Shots in the Dark

In Slate, Bruce Fein makes the conservatives’ case for impeaching Dick Cheney.

It sounds quixotic, I know. But think of it this way: If Dick Cheney has caused this much trouble so far, imagine what he’s capable of in the desperate last days of a dying administration, when he feels even less responsibility to be publicly or legally accountable?

Guess who’s just collaborated with Prince on a hot new song?

You won’t, so I’ll give you a hint: His previous musical outing was wrongly described by ignorant or racist (or both) critics as “rap.”

You guessed it! Cornel West has teamed up with Prince to record a song called “Dear Mr. Man,” which is the “song of the day” today on Salon.com.

Here’s writer David Marchese’s description of “Dear Mr. Man“:

Prince was featured in this space just last week, but today’s song, his collaboration with Princeton professor and public intellectual Cornel West, is just too unique to pass by. Horn stabs and some wiggly wah-wah guitar groove along to a greasy beat as Prince wonders, “What’s wrong with the world today?” and West chimes in with lines like, “Raise your Socratic questions to the system!” If only all protest music were this funky.

Me, I like it when West shouts out, “Break it down, brother Prince!”

It’s a pretty good song, in fact.

Now that we’ve discussed the sex lives of Harvard students, it only seems fair to consider that of their teachers.

In the American Scholar, William Deresiewicz examines the image of the priapic professor in popular film.

The absentminded professor, that kindly old figure, is long gone….

Deresiewicz, an associate professor of English at Yale, writes that the new stereotype is of a bitter, frustrated, and disappointed professor who compensates for his lack of professional success by sleeping with students.

Why are so many of these failed professors also failed writers? Why is professional futility so often connected with sexual impropriety? (In both Terms of Endearment and We Don’t Live Here Anymore, “going to the library” becomes a euphemism for “going to sleep with a student.”) Why are these professors all men, and why are all the ones who are married such miserable husbands?

So many choices….

The first possibility is that today’s academics are portrayed as pompous, lecherous, alcoholic failures because that’s what they are….

But there’s more to it than that, apparently….. Deresiewicz winds up suggesting some quite smart ideas about how a certain erotic tension is in the nature of the student-teacher relationship and, properly channeled, is a socially good thing.

The Socratic relationship…has become a kind of suppressed cultural memory, a haunting imaginative possibility. In our sex-stupefied, anti-intellectual culture, the eros of souls has become the love that dares not speak its name.

Lots to think about in this essay….

Elizabeth Edwards calls Hardball to challenge Ann Coulter to start acting like a human being. Coulter twists her words, says no.Â

Here’s the WashPo blurb for today’s Dick Cheney investigation into his role in the White House’s environmentalism:Â

Walt Mossberg in the Journal and David Pogue in the Times love the iPhone.

In Florida, leatherback turtles are making a “mild resurgence” this year, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. (Thanks, Florida reader.)

With a few weeks to go in the nesting season, “Anecdotal reports show this could be a record year statewide for leatherback turtle nests,” said Meghan Koperski, environmental specialist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Conservation efforts are actually working!

In other animal news, scientists have found that giant penguins used to roam Peru about 42 million years ago.

And whale-watchers in Australia have spotted Migaloo, a legendary albino humpback feared eaten by killer whales. Nice one, Migaloo. Way to stay alive.

Today the Washington Post examines his influence on domestic policy—less well-known than his impact on foreign policy, but also huge.

These articles really do raise the question: Who is the president of the United States? Or, perhaps more accurately put, who has more power, President Bush or Vice-President Cheney?

The answer should be obvious. It isn’t.

Meet Elwood, the world’s ugliest dog….

And the runners-up are no beauties either.

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Justin Murray and Sarah Kinsella talk about the Harvard-based, pro-abstinence group, True Love Revolution. (I know—sounds like a ’70s disco orchestra, doesn’t it?)

On a campus they describe as saturated with casual sex, Justin and Sarah have helped put abstinence on the map. As they prepare to take their commitment to chastity — and each other — off campus, they leave behind a handful of devotees of a countercultural movement that says abstinence is sexy.

Harvard? Saturated with casual sex?

Well, they seem like nice young people, so I wish them luck. But one day, will they grow up and join the next Bush-like administration and start telling the rest of us what we can and can’t do?

That’s always the concern, of course.