Shots in the Dark

The New York Post puts news that a masseuse accused Al Gore of an inappropriate sexual advance on Page Six, its gossip column, which is where it belongs.

So what excuse do the Wall Street Journal and New York Times have?

A massage therapist accuses Gore of sleazy behavior, but there’s no proof, no charges were ever filed, and there’s no evidence of a payoff.

In the age of John Edwards, and given that Gore is getting divorced, there’s no way this isn’t going to get covered—but unless there’s some real proof of wrongdoing, it shouldn’t be. And if it is—a paragraph. Not major stories in major newspapers.

Update: The Enquirer alleges that Gore paid $540 for the massage and checked into the hotel where the incident took place under a false name—Mr. Stone. That is a bit odd. But those details are not in the AP copy run by the Times and the Journal….

Update 2: OregonLive.com has these details:

In her detailed Jan. 8, 2009, statement to a Portland sexual assault investigator, the woman said she was called to the hotel about 10:30 p.m. Oct. 24, 2006, [Blogger: My birthday, weirdly] to provide a massage for Gore, who was registered under the name “Mr. Stone.” Once inside his ninth-floor suite, she said he pushed her hand to his groin, fondled her buttocks and breasts, tongue-kissed her and threw her down on the bed as she tried to thwart his advances.

…She called him a “crazed sex poodle” and tried to distract him, pointing out a box of Moonstruck chocolates on a nearby table. He went for the chocolates and then offered her some, cornering her, fondling her and shoving his tongue in her mouth to french kiss as he pressed against her.

A crazed sex poodle? Moonstruck chocolates?

Sigh. I am changing my mind about the propriety of covering this tawdry matter because these other reports suggest that there’s something strange about the whole situation. Where there’s smoke, etc.

Still, it makes me very sad. If it’s true, didn’t Gore learn anything from Bill Clinton? (There’s even an alleged pair of pants with DNA evidence in this case. Shades of Monica’s dress.)

Or—I don’t know—Jeffrey Epstein?

Only the coldest heart could not have been moved by the athletic feats of yesterday.

First off, the US in the World Cup. As I multitasked and watched the game on Univision—stick it, ESPN—I couldn’t believe that the US wasn’t scoring; they were playing aggressive, elegant soccer, putting an enormous amount of pressure on Algeria. (And Algeria wasn’t so bad, don’t you know—that tough-looking bald guy, #11, was a terrific player.)

And they had one narrowly missed opportunity after another. That second half was incredibly exciting. But it seemed that Algeria was going to hold off the US for a tie that would have knocked us out of the World Cup. (Undeservedly, after the US had its second goal of the tournament negated by an incorrect call.)

So Landon Donovan’s goal—ecstasy.

(FIFA, why have you blocked that goal from being posted on YouTube? You shortsighted greedheads.)

This is the greatest sporting event in the world, and America is really getting into it. That’s wonderful. As satisfying as it is to compete against other teams, competing against another country adds levels of depth that interleague play can’t match.

And speaking of great sporting events…

59-59. Holy cow. I applaud those guys. I’m not sure I have anything to say about them that hasn’t been said or is very interesting, but here’s my one thought: Almost surely neither of them will win Wimbledon. But isn’t it a fantastic thing when people rally around a happening in sport that isn’t about winning, but about athletic effort that unites us in appreciation?

Finally, no one’s paying much attention right now, but the American League East is shaping up to be pretty exciting.

What a great time for sports lovers…

Next up: Ghana!

The Brits, meanwhile, have to take on Germany….

I leave you with the video for England’s unofficial World Cup anthem, sung by Dizzee Rascal and a fat bastard named James Corden and appropriating one of the greatest choruses in the history of pop music…

Let us crush Algeria back into the 19th century.

Potentially an advance for Algeria, I suppose…

(Kidding!)

The Globe and Mail runs a series on the “hottest World Cup fans.”

They’re talking about the heat in South Africa, of course.

Because a restaurant there is serving lion burgers—yes, lion burgers—during the World Cup as a “tribute” to Africa.

Owner Cameron Selogie said the decision to serve the lion burgers was a tribute to South Africa, host nation of the World Cup.

He said: “In Africa they do eat lions, so I assume if it’s OK for Africans to eat lions then it should be OK for us.” Mr Selogie added: “We thought that since the World Cup was in Africa that the lion burger might be interesting for some of our more adventurous customers.”

Oh, Arizona….

Reuters reports on how the former Harvard pres is conducting himself within the White House.

…the 55-year-old former Treasury Secretary said he has worked to soften some of his rougher edges. He acknowledges he is still “maybe a little blunter than would sometimes be ideal.”

That may be an understatement….

What’s interesting is that Summers’ time at Harvard is reduced, in this length article, to a paragraph, something he is probably happy about. With his current stint in Washington, the Harvard debacle is going to be reduced to—not quite a footnote—but a digression in Summers’ career.

I wonder if that’s the right way to think of it, or if it’s perhaps part of a continuity, something more consistent than exceptional?

It depends, I think, on how much you believe Summers changes…..

“Ms. Lo is not by any means a flashy chef. …She simply stays in the kitchen and works, cooking as the Puget Sound novelist David Guterson writes: precisely, with earth in closest proximity to sea.”

—New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton, writing about the Manhattan restaurant Anisa.

Ever since I was a boy and my parents took me to the Museum of Natural History, where I would stare at the enormous blue whale (not a real one, thank God) hanging from the ceiling in the Hall of Ocean Life, I’ve loved those beautiful, otherworldly animals.

Later, as an adult, I had the real joy of taking my nephew for a Night at the Museum sleepover, when we got to throw sleeping bags on cots and sleep underneath the whale. (Well, not directly underneath it, as my nephew and I agreed that although the creature was unlikely to fall from on high, why take the chance?)

But I never expected to see a blue whale, and for a while there it looked as if no one else would either.

Now the BBC reports that the blue whale population is actually increasing by about 7% a year. Though they’re hardly out of the woods yet—they’re only about 2300 blue whales on the planet—that’s a healthy rate of increase….

In the Times, former naval officer Christopher Brownfield advocates calling in the navy to blow up the leaking BP oil well.

The idea of detonating the well already has serious advocates. A few people have even called for using a nuclear device to plug the well, as the Soviet Union has done several times. But that would be overkill. Smartly placed conventional explosives could achieve the same results, and avoid setting an unacceptable international precedent for the “peaceful” use of nuclear weapons.

At best, a conventional demolition would seal the leaking well completely and permanently without damaging the oil reservoir. At worst, oil might seep through a tortuous flow-path that would complicate long-term cleanup efforts….

At this point, any idea seems worth considering, because who can believe that BP has any better plan?

The Times runs a fascinating piece on John’s Updike’s voluminous archive at Harvard’s Houghton Library.

…all the while he was fending off the public, Updike was also leaving a trail of clues to his works and days: an enormous archive fashioned as meticulously as one of his lathe-turned sentences. “The archive was vitally important to him,” Mrs. Updike said in a telephone interview, especially in his last days. “He saw it not just as a collection of his working materials, but as also a record of the time he lived in.” Today the material crowds an aisle and a half of metal shelving in the basement of Houghton Library…

Harvard granted the Times’ Sam Tanenhaus an advance look—how these mega-powerful institutions scratch each others’ backs!—and the NYT Book Review (snore) editor reports,

The papers…suggest that Updike was a more complex artist — and person — than he chose to admit.

Though he was known and envied for writing rapidly and easily and revising very little — a reputation he encouraged — the archive demonstrates the painstaking care he took to establish the tone and atmosphere of his novels….

A point to consider with some sadness is whether we will ever see another such collection of documents relating to a writer’s work. Who writes longhand anymore? Who writes letters (on paper)? Or receives them? Who saves emails?

The story also contains some wonderful material about Updike’s time at Harvard, including the fact that he was booted out of a fiction-writing seminar by novelist Albert Guerard, who thought little of Updike’s work. To which the world could now ask, Albert who?

Tanenhaus quotes from a letter Updike wrote to novelist Nicholas DelBanco at age 75 to provide an epitath of sorts.

“I set out to make a living with my pen, in privacy, in the commercial literary world as it then existed, and am grateful that I managed. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure; and it goes without saying that I’ve been lucky. No impairing disease. No war I was asked to help fight. No stupefying poverty yet no family wealth or business to limit my freedom.”

Modest, complicated, honest, understated almost to the point of being self-detrimental—typical Updike.

My first reading of Updike came from a copy of Rabbit is Rich that I appropriated from my parents’ bookshelf. I was probably 11, and I liked to read the naughty parts–wife-swapping! forbidden sex! (if I name it here, I’ll get endless spam for my trouble).

But as the naughty parts merged together, I began to read the entire thing, then jumped back to Rabbit, Run (which I read again in a Yale American Studies seminar called “Flight, Freedom and Identity in American Literature“) and finally Rabbit at Rest, which I found unexpectedly moving.

I had stopped reading him for years by the time of his death—his time, and his prime, had passed—but I miss him, and I hope many Americans do.