Shots in the Dark

That’s how the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay describes how the Red Sox “great” is leaving baseball.

How much of Ramirez’s career can be tossed aside? Some of it? All? A Hall of Fame case, once easy to make, feels like a waste of time. Sports will forgive its wayward eccentrics—look at Dennis Rodman’s act, en route to the Basketball Hall of Fame—but performance-enhancing drugs have become a great unforgivable.

Meanwhile, the Globe editorial board (it’s on a roll!) agrees with me: Manny’s steroid use casts an indelible shadow over the Sox’s 2004 World Series victory over the Yankees Cardinals.

Ramirez’s track record, along with reports that David Ortiz, too, tested positive in 2003, leaves an unfortunate odor of suspicion around Boston’s championship clubs….

Hey! I’ve been saying that for years…

The Winklevoss twins have to live with their $20 million cash and estimated $150 million worth of stock. Poor lads!

Actually, I don’t mean to tease the brothers, who take a lot of grief because they’re preppy and have a funny name. (In his remarks on The Social Network a couple weeks ago, Larry Summers actually referred to them as “the Winklevi.”)

But it does seem time for them to move on with their lives…..

…but I wouldn’t really care if Donald Trump and Sarah Palin were sucked out of a plane.

Arguably, it’d be good for the country.

Drew Faust says she doesn’t want to be Harvard’s scold-in-chief. But the Boston Globe agrees with Harry Lewis: When Harvard professors exploit the university brand to front for dictators, the university’s president should dress them down.

Instead of heeding Lewis’s call to condemn those who worked for Khadafy, Faust offered the faculty a long, thoughtful statement about the need “to be sensitive and self-reflective about our engagements.’’ In other words, do only what you’re comfortable doing. That’s good advice for life, but a weak standard for an institution of global leadership.

In this case, it sounds like “thoughtful” means exactly its opposite.

The question thus arises: Is Drew Faust comfortable with leadership? Or is she covering up for her constituents while underestimating the potency of a public issue?

Everybody hates his new movie.

In the Globe, Tracy Jan chronicles the reverence in which Summers is now held by Harvard students.

Half an hour after his class had ended, the professor still stood on the stage. Beneath him, a line of undergraduates snaked down the aisle, eagerly awaiting their turn to invite him to their dorms for dinner, pepper him with questions about credit default swaps, and just to say hello, thank him for the lecture, and shake his hand….

And here’s a little bit of historical revisionism that, if I were a Harvard professor, I’d be concerned about:

Having alienated a segment of the faculty with his autocratic management style and combative personality during his five years as president, Summers resigned under pressure in 2006….

A segment of the faculty?

(Full disclosure: I’m writing my own piece about Summers, for a different outlet. Watch this space.)

And here’s the kind of thing that just makes you wonder: How smart are Harvard students, really? Or does celebrity trump all their critical thinking?

Listening to him lecture about the economy is like hearing one’s grandfather tell the story of a war he had fought in, with tales from the front lines of the recession woven throughout. A recent lesson on the role of fiscal and monetary policy drew applause.

I’ve no doubt that Summers is a compelling figure in a lecture hall, and I bet those are pretty entertaining and stimulating classes. I’d go to them.

But…like listening to one’s grandfather? Does no one actually care about the substance of Summers’ role? The Shleifer affair? The part he played in creating the economic crisis? His impact on Harvard’s endowment? The millions of dollars he took from banks and a hedge fund just before going to Washington to oversee them? The connection between that and the Obama Administration’s coziness with Wall Street?

I keep reading this article, and this paragraph, by Charles Ferguson, the director of Inside Job, which seems to get much less attention on the Harvard campus than does The Social Network.

Summers is unquestionably brilliant, as all who have dealt with him, including myself, quickly realize. And yet rarely has one individual embodied so much of what is wrong with economics, with academe, and indeed with the American economy. For the past two years, I have immersed myself in those worlds in order to make a film, Inside Job, that takes a sweeping look at the financial crisis. And I found Summers everywhere I turned.

I don’t know what’s worse—whether Harvard students don’t know these things, or whether they do and just don’t care.

I’m not saying, don’t take the man’s classes, or vilify him every day of his life. But are we back to the days of asking for his signature on dollar bills, like little happy panting puppy dogs?

As Summers rushed from class to a lunch appointment across Harvard Yard, three students passing him in the stairwell did a double take. One whispered, “That’s Larry Summers.’’ On the sidewalk in front of the Harvard Bookstore, another undergraduate stopped him for a handshake.

Meanwhile, Christie Romer, to whom Drew Faust denied tenure and Larry Summers pushed out of the White House, argues in the New York Times that the government should be doing more to help America’s unemployed.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The New York Post ran this photo of Dylan Madisetti and a friendly sperm whale known as Scar to the people of Dominica, off which this photo was taken.

What can I say? I’m deeply jealous. I mean, you could die happy after that, right?

The second I mock the Red Sox, they go and beat the Yankees….The Yankees are, and should be, worried about Phil Hughes.

But! (And this is a big but…)

In more important news, Manny Ramirez is retiring after testing positive for steroids for the 27th time.

Which means that the offensive heart of the 2004 Sox—Ramirez and David Ortiz—were totally juiced….Should their World Series victory from that year go into the history books with an asterisk?

The Times reports, not very well, on the alleged culture of sexual harassment at Yale.

The article begins by recounting the three incidents already widely reported on:

In 2008, fraternity members photographed themselves in front of the Yale Women’s Center with a poster reading, “We Love Yale Sluts.” In 2009, a widely e-mailed “preseason scouting report” rated the desirability of about 50 newly arrived freshman women by the number of drinks a man would need in order to have sex with them. And in October, fraternity pledges paraded through a residential quadrangle chanting: “No means yes!”

Pretty awful stuff, and as a Yale alum who cares about the institution, it pains me to read how a culture of idiocy at fraternities is demeaning a great campus. I mean, honestly—what were they thinking? In what way is this smart or funny?

Still, here’s the question: This is three incidents in four years. Not great; far from great. This nonsense should never happen.

But does it mean that there is a pervasive culture of sexual harassment at Yale, and that the university administration tolerates it?

After all, all these incidents were perpetrated by fraternities, which the university has no control over. But more than that—they are incidents. There is no sign that they are part of the daily fabric of life on campus which would constitute a “hostile culture.” They may be…but they are not in and of themselves conclusive proof of that.

Buried in the article are a couple of important paragraphs that any lawyer, First Amendment scholar or university administrator will recognize as having the feel of truth:

Administrators said they sympathized with those who were unhappy with the disciplinary process. Punishing students in public episodes like the chanting is complicated by a hallowed tradition of free speech on campus, as well as by fraternities’ independence from the university and by confidentiality requirements that prevent Yale from naming students it disciplines.

The private cases are even more problematic, officials said, with victims often not wanting to go to the police or even a disciplinary board. Some victims prefer to deal with sexual harassment informally — having a male student moved to another dorm, for example. Most do not go to the administration at all: Studies show that nationwide, more than 90 percent of college students who are sexually assaulted do not tell anyone in authority.

Ninety percent of sexually assaulted students—presumably, the vast majority of them women—don’t tell an authority figure? WTF? That needs to change.

Meanwhile, the woman who essentially accused all men at Yale of being rapists reappears, and makes her allegations more specific.

Hannah Zeavin, a junior from Brooklyn who signed the complaint, said she found the question of sexual consent no joking matter. She said that a Yale friend was raped during her first month on campus in 2008, and that she knew of others who had been sexually assaulted.

“If you’re not expelling people who are committing rape, as was the case with my friends’ assailants, that means those men are still around,” she said. “That means that I’ve been in class with them, and I’ve been in parties where there’s more than one of them.”

This is obviously a very serious and deeply upsetting charge, both because of the events it posits and the alleged response, or lack thereof, to them.

But unfortunately, the Times article ends there. No further details are provided, and no one is asked for a response to these grave allegations that multiple women have been raped by a number of men (“my friends’ assailants”) who are now roaming the campus.

True?

It’s possible.

Misinformed?

Well, very few people know all the details of such matters.

Or the allegations of a person who may have complicated motives?

The point is, just as we don’t know what the Title IX lawsuit contains, we don’t know anything about these allegations. They certainly sound bad, though, don’t they?

One suspects the truth is more complicated.

Incidentally, here’s a great example of sloppy journalism. The Times quotes one man in the article—the only male student I’ve seen interviewed in all the articles I’ve read or seen about the Yale lawsuit—and he is sympathetic to the complainants.

Conor Crawford, a junior from Des Moines, said he had detected a tolerance on campus for crude comments about women that contrasted with a greater deference shown to gay and minority students. “There are a lot of close female friends I have here who have felt threatened,” he said. “You can hear the same language in some all-male suites, with the word ‘bitch’ used a lot and just general objectification.”

I was curious about this Conor Crawford—who is he other than some random junior from Des Moines?

So I did about ten seconds of Internet research and found that he’s Facebook friends with Alexandra Brodsky, the most public complainant in the Title IX lawsuit.

(He’s also posted about his entire resume on LinkedIn, which, you know, for a college student…and not even a senior…bleh. But that’s a separate issue.)

So perhaps the Times’ crack reporter might have asked Crawford if he was friends with any of the parties in the lawsuit? Or perhaps found a man—heck, maybe even two—to interview who wasn’t friends with one of the parties in the lawsuit?

Dumb, dumb, dumb…..

The Crimson gets 15 questions with Larry Summers. It could talk to him about Harvard’s investments during his tenure as president, about Inside Job, about changes to the Corporation, about his Wall Street buckraking and the White House’s cozy relationship with Wall Street, about Christie Roemer…about so much, really.

Instead, the Crimson asks him how he feels about Drew Faust’s redecoration of his Mass Hall office. (Answer: “I’m sure Drew has done a great job with that.”)

Granted, Summers may have insisted upon some ground rules before giving the interview. (On the other hand, he may not have. And if he did, the Crimson should either have said no, or disclosed them.)

But still…come on, people. Your hero worship is showing.