Shots in the Dark

I’ve avoided writing about Harold Ford, the Tennessean-turned-New-Yorker-kinda-not-really-but-thinks-he-can-be-senator, because there’s just so much to write, I’ve found it a little daunting.

But in the spirit of bipartisanship, I think the time has come.

Ford, as you may know, is an African-American man who was a media-hungry congressman from Tennessee until he was beaten by Republicans, largely with the help of a probably-racist advertisement playing on white people’s fears of miscegenation.

That said, Ford is was a little bit of a player. Though he’s married now, as a single guy he dated about five women that I know (the media-politics nexis is pretty small), and I don’t know that many women. Also, he dated Julia Allison, which on one level you can understand but isn’t really the mark of a serious man.

So anyway, after losing his race Ford did the stand-up thing: He started a non-profit to help poor and sick people around the world.

Hah! Just kidding. He moved to New York to make a fortune with Bank of America Merrill Lynch while appearing as a talking head on MSNBC.

Now he’s talking about running for Senate by challenging Democratic incumbent Kirsten Gillebrand, who has her own issues but, well, give her a chance.

Ford, however, is wildly out of sync with New Yorkers on the issues—he’s anti-choice (though he’s since flip-flopped) and he voted for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which is just kind of asinine. (He’s flip-flopped on that too.) He’s also voted for oil drilling in the Alaskan tundra and against raising CAFE standards (other positions on energy are more mixed, it’s a bit confusing).

Ford doesn’t know the subway system—he says he takes taxis to work, and only rides the subway in winter—so to prove that he’s a real New Yorker, he’s explained that he moved to New York three years ago and that he pays taxes in New York. (They’re a lot!)

But, scooping the Times, Gawker establishes (who says blogs don’t report) that Ford has never filed income taxes in New York. He’s managed to maintain legal residency in Tennessee, which has no income tax.

Ford presumably decided that his real home was Tennessee, which conveniently has no income tax. Which means that, despite the fact that New York law requires part-time and nonresidents to pay income tax on money they earn in the state, Ford has shielded his entire Merrill Lynch salary from New York’s tax collectors for the past three years. In fact, it seems like Tennessee’s lack of an income tax may be the best explanation for Ford’s rather complicated two-state life since 2007 — he clearly wanted to live in New York, and married a woman in 2008 who did live in New York. But he made sure to keep a foot in a state whose tax code is friendly to rich guys like himself.

Though to be fair, the Times did get him on one of the more hilarious quotes of all time. Ford told the paper, when it asked about his residency, “Moved is such a legal term.”

Only, apparently, when you haven’t.

And when the Times asked if he’d been to all five boroughs of NYC, Ford responded that he had because he’d taken a helicopter trip around the city one day. Asked if he’d been to Staten Island, Ford responded, “I landed there in the helicopter, so I can say yes.”

You get the feeling that that is exactly right—Ford landed there in the helicopter so he could say yes.

And the guy wants to be our senator?

I do credit him with having one genuine New York quality: chutzpah.

The Washington Post looks at the track record of new local hero (and Massachusetts senator) Scott Brown—and finds it pretty thin.

During his 11 years on Boston’s Beacon Hill, one of the nearly 180 bills that Brown introduced became law, according to an analysis by The Washington Post. He voted with the state legislature’s Republican minority leaders about 90 percent of the time, agreeing with the Democratic majority least often on taxes and most often on matters involving energy and the environment, according to the analysis of every roll-call vote Brown cast.

One out of 180 sounds pretty bad, but the Post doesn’t provide any context on how that relates to other Massachusetts lawmakers. And, of course, it’s not easy for a Republican to pass a bill in a Democrat-controlled legislature.

Still, it’s probably pretty bad.

The only bill Brown got through the state Senate during his half a dozen years there was a measure making it easier for returning veterans to claim a $1,000 “welcome home” payment. His only legislative successes previously in the Massachusetts House were nine local measures, including one that allowed a pizzeria to sell wine and others that allowed two employees to save sick leave.

I like wine, and I like pizza. So that’s good. But on the other hand, who drinks wine with pizza?

Brown has a record of wanting to cut taxes, which the Post calls “fiscal conservatism”—a term I disagree with, as there are times when cutting taxes can be a radical move—and for many years supported “don’t ask, don’t tell,” though he appears to be changing his position on that.

Brown has consistently opposed gay marriage, and has even voted against recognizing civil unions between gay people.

Hmmmm. Is Mr. Brown a little bit of a ‘phobe?

Still, Brown wasn’t really defined by social issues. He wasn’t really defined by anything. He worked on behalf of a local racetrack and the National Guard.

“Nationally, people are saying, who is Scott Brown? Is he an ideologue, an opportunist — in fact, the open-minded thinker he claims to be?” said Paul Watanabe, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. In Massachusetts, he added, “we have these same questions.”

One wants to be optimistic about Scott Brown; the Republican party could use a moderate voice, and there’s nothing wrong with a vigorous opposition to the party in power.

But it’s hard not to get the impression that he’s just a pretty-boy lightweight who looks good in front of a camera—whether it’s undressing to his birthday suit or posing in a politician’s suit.

For the progressives amongst us, there’s some good news in today’s paper.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that 75% of Americans support allowing gays to serve openly in the military.

The level of public support for allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly far outpaces that in the spring of 1993, when Congress and the Clinton administration established the policy.

Three House Republicans are retiring, which leads some in the party to wonder whether the GOP is losing momentum as it heads into the fall elections.

With the three latest lawmakers choosing not to seek reelection in November, Republicans will have to defend 18 open seats and Democrats 14. The raw numbers contradict the conventional wisdom that Democrats would head for the sidelines after GOPSen. Scott Brown’s special election victory Jan. 19 in Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, a New York Times poll finds that while Americans have their frustrations with Barack Obama, they still like him more—and think him more bipartisan—than they do the Republicans. (And—not so encouraging for the Dems here—Congress as a whole.)

While the president is showing signs of vulnerability on his handling of the economy — a majority of respondents say he has yet to offer a clear plan for creating jobs — Americans blame former President George W. Bush, Wall Street and Congress much more than they do Mr. Obama for the nation’s economic problems and the budget deficit, the poll found.

No question, November is going to be interesting. But the good news to take from this is that both parties will be under pressure to get things done. The Republicans’ opposition at all costs strategy doesn’t seem to be working, while the public approves of Obama’s attempts at bipartisanship.

It’s not a shock, really—Americans want their elected officials to work on their behalf, rather than railing against each other.

I don’t mean to sound cold, because for the most part I’m not. But why is Harvard College dean Evelynn Hammonds appearing on a panel about Haiti making the not-automatically-obvious claim that “the meaning of this tragedy is not just for the people of Haiti, but for the people of the world”? (Sounds nice, doesn’t mean much.)

And more problematic, why does Hammonds keep sending me emails—two of them so far, going to all Harvard alums—asking me to watch the Harvard student concert fundraiser for Haiti and making a not-very-subtle request for contributions?

On behalf of the students, I want to thank you once again for your interest in this very memorable evening of performances and for your generosity toward the people of Haiti.

(Given Hammonds’ outspokenness on the issue, is she really speaking on behalf of the students?)

Contributions will go to Partners in Health, a non-profit co-founded by Harvard doc Paul Farmer which works in Haiti.

I’m sure PIH is a great organization, and it gets a very good rating from charity watchdog Charity Navigator.

But here’s the thing. Harvard alumni are, I’m confident, already giving substantial sums to Haiti without being prodded by Harvard to do so. And it’s very unclear that a non-profit institution should be in the business of raising money for other non-profits—particularly not a non-profit that is running $100 million deficits. The job of a non-profit is to raise money for itself, and then use that money to further its mission.

Harvard should be raising money from its donors to restore hot breakfast for undergraduates, preserve academic programs, and rehire some of the people who lost their jobs in the recent budget crunch. I’m just not sure that it’s the university president’s role to host a web page for Haiti relief—not least because, once you do it for Haiti, where do you stop? New Orleans? Thailand? Appalachia? Darfur? Detroit? Iraq? There are lots of good causes. You can’t just pick the ones you feel affinity toward. Why should you throw Harvard’s brand behind fundraising for the really, really bad disasters, and not the quite bad ones?

And what happens when one of the dozens of organizations endorsed by Drew Faust gets hit with a fundraising scandal, as the Red Cross (on DGF’s list) did after Katrina?

Sometimes one gets the feeling that the leadership of Harvard hasn’t really thought very much about the leadership of Harvard.

He’s barely stepped through the doors of the Senate, but already Scott Brown is busy buckraking: He’s peddling his “autobiography.”

Will it tell all?

Now take off your pants, the photographer instructed me, a warm but commanding tone in her voice. I whispered: Promise nobody will see anything? She smiled. “Only me.” I took a deep breath and reached for the buckle….

All right, probably not. The Boston Globe reports,

Seeking to cash in quickly on his newfound celebrity, the freshman Republican from Massachusetts is shopping his autobiography to publishers. Brown has retained agent Robert Barnett, a Washington attorney whose high-powered clients include President Obama and former president Bill Clinton, among other luminaries.

For those who see Brown as an avatar of populist frustration, bear in mind that Bob Barnett is as insider, old-line Washington as you can get.

Far be it from me to discourage anyone from writing a book. Still, it’s a bit tacky to cut a deal when you’ve been a senator for, what, two weeks? Shouldn’t you be focusing on the work you were sent to Washington to do?

Of course the book will be ghostwritten, but even sitting down with a ghostwriter takes time…..

Massachusetts, are you having your morning-after recriminations yet?

Whenever I’m out to dinner with someone and s/he suggests ordering octopus, I always point out that octopuses are incredibly beautiful and intelligent animals, and that it feels wrong to eat something so miraculous, which probably explains why I don’t get invited out to dinner that much.

Here’s a cool example, though—an Australian scientist who’s filmed an octopus building forts for itself out of debris it finds on the ocean bottom, an example of tool-use previously thought limited only to us, monkeys, some birds and some dolphins.

In the Times, Alessandra Stanley reviews Skip Gates’ latest PBS special on genealogy, a four-part series called “Faces of America.”

Mr. Gates, the film’s narrator and writer, put a huge effort into this project, which is obviously dear to his heart. The director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, Mr. Gates is a founder of the genealogy Web site AfricanDNA.com, and the editor in chief of The Root (theroot.com), a site on African-American news, culture and genealogy. He has also done two previous series about African-American genealogy for PBS.

Stanley is a notoriously sloppy reporter—sometime I’ll have to write about my own experience with her, which was pretty bizarre—but still, is it too much to ask a reporter to do her homework?

It is a stretch to call Gates the “founder” of AfricanDNA.com, and it is a glaring omission not to mention that it is a for-profit operation.

As I wrote on this blog about a year and a half ago,

AfricanDNA.com is a website, heavily plugged by Skip Gates, that’s basically a shell company for another firm called Family Tree DNA.

Unless something has changed since that time, Gates presumably has a financial arrangement with Family Tree, and in return, Family Tree gets the veneer of respectability and the immense publicity value that comes with having a Harvard scholar as your spokesperson. And not just a Harvard scholar, but Harvard itself; Gates’ last PBS special began with a long shot of him walking through Harvard Yard.

Family Tree also gets what, it now becomes clear, is essentially a four-hour infomercial that is paid for by American taxpayers but benefits a private company.

Moreover, Gates’ financial self-interest in promoting DNA testing could cause him to make over-large claims for its precision. In Stanley’s review, she notes that many of the celebrities featured turn out to have genetic connections to singular people—Albert Einstein, for example. Such connections are exactly what might cause viewers to drop hundreds of dollars on a DNA test.

But there are real differences of opinion about whether DNA testing can be so specific.

Stanley also introduces something that is so bizarre it’s just absurd: The possibility that Gates, in his altercation with a Cambridge police officer, didn’t actually shout “your mama” but instead said, “Yo-Yo Ma.”

The arresting officer said Mr. Gates had been uncooperative and said he would speak to “your mama.” That sounded like a slur but could also have been name-dropping, though Mr. Gates later told the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that he hadn’t mentioned Yo-Yo Ma in the altercation.

Of course Stanley would bring that up—she and Dowd are close friends.

It’s all just a little, well, incestuous for me.

Skip Gates is a charming man of many and great contributions, and I’m sure this program has value other than the monetary value it has for Gates and Family Tree. But can’t a reporter know her facts?

The Telegraph reports on “whale whisperer” Andrew Armour, a diver who has befriended a sperm whale off Dominica that allows Armour to swim with it and pet the whale. Armour and the 10-year-old whale first met when the whale, then a wounded calf, swam up to Armour’s boat.

The photos are astonishing.

This is the kind of relationship that humans should forge with whales over the course of this century—not harpooning them with an explosive.

Was the Pope a Nazi?

In the Washington Post, Gerard Alexander writes that liberals have condescended to conservatives and their ideas for decades.

This condescension is part of a liberal tradition that for generations has impoverished American debates over the economy, society and the functions of government — and threatens to do so again today, when dialogue would be more valuable than ever.

There may well be some truth to this argument at various points during the 20th century, but if liberals don’t think much of conservative ideas right now, it’s easy to understand why—there are no conservative ideas now.

…liberal condescension implies that conservative masses are in the grip of false consciousness. When they express their views at town hall meetings or “tea party” gatherings, it might be politically prudent for liberals to hear them out, but there is no reason to actually listen.

I think that’s about right, actually. But can you blame liberals? After all, the tea party people frequently don’t seem to know what they’re talking about—listen to them rail about how Obama isn’t a citizen and wants to turn our health care system Soviet. Scott Brown voters probably couldn’t have told you anything about his ideas, because he didn’t really have any, but they knew he represented dissatisfaction with the Obama agenda and, more broadly, the state of the economy. (And, to some extent, with the arrogance/complacency of the state Democratic party.)

All of which means that, yes, you listen to the emotion and the passion of this political force, you respect the intensity of feeling and its political implications, but you don’t necessarily think that its ideas are grounded in much. Consider the new GOP health care bill suggestion—it relies on the free market, it doesn’t provide insurance to anywhere near the 30 million uninsured the Obama plan does, and it doesn’t seriously engage with the very large challenges of modernizing our over-priced, under-covering health care system. So, yes—it’s difficult to take it seriously from an intellectual perspective.

Also, I think many on the left simply don’t feel that modern conservatives are intellectually honest—they’re steeped in the Lee Atwater tradition where you concede nothing but deny, spin, and pretty much lie.

Here’s National Review editor Rich Lowry, for example, writing in today’s NY Post that liberals are getting their comeuppance because they presumed that tea party people would split the GOP—and, Lowry says, there’s absolutely no evidence of that.

One wonders if Democrats can overcome their contempt for the tea-partiers — whom they call “tea baggers,” in honor of an exotic sexual practice — long enough to notice that the devoutly wished-for GOP internal blood bath isn’t materializing.

(Actually, a Google search for tea baggers turns up a couple things on Gawker and the Huffington Post, but not much else—hardly convincing evidence of mainstream Dem “contempt.”)

Apparently Lowry isn’t following John McCain’s reelection race in Arizona, where he’s being challenged from the right.

“[Former GOP congressman J.D. Hayworth] is our great hope,” said Rob Haney, chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party, home to Phoenix, and Mr. McCain. “McCain has been a thorn in our sides for years. A dagger in our backs, really.”

A dagger in their backs. Really?

There are plenty of liberals, I have no doubt, who are too quick to write off and caricature conservatives. Yet that street surely goes two ways. (Is there a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh? Glenn Beck?)

And at the moment, you’d have to say that the man in the White House is a more serious person than any of the conservatives (Sarah Palin much?) who are so quick to fault him.

He’s Harvard’s commencement speaker.

That should be gripping.