Shots in the Dark

He’s probably covered up sexual abuse by priests in Europe, and now the Times reports that he definitely covered up the scandal of an American priest who sexually molested some 200 deaf boys.

Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities.

Instead of being disciplined, Father Murphy was quietly moved by Archbishop William E. Cousins of Milwaukee to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest.

Much of the molestation apparently took place in the confessional.

(You can’t make this up; it is beyond horrible.)

Father Murphy’s actions were well-known to the church’s ostensible higher-ups.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

Even now the church’s main priority is cover-up.

The New York Times obtained the documents, which the church fought to keep secret…

This pope is morally defunct. It will be fascinating to see whether he clings to power or does the right thing and accept the fact that he lacks the moral authority to lead his church. (One bet which he chooses.)

And after this pope departs, one way or the other, maybe the church can finally admit that this celibacy thing isn’t working.

The Harvard prof, who I’ve watched with admiration for her candor on television shows such as the Daily Show, is profiled in today’s Times.

She is an Oklahoma native, a janitor’s daughter, a bankruptcy expert at Harvard Law School and a former Sunday School teacher who cites John Wesley — the co-founder of Methodism and a public health crusader — as an inspiration. She brims with cheer, yet she is she is such a fearsome interrogator that Bruce Mann, her husband, describes her as a grandmother who can make grown men cry. Back at Harvard, Ms. Warren’s teaching style is “Socratic with a machine gun,” as one former student put it. In Washington, she grills bankers and Treasury officials just as relentlessly.

Washington would be a better place if it had more people like Professor Warren.

Sometimes people will try to convince you that Philadelphia isn’t a crappy place, just like they’ll try to convince you that Baltimore is charming. It’s sweet when that happens.

If you need a reminder of the hellhole that is Philadelphia, read on. Apparently the peasants are revolting.

One of the more upsetting things to happen in pro sports recently was the incident with the Washington Wizards a few months back, in which players Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other in the locker room.

So I was surprised to see this month’s Esquire give Arenas, who had four guns on him that day, a full-page in which to dictate his side of the story—without any interjection from an Esquire writer.

(I don’t usually read Esquire, because it feels like it’s trying so hard to be cool and edgy that it comes across as slick and silly. But I was on a five-hour plane ride.)

Arenas to Crittenton:

“You said you were gonna shoot me in my knee. I’m giving you the guns to do it.”

“I don’t need you to give me nothing. I’ve got my own gun.” He pulls one out and puts the clip in. That’s when some of the other players are saying, Man, I gotta get out of here. But then he puts his earphones in and starts singing. So I pick my guns up. From there, everything settled down. He goes into the Jacuzzi. You know what? I gotta warm my knee up anyway. I go in and sit with him. We’re just sitting in there talking. We didn’t have no problem. It was just some fun that got out of control.

Esquire might have mentioned what the Washington Post reported a couple days ago:

Federal prosecutors said Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas repeatedly lied about why he carried four unloaded guns into the Verizon Center locker room and tried to cover up his confrontation with a teammate, leading the government on Tuesday to urge a D.C. Superior Court judge to sentence the star athlete to at least three months in jail.

...They characterized Arenas’s role as a “calculated and premeditated” threat and not a light-hearted joke between teammates, as Arenas has maintained.

The magazine downplays the seriousness of the incident by allowing Arenas to talk unchallenged—which was probably a prerequisite for his cooperation with Esquire. Sometimes trying to be hip drains the morality out of life.

For some more professional sports journalism, try the documentary now showing on HBO, Magic and Bird, about the rivalry/friendship between Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. It’s a wonderful story, beautifully told. If you don’t get a little choked up at the end, check your heartstrings….

The just-ended UN conference on endangered species was pretty much a failure for the environment, sadly.

As the Times reports, while a rare salamander and elephants were protected, fish and sharks were not—thanks largely to the anti-environmental lobbying of Japan and China, both of which seem determined to fish for bluefin tuna and fin sharks until there are no more left of either.

The nations gathered in Doha, Qatar, for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, rejected proposals that would have required countries to strictly regulate — but not ban — trade in several species of scalloped hammerhead, oceanic whitetip and spiny dogfish sharks.

…China, by far the world’s largest consumer of the cartilaginous fish, for sharkfin soup, and Japan, which has battled to keep the convention from being extended to any marine species, led the opposition.

Thanks to Barack Obama—this would never have happened under Bush—the US fought the good fight. That we lost may be a sign of our relative authority around the world compared to China.

I like what the delegate from Palau said:

“We will continue to pursue our efforts to protect sharks from eradication by the decadent and cruel process of shark-finning,” Stuart Beck, Palau’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement. “I am sure that, properly prepared, bald eagle is delicious. But, as civilized people, we simply do not eat it.”

Exactly right.

The Crimson reports that the Harvard Corporation is conducting a review of its operations.

(Harry Lewis, of course, has been advocating reform of the Corporation for some time.)

The Corporation’s internal review, which may result in increased transparency, centers around the Corporation’s relationship with the Board of Overseers. The Corporation is known for itshigh level of secrecy and does not release agendas nor minutes for its meetings.

Two things worth pointing out: Lewis’ criticism was broader than just the Corporation’s relationship with the Overseers, extending to the Corporation’s ability to govern the university in its current format; and any internally conducted review has to be taken with some degree of skepticism.

Here are two other things I plan to do in my spare time (please don’t steal these massive money-making ideas): Write a book on the theme “when capitalism fails,” and—not unrelatedly—start a company that makes men’s razors whose replacement blades don’t cost $4 apiece.

Like many men, I love the quality of Gillette razors, which really go give you a nice shave, but am offended by the absurdly high cost of replacement blades. (And Gillette blades don’t last very long.)

Schick razors are slightly less expensive and generally less good.

So I was delighted to see this Wall Street Journal “Cheapskate” column on just this subject…

I’m a believer in markets, but it doesn’t seem like the razor-blade market gives me what I want. Instead of competing on price, Gillette and Schick largely seem to be engaged in a silly arms race to improve a product that already works perfectly well. Two blades, three blades, four blades—when will it stop?

Much the same thing has happened with toothbrushes, by the way, which (not so long ago, it seems to me) used to cost a buck or so, but now frequently run between $5 and $10 apiece, with no apparent gain in quality. Here are some made from recycled yogurt cups.

Meanwhile, replacement blades for the new Gillette Fusion—a five-blade razor!—cost about $4.50 apiece…..

I have a friend in California who runs a magazine which, like many magazines, is under financial pressure. And, like many magazines, it’s responding by making its website more active.

My friend, who’s the editor, frequently finds factual and grammatical mistakes in the copy posted by the 20-somethings who work on the website. When she encourages them to correct their mistakes—or better yet, avoid them—they explain that accuracy isn’t worth their time: They’re under constant pressure to post new material, and the old stuff will soon get bumped off the main page anyway. Such is our anti-literate age.

I thought of this anecdote on reading the hostile comments in the post below. For my criticisms of a certain Boston Globe sportswriter, I’m a 9th-grader, a 9th-grade bully, a grammar school teacher who gains confidence by making people feel stupid and small. (Wrote the anonymous commenters, their sense of irony…under-developed.)

All this vitriole is missing the point—but in an interesting way.

The context in which I criticize Amalie Benjamin’s prose is precisely not a schoolyard. We are not schoolchildren, nor schoolteachers, who need to pat people on the back and affirm their self-esteem.

I don’t believe, by the way, that the commenters would respond quite so nastily if Benjamin were not a woman, which is to say that they are guilty of sexism. She is a professional who should be judged by the same standards as any man. Unless, of course, you implicitly believe that she is a beneficiary of affirmative action who needs to be coddled, which is to say that you are guilty of sexism.

In any case: Newspapering is neither an AA meeting nor a yoga retreat, but a business, one threatened by technological and cultural change. It’s also a business I love. Much as I embrace the Internet, the death of print newspapers saddens me. Someday I’ll have to write about when and why technology effects change that no one particularly wants.

One of the worst responses to the aforementioned change a newspaper can make is to cut back on quality. Good writing matters. It is, I think/hope, one of the reasons that people will continue to buy newspapers—especially when compared to the shoddy caliber of much Internet typing.

Amalie Benjamin tweets, blogs, and performs on-camera analysis for the New England Sports Network. She may be excellent at those things.

But she is to good writing what Sweeney Todd is to haircuts.

To make things worse, she occupies a beat once filled by some really terrific writers. The Globe, once a locus of impassioned, literate sportswriting, now prints the work of someone who struggles to compose a comprehensible sentence. And its editors are either too unskilled or too overworked to do anything about it. Or maybe they are just too demoralized to care.

So when I fault Amalie Benjamin, it’s not because I want to be mean to her. If I met her in person, I’m sure I’d like her, though I’d understand if she didn’t reciprocate.

It’s because she represents some unfortunate things extraordinarily well: the decline of an industry and and the lowering of standards of literacy in American life.

Now, as to the question of my heartlessness: Amalie Benjamin’s got a great job, she seems to be well-liked by her newspaper, and she shouldn’t worry too much about the laments of a curmudgeonly blogger. Other bloggers like her just fine.

Truth is, having someone care enough about your prose to tee off on it is a compliment. As any writer will tell you, what’s really bad is when no one cares.

And finally, sports history is filled with the malapropisms of famous figures who used their wrong way with language to brand themselves: Howard Cosell, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto.

Granted, they weren’t writers. Perhaps the solution is a future in broadcasting?

Okay, I promised not to pick on a certain writer. So she shall remain nameless. But her prose cannot go unexamined!

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Jonathan Papelbon spent much of yesterday morning on his back in front of his locker at City of Palms Park, his feet up on his chair. He was sleeping, or trying to, and there was a reason. Papelbon had felt the onset of a migraine on a day he was scheduled to pitch against the Astros, and he had taken his medication.

Let’s rephrase:

“Jonathan Papelbon thought he was getting a headache.”

Here’s a classic lede that shows how it’s done, if you like to do it this way:

Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something…

His predictions have proved correct: Health care is passed. (And suddenly Scott Brown is a lot less the flavor of the month.)

I had long discussions about this over the weekend with some friends I was visiting in San Francisco. One, who leans toward the libertarian/conservative side, argued that the bill would cost taxpayers a fortune and would kill the Democrats in November. (He didn’t seem all that upset about the latter.)

Two of the friends on hand were doctors, and they both supported the bill, though not without reservations: Interestingly, both thought it didn’t go far enough to fix a health care system they know as broken and dysfunctional.

I myself am caught up in the history of it all. Returning to JFK at about midnight last night, my fiancee and I walked past baggage claim, where a television was tuned to CNN and the president speaking. Forgetting if only temporarily about their bags, a crowd of passengers had gathered, riveted, in front of the television. Thankfully, there wasn’t a Tea Party-er around to throw racial or anti-gay epithets or bricks, or to mock a man with Parkinson’s disease.

(The Tea Party movement is surely one of the least attractive political movements in American political history. But can any movement that stands for nothing except hateful opposition long survive?)

What happens next for Obama and the Democrats, I wonder? My sense is this is a huge win, and that November might turn out better than expected. But that could be an optimistic view.