Shots in the Dark

They’ve written a letter to Drew Faust protesting Larry Summers’ conduct and recounting their version of their meeting with him.

His manner was not inconsistent with his reputation and present day admissions of being tactfully challenged. It was not his failure to shake hands with the three of us upon entering his office (doing so would have required him to take his feet off his desk and stand up from his chair), nor his tenor that was most alarming, but rather his scorn for a genuine discourse on deeper ethical questions…

…it is deeply disturbing that a professor of this university openly admits to making character judgments of students based on their appearance….

…Ironically, our choice of attire that day was made out of respect and deference to the office of the President. As the current President, we respectfully ask for you to address this unprecedented betrayal of the unique relationship between teacher and student. We look forward to your response.

My initial thought: Good luck with that.

But I think putting Drew Faust on the spot is kind of a smart move, actually. Yes, it makes the Winklevosses look like they’re running (again) to a Harvard president for help. Not great.

Still, the fact is that Drew Faust should rebuke Larry Summers for publicly calling two recent Harvard graduates “assholes.” Insulting your students is not a good advertisement for the university, and in one selfish move—for surely Summers is trying merely to ingratiate himself with the tech crowd, and Mark Zuckerberg specifically—Summers has stained Harvard’s reputation. You can not proudly wear the label “former president of Harvard”—as Summers does, helping him to gain lucrative speaking fees and Silicon Valley consulting deals—and then ignore all the responsibilities of that position, one of which is not publicly humiliating former students. (Should be easy enough, right?) I wonder what Derek Bok and Neil Rudenstine, two eminently decent men, think of this episode?

Truth is, Summers should show some class and apologize on his own. But since that will never happen, maybe bringing Faust into it might focus the situation. At the very least, it should prompt some journalist (hello, Crimson?) to ask her if she thinks it’s appropriate for a Harvard president to call students “assholes.”

Faust has spoken at length about civility and community, and I’ve no doubt she’s sincere in this effort. But she is chronically conflict-averse, and this desire to avoid making waves weakens her. That needs to change here. Harvard has an ex-president, still on its payroll, who’s gone rogue, as James Murdoch might say. Drew Faust needs to rein him in—fast.

Some will mock the Winklevosses for the length and high-mindedness of their letter. But the truth is that Larry Summers is to blame for putting them in a difficult situation. They’re mocked if they respond; they’re mocked if they don’t. They’ve been attacked by a bully with a microphone, a man who can get press attention any time he wants and seems to have no shame about picking on those less powerful and less connected than he is. Has he no decency? It appears not. So what are the Winklevosses supposed to do—lie there and take it while a former president of Harvard, one who doesn’t play by any rules of civility and courtesy, humiliates them in front of a laughing crowd? In remarks that are transmitted around the globe?

Here’s another thing I keep thinking: In my own work, I make a point of never writing something I wouldn’t say to someone’s face.

Does anyone believe that Larry Summers would dare to call the WInklevosses assholes if they were in the room?

As I say: Bully.

The question is whether Drew Faust will stand up to him. She will be a weaker president than she is now if she does not.

Fortune reports that Larry Summers, being interviewed by Walter Isaacson at the “Fortune Brainstorm Tech” conference, called the Winklevosses “assholes.”

Here’s the quote:

“One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o’clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they’re looking for a job and have an interview; the other is that they are an a**hole. This was the latter case. Rarely have I encountered such swagger, and I tried to respond in kind.”

And—astonishingly—it’s true. Summers said it. Check it out—there’s video below.

It’s hard to know where to start with this, but I’ll try.

Did it not occur to Summers that the Winklevosses were wearing coats and ties because they had a meeting with the Harvard president, and they had enough respect for the office and the man who occupied it to get dressed up?

Second, what you’re wearing doesn’t make you an asshole. Unless perhaps it’s deliberately disrespectful, and this was clearly the opposite of that.

Third, whether or not they were assholes should have no bearing on how Summers treated them, and how he ruled on their complaint.

Fourth, the former president of Harvard shouldn’t be in the business of calling Harvard students/graduates “assholes.” Just…no. Not under any circumstances.

Fifth, if the Winklevosses are assholes because they wore coats and ties, what would that make Mark Zuckerberg, who created a website to rank people by their looks and blogged about how Harvard women were like “farm animals“—something Summers should have known, since it was a disciplinary matter before he met with the Winklevosses.

Six, it’s a little creepy how Summers starts this anecdote by almost verbatim repeating his earlier answer from a couple months ago—and then, apparently flush with the confidence of recent successes, adds that startling dig at the end.

Seven, I took some heat for writing in Harvard Rules that numerous Harvard faculty members wondered if Larry Summers has Aspergers. The fact that Summers would so misinterpret the social cue of getting dressed up for a meeting with the president of the university—and the fact that he would find it now appropriate to call former students “assholes”—provides some evidence for that theory.

“Rarely have I seen such swagger,” Summers says. You have to wonder: Does he ever look in the mirror?

A couple weeks back I raised an eyebrow about Henry Blodget’s suggestion on his website, Business Insider, that Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg should be the next Treasury secretary. Given her lack of relevant experience, it seemed an absurd suggestion.

Now I know why Blodget really made it: Sandberg is the lead speaker at a Business Insider conference. Tickets are a mere $1300 a pop.

So Blodget was either thanking her for agreeing to attend his conference, trying to persuade her to attend his conference, or trying to boost sales for the conference by putting the rumor out there she might be the next Treasury secretary.

If something doesn’t make sense on the face of it, there’s usually a reason…

There’s a subject header I never thought I’d type.

Nonetheless..the city of Philadelphia is going to start issuing traffic tickets to people who text while walking. That is an awesome start. Now…could they also lock up people who block subway doors?

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a long editorial defending its now resigned publisher, attacking politicians and accusing other news organizations of hypocrisy. It’s one of the truly cringe-worthy moments in this whole fascinating saga, and it’s a sign of just how far the Murdoch ethos—facts are silly things—has infiltrated that newspaper.

A few point-counterpoints:

1) “News Corp. and its executives have apologized profusely and are cooperating with authorities.”

It’s taken them ages to apologize and the extent of their cooperation is far from clear—as the Times reports, they’ve destroyed internal emails, and as the Guardian reports, former News International head Rebekah Brooks may have just tried to throw evidence of her misbehavior in a dumpster. This is the same woman whom Rupert risked his company to save.

As the Times points out today,

Late last week, Rupert Murdoch told The Wall Street Journal that the News Corporation had handled the situation “extremely well in every way possible,” except for a few “minor mistakes.”

2) “Phone-hacking is illegal, and it is up to British authorities to enforce their laws. If Scotland Yard failed to do so adequately when the hacking was first uncovered several years ago, then that is more troubling than the hacking itself.”

What the Journal doesn’t say here is that the reason Scotland Yard failed to investigate adequately is that its officers were blackmailed, bribed and corrupted by News of the World employees. Hmmm. Seems relevant.

3) “The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support.”

This is an argument I’ve heard News of the World reporters make, and it’s silly. Courting the support of the press and worrying about the press breaking the law are not incompatible, presuming that, while you’re courting the press, you’re not aware that the press is breaking the law on a massive (thousands of hacked phones) scale.

4) “Our readers can decide if we are a better publication than we were four years ago, but there is no denying that News Corp. has invested in the product.”

The Wall Street Journal is not a better paper than it was four years ago. Period.

5) “We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur.”

Oh, grow up, Journal. If you want to take a shot at the Times, have the balls to name the paper. But the charge doesn’t really stick, which is probably why it’s only an implication. The Times hasn’t said much about the Journal, if anything, in all this mess, and the paper’s reporting on the scandal has been just what it (and the Journal’s) ought to be—thorough, dogged, relentless. They’re doing a good job on this story.

Here’s an example from today’s paper:

“If you’re talking about illegal tapping by a private investigator,” Rupert Murdoch declared in February 2007, “that is not part of our culture anywhere in the world, least of all in Britain.”

But it turns out that almost from the beginning, executives of News International, the British subsidiary that owns the tabloid, had access to information indicating that other reporters were also engaged in the practice.

And the Times goes on to deliver the goods.

If they’ve slagged the Journal, I haven’t seen it—but in the eyes of the people writing this editorial, investigating Rupert and slagging the Journal are the same thing. That shows just how mired in the News Corp culture the Journal has become.

6) “The prize for righteous hindsight goes to the online publication ProPublica for recording the well-fed regrets of the Bancroft family that sold Dow Jones to News Corp. at a 67% market premium in 2007. The Bancrofts were admirable owners in many ways, but at the end of their ownership their appetite for dividends meant that little cash remained to invest in journalism. We shudder to think what the Journal would look like today without the sale to News Corp.”

Now, that’s just tacky.

In short, this is an argument whose every paragraph is rife with intellectual dishonesty, and in that sense it shows just how far the Journal has fallen. The newspaper’s defense is its own undoing.

“Another week, another great white shark” off Cape Cod.

In other shark news, the BBC ran this video of a couple of American guys in kayaks who allegedly risked their lives in this “dramatic” shark catch. This is a thresher shark which the BBC generously describes as eight feet long.

Thresher sharks are rare, beautiful, and never hurt a fly (or a person). But watch this asshole talk about “at any moment that shark could have arched up and taken out his Achilles….”

And these guys are proud of this video? Looks to me like they’re basically torturing an animal.

“The shark was released,” the BBC says. (Wish I’d been the reporter; I might have asked a few different questions.) But sharks that are hooked, reeled in, grabbed by their tail and yanked onboard often go into shock and die. (Think about it.) To what end? For 30 seconds of video and bragging rights?

When are humans going to learn that getting your kicks by capturing and killing other creatures for sadistic pleasure isn’t a good way to live on this planet?

“The men escaped injury,” the BBC wraps up. Too bad.

The TV show, not the family…it just earned 10 Emmy nominations after being dropped by the HIstory channel because of pressure from Caroline Kennedy.

The fears about being associated with “The Kennedys” didn’t end when it finally ran (to mixed reviews). Hubbard said Reelz had to promote the miniseries to Emmy voters itself after being unable to land a big Hollywood public relations firm to coordinate the campaign.

“They wouldn’t touch this thing,” [ReelzChannel CEO Stan] Hubbard said….

Here’s another sign that the generational infighting within the Kennedy family is growing: AP reports that the family is divided over the future of the family compound in Hyannis Port.

Sen. Edward Kennedy’s widow, Vicki Kennedy, and his three children plan to transfer the main house at the compound to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, perhaps for use as a scholarly retreat or a museum.

Some Kennedys have raised concerns about those plans, according to a family associate who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. They are worried about protecting the privacy of family members who will continue to live on the grounds, maintaining the overall character of the compound and ensuring access to the beachfront property, the family associate said.

As a part owner of a (vastly smaller) home left to my siblings and myself by my father, I can sympathize: The joint ownership of a home is not easy. Consider the real historical importance of this family home, not to mention how pleasant its present use must be, and I’m sure resolving this is not going to be easy.

This story is another sign—one was the fight over the Kennedys miniseries, another is the fight over RFK’s presence in the JFK Library—that the family is struggling with the final loss of its most accomplished generation, divvying up the legacy. Again—can’t be easy.

1) Boy, was that a shameless plug FOX gave to its own movie, “Friends with Benefits,” interviewing its star Justin Timberlake for about five minutes. Even Timberlake seemed embarrassed. And/or drunk.

2) That’s great for Mastercard and MLB to “stand up for cancer” and all that. But…$4 million? That’s how much Mastercard is giving away? That’s a rounding error for Mastercard. They could probably have given more money away if they didn’t spend so much money on ads at the All-Star game.

3) Wouldn’t DirectTV’s ads for a “football season ticket” be more compelling if there was actually going to be a football season?

4) That kid that Heath Bell was talking to was kind of a spoiled brat. He’s front row at the All-Star game, talking with a player on national television, and he can’t even look like this is kind of a big deal?

5) Big mistake—and I hate to say this, but it’s true—on Derek Jeter’s part not to come. For Chrissake, play in the field for an inning and bat once and give people a chance to celebrate your accomplishment. Not going=not classy.

6) Jonah Hill in Moneyball? Really?

…the paper ran a fascinating story this morning on divisions at the Kennedy Library.

As archivists prepare to make public 63 boxes of Robert F. Kennedy’s papers at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, his family members are having second thoughts about where they should be housed and are considering moving them elsewhere because they believe that the presidential library has not done enough to honor the younger brother’s legacy.

Joe Kennedy, one of Bobby’s kids, points out that in the “very large building,” JFK gets a lot of attention, as you would expect, and Ted Kennedy gets a lot of attention, as you might expect.

But RFK gets very little attention, which you wouldn’t really expect at all.

There’s also the suggestion that some RFK papers might be sold by members of the family who are frustrated with the JFK Library.

A few points to make here.

1) It’s entirely possible that the RFK kids could use some cash. There are about 40 of them, and they may well bear out the old expression, “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.”

2) As the current generation of Kennedys becomes less and less of a presence in American public life, these fights over how the prior generation is remembered will grow more frequent and more intense. If the current generation were making a bigger mark, they’d be too busy to bicker so much—and, frankly, they’d care less.

3) Where is Caroline? She’s not even mentioned in the article—a strange omission, given that she’s the president of the JFK Library Foundation—but surely she is the single most powerful voice in determining what happens at the JFK Library? And as I’ve detailed elsewhere, she cares very much about how history treats her (immediate) family.

There’s a great story about how the Kennedy Library tries to shape history and control scholarship, if anyone feels like pursuing it….

David Warsh does the math on home delivery of the New York Times: about $770 a year. (The Times makes it very hard for you to figure this out on your own.)

That’s about twice as much as the Wall Street Journal and almost $500 more than the Financial Times.

Warsh does some interesting analysis of how and why the Times charges so much, but this is the bottom-line paragraph:

For now, customers like me are faced with a trilemma. Do I continue to pay twice as much, for a newspaper that, generally speaking, I don’t have time to read, feeling slightly euchered all the while? Do I surrender to its tilt to digital consumption, presumably hastening the demise of the weekday print edition that I prize? Or do I simply quit buying the paper altogether, in protest? It is a cruel choice. Bare-knuckles for them, white-knuckles for those who prefer newsprint.

One thing I wouldn’t mind canceling: the Sunday Times. It’s too much paper, not enough worth reading…