Notice: Sparse Posting

This week I am out of town and will not have much time until Monday 7 February, so please expect sparse posting.

My sincere thanks for reading, though.

A content-free weekend

The weekend and Monday Globe are issues that have fairly little interesting content. Instead I went fishing at the NY Times and found this article in the NY Times Magazine by Matt Bai about SEIU President Andy Stern. It was the most interesting piece I saw over the weekend. Stern is a unique union president.

On Monday both the NY Times and the Globe covered Kerry’s Sunday appearance on “Meet the Press”, but neither report mentioned Kerry's weak response to direct questions about his seared memory of “Christmas in Cambodia”. You can find a thorough take on that part of the program in this post at Power Line. One has to wonder what the Times, the Globe, and other MSM organs are thinking when they cover Kerry’s TV appearance without mentioning the uncomfortable parts. It sure doesn’t seem that they are fast learners about the value of candor in the era of Internet-enabled information distribution. Oh well.

Godspeed

Here is a tribute to the real heroes of our country.

Re-thinking Philip Johnson

I regret the imprecision of calling Philip Johnson an American Albert Speer. A youthful Speer wannabe would be more accurate. Let me clarify by reproducing the entry from William Shirer’s Berlin Diary that mentions him – a diary entry from just 2 ½ weeks into World War II:

Zoppot, near Dantzig, September 18, [1939]

Drove all day long from Berlin through Pomerania and the Corridor to here. The roads full of motorized columns of German troops returning from Poland. In the woods in the Corridor the sickening sweet smell of dead horses and the sweeter smell of dead men. Here, the Germans say, a whole division of Polish cavalry charged against hundreds of German tanks and was annihilated. On the pier of this summer resort where just five weeks ago John [Gunther] and I sat far into the peaceful night arguing whether the guns would go off or not in Europe, we watched tonight the battle raging around Gdynia. Far off across the sea you could see the sky light up when the big guns went off.

Dr. Boehmer, press chief of the Propaganda Ministry in charge of this trip, insisted that I share a double room in the hotel here with Phillip[sic] Johnson, an American fascist who says he represents Father Coughlin’s Social Justice. None of us can stand the fellow and suspect he is spying on us for the Nazis. For the last hour in our room here he has been posing as anti-Nazi and trying to pump me for my attitude. I have given him no more than a couple of bored grunts.

The New York Times obituary says of Johnson’s 1930s escapades:

He liked to refer to himself, with only some irony, as a whore. And in the 1930's, this man who believed that art ranked above all else took a bizarre and, he later conceded, deeply mistaken detour into right-wing politics, suspending his career to work on behalf of Gov. Huey P. Long of Louisiana and later the radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, and expressing more than passing admiration for Hitler.

Yet both the Globe and the Times repeatedly refer to Johnson’s fascist period as dabbling in “right wing politics” as if he had joined a particularly conservative chapter of the Young Republicans rather than willingly pawning himself off to the Nazis…or are these two somewhat equivalent in their view?

I don’t mean to deny Johnson forgiveness or speak ill of the dead, but it seems to me that both the Times and Globe have glossed over this.

Finally, a very informative article here on the topic of Johnson and his Nazi sympathies in the 1930s by KAZYS VARNELIS, which was published in the journal Architectural Education.

Nazi Survivors

Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp by the Soviet Red Army in 1945. Today’s Globe has 4 stories about Auschwitz survivors: here, here, here, and here.

Also in today’s Globe is a long obituary of celebrated architect Philip Johnson. Not so celebrated is Johnson’s Nazi sympathy and activism during the 1930s. Midway through the obit, this is discussed:

During the 1930s Mr. Johnson abandoned architecture for right-wing politics. He attended a Nazi rally near Berlin, where he was enthralled by Adolf Hitler and -- as he told a biographer long afterwards -- ''all those blond boys in black leather." [Johnson was homosexual -ed] He became a Nazi fellow-traveler, published racist articles, and in September 1939 followed Hitler's armies into Poland as a correspondent for Social Justice, a magazine published by the American radio extremist Father Charles Coughlin.

In Poland he encountered the journalist William Shirer, who later wrote in his best-selling book ''Berlin Diary": ''None of us can stand the fellow and suspect he is spying on us for the Nazis." To an interviewer decades later, he explained his politics of the 1930s, which he came to regret, as having been motivated by architecture: ''I thought the fascist dictators were going to build in a grander way than the democracies, by analogy to the papacy and the monarchies."

An American Albert Speer, then. How ironic that his far too complimentary obituary should appear in the Globe today.

Poorly Behaved Brats

There are a couple of amusing reads among today’s Globe columns.

First, Eileen McNamara once again bashes the Archdiocese of Boston. Eileen must be the kind of person who never tires of catching fish in a barrel. How much courageous journalism does it take to blast the bureaucratic stupidity of the Archdiocese of Boston? Of course there is no point in feeling too sorry for the victim, either. The Archdiocese has decided to use the space in a shuttered Catholic school for its marriage Tribunal rather than sell it to a community organization.

The Archdiocese epitomizes an organization that is profoundly deaf to its constituents (“stakeholders” in trendy parlance), but that point was well proven some time ago. Eileen does not mention that the Archdiocese has such a giant problem with its current cash flow that it will likely be liquidating assets regularly for some time to come.

On a lighter note, Scot Lehigh comments on reality TV and its latest manifestation, “Supernanny”:

…I have to confess that the charm of most reality TV eludes me. Tribal councils? Immunity? Alliances? I don't care if everyone stays on the island, but if it were up to me, I'd vote them all off the air.

Amen! The Supernanny, Jo Frost, is not an aspirant movie actress or a hotel heiress, but instead actually did work as a nanny for 15 years, so she tends to load her remarks with far more common sense than is normal for Hollywood fare:

"Every child needs discipline, along with a healthy balance of love and affection. Parents have lost the in-between ground -- and kids have lost respect for them."

That sentiment could come straight from the books of Dr. James Dobson, the latest Media Boogeyman of the Religious Right. I can hear the show’s director calling “Get me re-write!”.

As for Scot Lehigh, he complains that poorly behave brats are disturbing his serenity in Borders bookstore or his lunches up in Portland. Poor Scot! Those complaints make me suspect that he might be a D.I.N.K.

Harvard president walks out of emergency meeting

Harvard president Lawrence Summers stormed out of a closed-door emergency session on snow removal at the University on Sunday afternoon. While a transcript of the session is not available, it appears that a disagreement arose after Summers discovered that over 90% of those performing weekend snow removal at Harvard were male.



Summers calls for more women in Snow Jobs
When asked to explain the imbalance Jeffery Smith, Harvard’s Director of Facilities Maintenance, suggested that many factors might be involved. He offered three possible explanations, in declining order of importance, for the small number of women in snow removal positions. The first was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 18-hour shifts during snow emergencies when schools are cancelled.

His second point was that fewer girls than boys have high skills in operating power equipment. ''I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Smith said in an interview later. ''Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all.

This was the point that most angered Summers. Several at the meeting reported that Smith said that women do not have the same ''innate ability" or ''natural ability" as men in some fields. Asked about this, Smith said, ''It's possible I made some reference to innate differences. . . I did say that you have to be careful in attributing things to socialization. . . That's what we would prefer to believe, but these are things that need to be studied."

Keep your hand on the snowplow
In his response, according to several participants, Smith also used as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two snowplows in an effort at gender-neutral parenting. Yet she treated them almost like dolls, naming one of them ''daddy plow," and one ''baby plow."

It was during his comments on ability that Summers, sitting only 10 feet from Smith, closed his computer, put on his coat, and walked out. Summers said later that if he hadn't left, ''I would've either blacked out or thrown up."

However, the problem of women in snow removal is one that Summers is confronting in his role as university president. The percentage of job offers made to women by the university's Maintenance Services has dropped dramatically since Summers took office. Summers has called last year's results, when only four of 32 job offers went to women, unacceptable and promised to work on the problem. However, some Harvard professors have questioned his commitment to diversity snow jobs.

Making the world Safe for Dictatorship

In discussing the inaugural address in today’s Globe, analyst Peter Cannellos takes a Kerry-esque tone:

By stating that dictatorship breeds terrorism, Bush is reinforcing his strategy of attacking dictators rather than the groups that plan terrorism. Many antiterrorism specialists believe that as a way to attack terrorism, regime change is ineffective: The most threatening terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda operate outside national boundaries and can only be fought with intensive international cooperation.

By implicitly expressing a desire to transform all governments that are not democracies, Bush runs a risk of either alienating allies in the war on terrorism or being accused of a double standard when he extends favorable treatment to nondemocratic allies such as Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

In that first paragraph, Canellos certainly has a point. In the second he charges Bush with running a risk. Guilty as charged. It’s a nasty thing having to develop a policy and execute it. Risks must be evaluated and accepted along with the consequences. Kerry tried to run a risk-free (nuanced?) campaign, and he lost despite the heroic efforts of the media to portray him as superior to the president. Canellos later writes:

Ultimately, Bush's inaugural address will be either validated or subsumed by the events that follow.

Exactly.

Reagan’s speeches during the 1980s, also widely criticized from Morrissey Boulevard, have been validated by the events that followed. Bush is looking back not only to the events of 2001, but to those of 1989.

Joanie Caucuses

Speaking of the junior Senator from Massachusetts, Joan Vennochi candidly remarks in today’s Globe:

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, hijacked Boston's annual Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast to advance his own agenda. He decried what he called the suppression of thousands of would-be voters in November.

If he truly believed that to be the case, why didn't he challenge the election? He continues as a politician who wants things both ways -- he is for the election result and against it. He votes for the war but he won't vote for Condoleezza Rice for secretary of state.

True, and that speaks well for the judgment rendered by the voters. Far better to have unbridled egotism spoil one breakfast in Boston than four years in Washington.

Not healthy for the nation

Today’s Boston Globe has a slew of columns about Larry Summers’ remarks over the weekend. Apparently it takes the folks on Morrissey Blvd a couple of days to get up a full head of steam. I did not find any of them particularly interesting. What was interesting was an editorial which criticized the Bush inauguration while trying to sound even handed. For example:

For instance, historians have noted that the ceremonies have frequently been muted in time of war, notably by Woodrow Wilson in 1917 and Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945. Two Democratic congressmen have informed colleagues that Roosevelt gave a short speech in the White House and served guests "cold chicken salad and plain pound cake."

Of course the Globe doesn't mention that FDR was in poor health, so poor that he had less than 3 months to live. Nevertheless his very short speech, also given in wartime, is one that would choke any Democrat who tried to give it today, but rather has a sound like many of today’s Republicans. Take a look – it's only 1 page - right here.

Digging the hole deeper, the Globe oracles write:

But most troubling from the perspective of domestic policy is those who are funding the fun in Washington. The McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, passed after enormous public pressure, limits political contributions to $2,000 and bans direct "soft money" gifts. But the big givers have found other routes, writing huge checks to "independent advocacy groups," the parties' national conventions, and now the inaugural events.

Apparently overcome by the need to keep up appearances, Bush has this year restricted inaugural contributions to no more than $250,000. This is a big step up from the $100,000 limit he imposed four years ago but still far less that the seven-figure checks some supporters wrote during the campaign.

Unsaid here is that the Kerry campaign and left-leaning 527s received many more seven-figure checks than Bush and conservatives. Finally, digging down to China (emphasis mine):

Interests, whether individuals or corporations, make such contributions for a reason, and it is a reason that is not healthy for the nation. In the future they should be limited to throwing their own parties, with an official inaugural ceremony and ball paid for with public money and modest public contributions. That would be a better start for any president.

Got that? “Not healthy for the nation”, regardless of the source or the level of public disclosure. Instead we should be spending the taxpayer’s money for a suitably Puritannic celebration.

On a lighter note, is this story of a morning breakfast club of liberal Kerry voters in nearby Lexington (was there once a battle fought there over something or other?), who are still in various stages of mourning over the November outcome. The article includes comments by some of the loons who were demonstrating outside of Kerry’s Beacon Hill home recently. That fellow says:

He does not trust the media to [expose the ‘fact’ of Bush’s election stealing] -- ''They make us look like idiots, conspiratorial" -- and he does not trust Congress to do it. So this week he launched a website, www.bushstole04.com, that includes links to other websites launched by citizens' groups that contain information about voter fraud. ''It's really up to the everyday person to realize they're not finding the truth from the media and the entire system is corrupt," Lopisi said.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has apparently expanded to include the mainstream media. Somebody better inform the folks over at CBS, and quickly!

Looking past the next 4 years of a Republican executive, one liberal breakfast clubber remarks (entirely innocent of the irony):

"Parties can self-destruct," Jim Fesler offers hopefully. "They're pushing a lot of stuff that could put them out to the fringe."

Do tell.

Larry says it again

Today’s Boston Globe lets Lawrence Summers out of the Boston stocks, but the NY Times reprises the story of his controversial remarks over the weekend. Larry clarifies his intent:

"I began by saying that the whole issue of gender equality was profoundly important and that we are taking major steps at Harvard to combat passive discrimination," he recalled in yesterday's interview. "Then I wanted to add some provocation to what I understand to be basically a social science discussion….I'm sorry for any misunderstanding but believe that raising questions, discussing multiple factors that may explain a difficult problem, and seeking to understand how they interrelate is vitally important,"

You might assume that your entire audience would agree, Larry, but that is not a safe assumption when speaking to academics.

An example of why the Globe needs Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn commenting on the reaction to Prince Harry's recent fling in Nazi regalia:

The French sports minister suggested the "scandal" would undermine Britain's bid to host the Olympics. Londoners should be so lucky.

But, if I understand the concern of the sporting world correctly, being a totalitarian state that's killed millions is no obstacle to hosting the Olympics, but going to a costume party wearing the uniform of a defunct totalitarian state that's no longer around to kill millions is completely unacceptable.

A superb and concise illustration of our cultural malady.

Harvard President Exercises Free Inquiry

Monday’s Boston Globe has a page 1 story on Larry Summers’ lunchtime remarks to an invitation-only seminar on women in science and technology. Poor Larry Summers violated the feminist academic speech codes in remarks that he announced in advance would be both speculative and provocative.

In Massachusetts we no longer display transgressors in the stocks. Instead, our form of social scolding by holders of the Sole Progressive World View is to publish a page 1 story in the Boston Globe (above the fold) with the lede “Summers’ remarks on women draw fire”.

Actually it should have been entitled:
“Harvard President Ignores Academic Speech Codes”.

Michelle Malkin has a choice comment.

Just Wishin' and Hopin'

In Friday's Globe Scott Lehigh composes a visionary "state of the city" speech for DeMayah of Boston.

"Our city employees will be able to bid as well, of course. Whoever can do the work or deliver quality services at the lowest cost will get the job. And the taxpayers will be the winners. Cities like Phoenix, Charlotte, Baltimore, San Diego, and Indianapolis have all tried this approach and proved that it works. It is saving them millions each year. The time has come for Boston to do the same.

We've made progress with our schools, but I want parents and students to have more options. So tonight, with the governor, the speaker, and the Senate president all here, I'm going to make a little news. I'm asking you to please lift the cap on charter schools, so Boston can have more of these innovative academies. I know I used to say pilot schools were a good alternative to charters. But last year, sadly, the president of the Boston Teachers Union blocked an attempt by his own members to transform their school into a pilot. His action has thrown cold water on the whole pilot-school movement."

In Scott's dream the Mayor of Boston is...Mitt Romney!

Leveraging the Blogosphere

Here are a couple items from other blogs pertaining to the Globe and Boston that I found rather interesting.

First, Scarnews has some amusing comments on today’s Globe article about the Former Presumptive Nominee’s trip to the Middle East (during the Congressional session).

Second, Best of the Web Today has a story (2nd story in the column) about math in the Newton public schools where falling MCAS achievement scores began (coincidentally) about the same time as the town adopted an "anti-racist multicultural math" curriculum. Yes, you read that right. Perhaps such a curriculum is one in which 2-10% of the lines are not born straight.

Finally, given the source I imagine there will be a fair amount of chatter among the chattering classes about Jacoby’s column today, proposing that the US House of Representatives be expanded to about 1300 members. It all sounded fine until Jeffy said this:

Enlarging the House to around 1,300 members -- triple its current size -- would doubtless take some getting used to. But the benefits would more than outweigh any inconvenience.

Among them: Congress would be enriched by a great infusion of new blood and new ideas. Congressional staffs could be sharply reduced.

Sure the staffs would be trimmed. So 1300 pols instead of 435 will operate with a smaller staff? Reps are going to shrink their own staffs? Since when? What planet are you on? And after that, Jeff, would the State just fade away and leave us in the Worker’s Paradise? If they need a token conservative opinion, I wish the Globe would run columns by Mark Steyn. They won't, though. It would stand out from their other content too much.

Somehow the Globe Missed This

Interrogation techniques were the focus at the recent Gonzales confirmation hearings held by the Senate Judiciary committee. The senior Senator from Massachusetts weighed in on the subject of “water boarding” (a technique for subjecting a prisoner to an experience of near-drowning). Certainly Senators on both sides of the aisle would yield to him on this subject.

Boston Globe readers, it seems, did not receive word of their Senator's line of questioning. Perhaps the folks over on Morrissey Boulevard lack the minimal degree of diversity required to detect irony in such an exchange, or more likely lack the backbone to share such a story with their readers. A fragment of audio record exists, however, here.

Hat Tip: MassRight

What if they called it their Bankie?

Comedian Bill Braudis does a hilarious stand-up routine in today's Boston Globe about the very local controvery of re-naming our city's boxy sports arena, which still carries the name of the swallowed Fleet Bank. An excerpt:

Bank of America was also oddly concerned that Bostonians would never call the arena by its full name. For some reason they couldn't bear the thought of a nickname. Exactly why this bothered Ban of Am, no one knows, because it's a common practice here. (See: Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, Commonwealth Avenue, Carl Yastrzemski, The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge, State Trooper, package store, and submarine sandwich.)

Tomorrow I'll post the correct answers for readers unfamiliar with the local dialect. I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Asking 'Why do they hate us?'

In today's Boston Globe a Blue columnist in the Bluest paper of the Bluest state contemplates the recently documented shrinking population of Massachusetts and asks:

“But something bigger than the price-tag on a house in Brookline may lurk behind the population shift. New England's well-established elitism and sense of intellectual superiority do not translate into tolerance for divergent viewpoints. Maybe the holders of divergent views are deciding to relocate to more open-minded locales? Perhaps the attitude, 'Massachusetts has been getting it right for more than 300 years,' is a turnoff."

More tolerant and open-minded than proud citizens of the Hub of the Universe and the Athens of America? How is that possible?

77 North Washington Street

The current issue of The Atlantic Monthly has an interesting article which examines the remains of the November election. In Clintonism R.I.P. (subscription required) Chuck Todd writes:

“Absent Clinton's high-profile foes—at the outset of his presidency, a paleo-liberal congressional leadership on one side and radical-conservative revolutionaries on the other—the habit of splitting the difference on difficult issues comes across as crassly political, more so when one lacks Clinton's unique personal charisma. The more John Kerry attempted to do this (on national security, gay marriage, Iraq), the more the effect was magnified, until the long-standing criticism of Clinton—that he didn't really stand for anything—became the definitive charge against Kerry. In the end Kerry, like his party, seemed to draw exactly the wrong lesson from Clinton's example, mimicking his tactics and politics with liturgical precision, but never managing to replicate the sense of a new direction that carried Clinton into office. The result was a candidate and a party with apparently no core set of values.”

Yes. In particular one conservative-posturing Kerry summer road trip through the Midwest comes to mind, when the Presumptive Nominee announced that he always believed that human life began at conception (he had apparently just never voted that way as a Senator).

In the same Atlantic issue, and even more interesting is an article by Benjamin Wittes of the LA Times entitled “Letting Go of Roe”, which argues:

“...a pro-lifer who complains that she never got her democratic say before abortion was legalized nationwide has a powerful grievance. And there's nothing quite like denying people a say in policy to energize their commitment to a position. This point is not limited to abortion. For instance, the host of gay-marriage ballot initiatives in November came in direct response to the decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court to treat same-sex unions as a judicial matter rather than a legislative one. And less than a year before the Court handed down Roe, it single-handedly reinvigorated a public commitment to capital punishment (which at that point was on the way out) by striking down the death penalty as then practiced; within several years states had rewritten their laws, the Court had backed down, and executions had skyrocketed to levels unseen in decades.

But the Court has not backed down on abortion. Thus the pro-life sense of disenfranchisement has been irremediable—making it all the more potent. One effect of Roe was to mobilize a permanent constituency for criminalizing abortion—a constituency that has driven much of the southern realignment toward conservatism. So although Roe created the right to choose, that right exists under perpetual threat of obliteration, and depends for its vitality on the composition of the Supreme Court at any given moment.

Meanwhile, Roe gives pro-life politicians a free pass. A large majority of voters reject the hard-line anti-abortion stance: in Gallup polling since 1975, for example, about 80 percent of respondents have consistently favored either legal abortion in all circumstances (21 to 34 percent) or legal abortion under some circumstances (48 to 61 percent). Although a plurality of Americans appear to favor abortion rights substantially more limited than what Roe guarantees, significantly more voters describe themselves as "pro-choice" than "pro-life." Yet because the Court has removed the abortion question from the legislative realm, conservative politicians are free to cater to pro-lifers by proposing policies that, if ever actually implemented, would render those politicians quite unpopular.

In short, Roe puts liberals in the position of defending a lousy opinion that disenfranchised millions of conservatives on an issue about which they care deeply while freeing those conservatives from any obligation to articulate a responsible policy that might command majority support.”

Exactly, but it is up to Democrats (and in their self-interest) to fix it by ending the use of this issue as a Party test of ideological purity. The Republicans won’t change a thing because the Democrat's intolerant stand on the issue helps them more with each election.

Character [of law] matters

Sunday's Boston Globe has a most interesting article in the Ideas section about 4 economists dubbed LLSV who have (apparently) been shaking up the legal world for several years with statistical research indicating a strong correlation between Common Law legal origins, the development of functioning financial markets, and higher levels of prosperity which people in countries with functional financial markets enjoy. Their hypothesis is that a more autonomous judiciary is critical. The original article appeared in Legal Affairs magazine and is a better read than the Globe’s shortened one. Moneygraph:

"LLSV has not produced a recipe for success that government ministers in developing countries can follow. What they have done is provide a giant statistical brief in support of the ideas of John Locke and James Madison, and they've updated those ideas for a world that's as interested in economic success as liberty. Creating a judicial branch that can check the executive and the legislature doesn't just protect individual rights and prevent the persecution of the government's political opponents. It improves your stock market.

If 18th-century reasoning can't convince modern constitution writers and lawmakers of the utility of protecting private property and putting judicial checks on other government branches, maybe 21st-century statistics and economic enticements can."

“A world that’s as interested in economic success as liberty” should not be surprised to find a strong correlation between the two. The relationship might come as a rude shock to the academic and totalitarian worlds, though. I plan to put these fellows' original paper on my to-read list.

UPDATE: If you really find this topic interesting, you can view or download their original paper here (53 pages).

Waiting for Clouseau

John Hinderaker of Powerline Blog (the bloggers who acted as a clearinghouse for Rathergate information) places his bets on the impending CBS report here. It is worth a read. I can see why he wanted to publish this before the CBS report became public. His key questions are out on the table before he knows what the content of the report is. Moneygraph:

The fundamental question here is whether CBS was the victim of a hoax, or the perpetrator of a hoax. It has been our view for a long time that Rather and his colleagues were perpetrators, not victims, in part because the documents were such obvious fakes that it strains credulity to suppose that they were actually fooled. When you read the Thornburgy/Boccardi report, keep that question constantly in mind: victim, or perpetrator?

We shall see.

Cutting Corners for a Kennedy?

Wednesday's Boston Globe carries a very short story on page A2 originally from the Chicago Tribune. The story is edited (cut, actually) to the point where it is nearly incomprehensible. Since it concerns a Chicago doctor – one William Kennedy Smith – this brevity is slightly suspicious. In olden days one might just shrug, but today one can read the original Tribune article and discover what Paul Harvey calls “the rest of the story”. This shows the Globe's apalling whitewash of the Tribune story. Below is the Tribune story with the text the Globe editors selected to print in bold. The Tribune yesterday carried another story on the same case which included this memorable explanation from Dr Smith:

“family and personal history have[sic] made me unusually vulnerable to these kind of charges.”

Indeed.

Suit against JFK nephew is dismissed
Ex-aide claimed sexual assault

By John Bebow
Tribune staff reporter
January 5, 2005

William Kennedy Smith is "totally vindicated" and should return to helping land mine victims around the world, his attorney said Tuesday after a Cook County judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming Smith sexually assaulted his former office assistant.

The suit, filed in August by Audra Soulias, sought financial damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress based on two phone messages Smith left her in January 2004. The messages, the transcripts of which have not been released, came one day after Soulias, 29, spoke with an investigator looking into claims of sexual harassment by Smith against women at the Chicago-based Center for International Rehabilitation, a much-lauded non-profit group founded by Smith in 1996 to assist victims of land mines.

Cook County Circuit Judge William Maddux ruled Tuesday that those two phone messages, totaling less than 90 seconds in length, did not meet the legal standard of extreme and outrageous conduct necessary to justify an emotional distress lawsuit.

"There is no question (Soulias) was trying to cash in," Smith's attorney, Dan Webb, said after the surprising oral ruling Maddux issued immediately after a hearing on Webb's motion to dismiss the suit. "This case has been about money since the beginning."

Smith, 44, a nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, moved to Chicago shortly after his acquittal in a high-profile Florida rape trial in 1991. Soulias' lawsuit derailed Smith's career as a global medical activist.

He stepped down as president and chairman of the Center for International Rehabilitation days after Soulias' suit claimed Smith sexually assaulted her in his home in 1999 after a night of drinking to celebrate her birthday.

Soulias' suit also revealed that two other former CIR employees had recently settled federal sexual-harassment claims against Smith. But Smith's legal team quickly pointed out that Smith and Soulias had a consensual sexual relationship for months after the alleged assault against her and noted $100,000 in shopping expenses and other debt revealed in Soulias' personal bankruptcy in 2000.

Despite the salacious claims and counter-claims, the lawsuit boiled down to the two phone messages because the statute of limitations on the alleged assault expired in 2001.

Maddux sided with Webb, who argued that successful emotional-distress claims in Illinois and federal courts have dealt with egregious acts such as a police officer allowing the forcible rape of a child, a victim whose house was set on fire and a bill collector's 10-month campaign of harassment against a debtor.

Such acts must be beyond all bounds of decency to justify a legal claim, Maddux said. "That standard has not been met," he ruled.

Soulias looked downcast after the ruling and did not comment on it.

Her attorney, Kevin O'Reilly, said he plans to file an amended lawsuit and proceed with other appeals if necessary. He declined to explain why his lawsuit did not include a transcript of the voice messages in question, insisted the case wasn't about money and claimed the Kennedy family name protects Smith.

"He's got seven women under gag orders right now," O'Reilly alleged. "It's working. He does have the power and the money to stop these things . . . This (case) has been worth my while no matter what. I did the right thing."

As for the content of the voice messages, O'Reilly pointed only to a quote in Chicago Magazine from Smith last month in which he related his recollection of the messages. "I heard this disturbing thing. I don't know if it's you (saying it. But if) it is you, I wish you would have the -- `guts' is what I think I said -- to call and make that accusation to me to my face. And if it's not you, please call and let me know because I don't know what's going on," Smith said.

O'Reilly claimed in his suit that the messages caused Soulias to become fearful, feel threatened and physically ill, caused sleeplessness and embarrassment.

Smith declined to comment through a spokeswoman.

The Center for International Rehabilitation cheered Maddux's ruling and a spokesman said Smith and the organization's board are considering his return to the staff.

"We're relieved he has closure to this," said Michael King, the agency's director of communications.

King said he had never heard of seven women connected to CIR signing gag orders regarding sexual-harassment claims involving Smith, noting only that the two privately settled federal harassment claims ended "amicably."

CIR and Smith will have a discussion over the next couple of weeks about his possible return, King said.

"Certainly, Will should take the time to clear his mind," he said.

Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune

Let's not be ethnic profilers!

Today's Boston Globe carries a report originating in an Arab newpaper that the suicide bomber who blew himself up recently in a US mess hall in Mosul, Iraq and killed 22 was not an Iraqi.

The bomber was a young male medical student from Saudi Arabia.

Beria lives

Putin has demoted the highest ranking dissenter within his administration. The ranks fill with former wearers of the blue shoulder-boards of the KGB.

Sublime and Ridiculous

Sublime: Today’s Boston Globe Ideas section contains an excellent story called “Muzzled in Moscow” by Masha Gessen on the impact of Putin’s crackdown on the independent press and other dissenters in Russia. Her story sounds very much like Solzhenitsyn’s struggles in Cancer Ward and The First Circle. She describes the dilemma of people who are faced with a choice of either collaborating with the Party to some degree through self-censorship, or of opting out altogether from civic life and pursuing only menial (meaning non-political) work and personal family concerns. It is a piece worth reading.

Ridiculous: The same Ideas section subjects readers to a second consecutive day of Op-Ed contributions by a professor of Women’s Studies. Aren’t we the lucky ones? While poor Masha Gessen writes about her grandmother’s struggles to survive under tyranny, today's Women’s Studies piece is a column entitled “Return of the goddess” which discusses the spiritual wandering of pop-diva Madonna into the mystic Kabbalah sect. Madonna has somehow become a Kabbalah follower yet without embracing the rigid sex roles that Kabbalah followers practice. Opines today’s WS prof:

“…one could say that Madonna has injected an obscure, ailing form of patriarchal Jewish mysticism with a much needed dose of woman's chutzpah.”

One could also say that by crashing her way uninvited into this Jewish sect, Madonna is simply continuing a 20-year run of flawless self-promotion; through which she has managed to keep small minds – feminist and otherwise – chattering about her; whether making records, knocking Catholicism, coupling with Dennis Rodman, or starring in and publishing a coffee table book of porn. The Kabbalah simply have the misfortune to be her current stage prop.

New Truths Revealed

The Boston Globe Op-Ed page is the gift that keeps on giving. Today a couple of professors (one a professor of Journalism at Boston University, the other a scholar at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center…we are talking soft-studies here) publish an essay with the unpresumptuous title “New truths about real men”. They begin their argument as follows:

“The news about men in the year just past was dismal. A high-profile court case saw a husband (Scott Peterson) convicted of murdering his pregnant wife. CEOs at Enron and Worldcom stand accused of defrauding employees and investors. NBA players waded into a crowd, fists flying. Then, to put the icing on this poisonous cake, the Department of Labor reported that the working woman spends twice as much time, on average, as the working man on household chores and care of children.”

Does that sound faintly like an argument with a woman? Can you follow the logic? What? You don’t quite see how these are related? Then keep eating the cake. While I am still licking the icing, I might mention a few other male-caused disturbances of 2004 which don’t get as much ink as Laci Peterson; like one episode of genocide and mass rape in Darfur, the slaughter of hundreds of elementary school pupils in Beslan (does anyone remember?), or prankishly poisoning a political candidate in Ukraine. Tisk, tisk, tisk. Nasty boys. We men spend our time plotting, murderering, and plundering, and then top it all off by leaving dirty dishes in the sink. The profs continue:

It gets worse.

Yes, it does.

At home men are seen as lazy slugs and at work are viewed as old-fashioned, kick-butt bosses. In school, boys' verbal abilities lag far behind those of girls. As parents, males are thought to lack parenting abilities. Expanding paternity leave is pointless, since males are programmed to have little emotional attachment to their kids.

Males lack empathy with others. If a friend approaches them to talk about problems, they change the subject or make a joke. In relationships they don't have a clue. They are faithless wretches "hard-wired" by their genes to be promiscuous.

Is this picture accurate? Happily, new research shows that it is not. Indeed, real men manage to escape the stereotypes much of the time.

Phew! Glad for that! We can escape our fate, guys, at least much of the time. The profs go on to cite a half-dozen recent sociological studies which give evidence that our gender is not nearly as bad as our rep, and then conclude:

It's time to jettison the idea that males are clueless oafs who come from the planet Mars. Men, like women, are perfectly able to be people-oriented leaders, caring parents, good listeners, and true friends in time of need.

Thanks for this much-needed assurance, ladies. I am bursting with self-esteem.