Shots in the Dark

Did I mention that the Yankees came from behind to beat the Red Sox in the bottom of the 9th?

Not a game that either team should be particularly proud of, but I’ll take the W…

Connecticut Democratic senatorial candidate Richard Blumenthal has been telling veterans that he served in Vietnam when he didn’t. In fact, the Harvard grad worked the system hard, getting numerous deferments, some of which were only available to the privileged and connected.

Few people care anymore if you served in Vietnam or didn’t, as long as you’re straight up about your record. So why lie about it? A sense of generational/individual guilt? A politician’s pathology? A desire to be more manly than you are?

In any case, watching the Times video of Blumenthal saying “when I served in Vietnam,” you can’t escape the conclusion that, whatever the reason, the man is a liar.

Apparently Blumenthal learned nothing from history. But this phenomenon of lying about serving in Vietnam seems widespread enough that perhaps there’s something deeper going on here than individual failing—as I suggested above, a collective guilt that, in some individuals, manifests itself in fabrication. I wonder what other manifestations of this guilt there might be?

Lying, ambition and Harvard are a theme today: The NY Post reports (front page!) on the case of Adam Wheeler, an expelled Bowdoin student who transferred to Harvard by claiming that he was a straight-A student from MIT.

…he got away with his con for some two years because the brain trust that runs the Ivy League school apparently never thought to check on his incredible credentials, authorities said. His hubris finally did him in when he attempted to apply for prestigious Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships last September with forged documents, according to Middlesex County (Mass.) District Attorney Gerald Leone.

But the lies didn’t stop once Wheeler arrived on campus.

Once at Harvard, Wheeler played the role of a top student, winning the Winthrop Sargent Prize in English, the Hoopes Prize and a research grant worth a total of $14,000 allegedly on the basis of plagiarized writing.

It wasn’t until last September when one Harvard prof finally grew suspicious after noticing that Wheeler’s Fulbright and Rhodes scholarship applications claimed straight A’s at Harvard and were chock full of “numerous books he co-authored, lectures he had given and courses he had taught,” Leone said.

The Crimson, by the way, should be all over this story, but it isn’t. Its article fails to mention which Harvard professor found him out (surely this is reportable), which Harvard professor was plagiarized by Wheeler, and most important, why apparently no one in the admissions office ever checked any of Wheeler’s application materials. (Were budget cuts a factor?)

The Post reports this fact as coming from the DA’s office, so it couldn’t exactly have been hard to get. The Crimson doesn’t mention it. Perhaps tomorrow?

Meanwhile, on to Yale, where the topic of sex is always, um, fruitful. The Post (big day for the Ivy League in the tab today) reports on Yale’s decision to ban sex between students and professors.

Yale’s approach makes it one of the strictest such policies in the country. Many universities, particularly in anything-goes New York, have rules that are much softer.

At Columbia University, romances with faculty members are “not expressly prohibited”….

The Post wonders if Yale’s move is feasible-or even desirable.

Yale’s move has sparked a heated debate among students and experts who think the ban patronizes adult students, and that, rules or no rules, romance will prevail. Jokes one source close to top academics at Rutgers University, “Dating a professor is practically a policy here. Half of the science department seem to have left their wives and married their grad students.”

Charming.

The larger point the article makes: that this policy is one of many ways in which universities are returning to their pre-1960s role of in loco parentis, largely because of liability concerns. Is this progress? I’m not sure.

Woody Allen tells the French that it’s time to forgive Roman Polanski.

“It’s something that happened many years ago … he has suffered, he has not been allowed to go to the United States. He was embarrassed by the whole thing,” Allen said in an interview Saturday with France Info radio at the Cannes Film Festival.

“He was embarrassed by the whole thing” is not, in fact, the strongest argument one could make on Polanski’s behalf.

Meanwhile, another woman has come forward claiming that in 1982 Polanski forced himself on her while she was a teen—British actress Charlotte Lewis, who appeared in Polanski’s unfortunate film, “Pirates.”

Lewis has told London’s Mail on Sunday that Polanski told her, “If you’re not big enough to have sex with me, you’re not big enough to do the screen test. I must sleep with every actress that I work with. That’s how I get to know them, how I mold them.”

Creepy.

That said, Lewis apparently said no at first, then thought about it, returned later, and “won the part,” as Radar puts it. And as the New York Post points out, while Lewis was 16 at the time, the age of consent in France was 15.

Still, while the claim may not have any legal implications, and it says nothing about the circumstances of his murky trial, it certainly doesn’t help Polanski in the court of public opinion.

…but disappointed that you can’t see the band‘s sold-out show in Brooklyn tonight?

You can watch it live on YouTube.

The long knives are coming out: Yesterday the Wall Street Journal mysteriously ran a photo of Elena Kagan (gasp) playing softball, which according to the Journal basically establishes that she prefers the company of women and should therefore not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court.

As the New York Post not-quite-honestly put it,

The Wall Street Journal’s decision to feature a front-page photo of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan playing softball has ignited a national discussion about why people assume that women who play the field are lesbians.

(Today the Post reprinted the photo next to this bombshell: “I was token straight gal on gay team.“)

Also today Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law, says that Kagan violates all that we hold sacred by tolerating the presence of plagiarists on the HLS faculty.

Velvel discussed Kagan’s nomination as a guest on “The Tom and Todd Show” on WRKO-AM Radio in Boston on Tuesday morning. “That philosophy of protecting the Ivy League elite no matter what was reflected by the failure of Kagan and Summers to act strongly against the two famous Harvard law professors whose books were partly the result of plagiarism or ghostwriting, which are serious forms of academic dishonesty,” he said. “Neither Kagan nor Larry Summers had the guts or integrity to take on the incidents of plagiarism and ghostwriting at Harvard Law School, even though dishonesty is one of the major roots of all problems and is, as said, an academic sin.”

I am slightly sympathetic with Velvel here, as I thought Kagan’s rather glib treatment of HLS plagiarist professors sent the wrong message. (If you’re powerful, you can get away with it.)

This is probably not a disqualifying sin; after all, it’s not as if any Supreme Court justice actually writes her own opinions, but they all put their names on them. So they’re down with plagiarism.

But it does show, I think, Kagan’s willingness to either play ball with The Man when it helps advance herself, a, or b, compromise in order to resolve a dispute, depending on your perspective.

You can stream their new album here. But probably not for long.

“WTF Arizona? Ya basta! No mas deportacion.”

—from the video screen at Massive Attack‘s show at Terminal 5 the other night.

What do we really know about Elena Kagan? asks the New York Times editorial board.

Whether by ambitious design or by habit of mind, Ms. Kagan has spent decades carefully husbanding her thoughts and shielding her philosophy from view. Her lack of a clear record on certain issues makes it hard to know whether Mr. Obama has nominated a full-throated counterweight to the court’s increasingly aggressive conservative wing.

Ambitious design, I imagine—but is it really to ask where Ms. Kagan stands on every hot-button issue of the day? It’s just such a question that leads potential nominees to avoid leaving any hint of paper trail that could later sabotage them. And Kagan, who’s already had one nomination torpedoed, would appreciate this better than most.

I’m not a student of the Supreme Court. (You may have discerned this.) But the idea that we should know exactly where a nominee stands on every issue that might come before the court strikes me as a modern, and not very good, one.

It means only that invariably we have a partisan slugfest every time someone is nominated, and that such a battle is the way things ought to be.

Presidents both Democratic and Republican should care more about a nominee’s qualifications and her open-mindedness.

Otherwise, we are left with an ongoing ideological war rather than a court in whose merits we trust.

“Each program…highlights participants’ singular competencies in hundreds of lectures, seminars, workshops and academies. Intellectual content is punctuated by music, laughter, and the power of personal experience...”

—From the invitation to Renaissance Weekend‘s “30th Anniversary Year”

As many of you know, I’ve long argued that Twitter is over-hyped and little-used.

Now a new survey finds that, while most Americans have heard of Twitter, not many of ’em use it!

Only 7 percent of Americans are actually using Twitter and Facebook remains the social network of choice. The report notes, “Despite equal awareness, Twitter trails Facebook significantly in usage: 7% of Americans (17 million persons) actively use Twitter, while 41% maintain a profile page on Facebook.”

Seven percent is actually higher than I would have thought. I’m going to guess that 7% of Americans have signed up for accounts, and maybe .5% Tweet (argh) on a regular basis.

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P.S. Possibly my favorite headline ever.