michael Kolber might say, sometimes the media is lazy.)

Perhaps I will rename this blog “Tilting at Windmills”….

I am saddened and also, for the following reasons, a little freaked out by the death of David Halberstam.

1) I saw Halberstam walking down the street a couple weeks ago, past the Cafe des Artistes on West 67th Street. He looked great—dapper, vigorous, elegant. I thought about introducing myself, then decided that I shouldn’t bother him.

2) One of the reasons I thought about introducing myself is that I’ve been meaning to drop him a note; I recently read two of his baseball books, The Teammates and Summer of ’49, and wanted to chat with him about baseball, the Red Sox, and the summer of ’78. But I’ve been busy, and I put off writing the note. There’s a lesson in that.

3) This paragraph, from Clyde Haberman’s eloquent remembrance in the Times:

Mr. Halberstam was killed doing what he had done his entire adult life: reporting. He was on his way to interview Y. A. Tittle, the former New York Giants quarterback, for a book about the 1958 championship game between the Giants and the Baltimore Colts, considered by many to be the greatest football game ever played.

Halberstam and I were/are working on very similar projects.

My own feelings aside, this is a real loss. First Vonnegut, now Halberstam. Wherever you are, Norman Mailer, please look both ways.

The Times makes a joke in its Boris Yeltsin headline:

Boris N. Yeltsin, Who Buried the U.S.S.R., Dies at 76

Michael Kolber, the Crimson’s ombudsman, writes a whole story about how the Crimson made a mistake and then ran a correction. Apparently newspapers do that.

Several forces seem to be driving newspapers toward more accountability and transparency: the New York Times-Jayson Blair scandal, the ombudsman industry, and the growth of Internet media including a phalanx of bloggers and watchdogs focused largely on the foibles of the old media.

I have never read those thoughts before. You say these blogger things focus on the “foibles” of the old media?

It would be unfortunate if all this criticism enfeebled newspapers, but there’s a difference between fearlessness and recklessness.

So, so true. There is a difference between fearlessness and recklessness.

It may be premature, though, to say The Crimson does as good a job as it should.

This is verging on ombudsman self-parody.*

Forgive the sarcasm. It’s just that, since Kolber’s last column, there’s been some very problematic stuff in the Crimson, most notably the reporting on Theda Skocpol. Lots of interesting issues there—anonymous sources, “news analysis,” different versions online and in print, and so on.

Yet for some reason, Kolber writes his one-time-a-month column about corrections even though he admits that the Crimson promptly corrected the story in question and in general is pretty good about running corrections.

It may be premature, though, to say The Crimson does as good a job as it should.

A few weeks ago, Kolber’s editor, Kristina Moore, said she would encourage him “to draw some stronger conclusions.” Keep encouraging, Kristina.

And then Kolber becomes approximately the 100 millionth media commentator to say something not very interesting about Jayson Blair.

Let me put it this way: Do you think that even one person at the Crimson was made uncomfortable by this column?
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* Speaking of ombudsman self-parody, I just noticed that Kolber’s column is titled “On Corrections.” Hilarious—just the right blend of earnestness and self-importance. Reminds me that back when I was a plebe at the New Republic, the magazine had a “most boring headline” contest. The winner? Flora Lewis’ column titled “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.”

Harvard Magazine has more info on Jeremy Knowles’ fight against cancer.

Knowledge of Knowles’s illness was closely held within the University, and it seemingly had no effect on his work. During the winter, however, his health worsened, acutely so in mid April, causing the initial announcement of his absence last week; at that time, as reported, Knowles hoped for a course of care that would lessen what Bok described as “acute and persistent pain,” enabling him to return to work in short order. Today’s announcement makes clear that that will not be possible.

It goes without saying—but let it be said regardless—that our thoughts and prayers are with Dean Knowles.

The Crimson reports that Jeremy Knowles is stepping down as dean to attend to his health; Knowles has prostate cancer.

He wrote the faculty, “I’ll be working from home for a week or so, trusting (and believing!) that I shall be fully re-harnessed thereafter. As Christopher Robin put on his door for Winnie-the-Pooh to read: ‘Bak Sun’!”

Dean Knowles, get well soon.

At Harvard, students just want to be infantilized (except when they want to drink beer); at Yale, the deans want to treat students like children.

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, Yale dean Betty Trachenberg just banned a student theater production from using swords and daggers as props.

Yale deans should not be in the business of censorship. Nor should they be idiots. When every newspaper and broadcast network is showing a photo of a campus killer waving a gun in each hand, she’s worried about a swordfight on stage?

Perhaps this confirms the wisdom of her decision to retire….

Thanks to all who contributed to the conversation below, more than doubling the previous record for comments posted regarding an item on this blog. I’m not quite sure what came out of it…but somehow, I feel that we haven’t heard the last of the issues you all raised and debated over the weekend.

And I am struck again by the question: What does it say about the greatest university in the world that there is no public forum where this kind of discussion can take place other than a single blog?